The sea gave them back slowly.
When Arenne and Seraphyne broke the surface, it was not to the same world that had taken them in. The air burned pale and gold, heavy with mist. The moon still hung in the west, fading from red to silver, and along the horizon a thin band of light trembled as though deciding whether to rise.
They waded to shore in silence. The water no longer clung to them; it slid away as if unwilling to keep what it could not understand. Sand shifted beneath their feet, soft as memory.
Arenne looked at the sky. Clouds had gathered there, shaped like wings unfurled. "Is this… the new dawn?" she whispered.
Seraphyne's gaze followed hers. "It is the edge of it. The world waking too soon."
The air around them shimmered. Across the sea, fragments of light broke free from the waves, hovering — each one the size of a petal, each carrying faint echoes of voices. Some wept, some sang. They drifted toward land and vanished in the air like sparks.
"They're dreams," Seraphyne said quietly. "Pieces of what once was, trying to remember themselves."
Arenne knelt, scooping a handful of the glowing water. It pulsed once before dissolving in her palm. "And us?"
Seraphyne smiled faintly. "We are what they dream of."
The city that waited beyond the dunes was both familiar and wrong. Its towers glimmered with the shapes of the old world— arches of Elarion reborn in glass and stone — but its streets were empty. Every sound carried twice, as if the air itself were echoing in confusion.
They walked together through the silence. A wind began to move, stirring banners on empty balconies. Arenne stopped before a mirror left in the street — a shop window, half shattered. Her reflection wavered. For an instant, she did not see her own face but that of the Queen she had painted, eyes calm, lips curved in a knowing smile.
"Lyssara," she breathed.
Seraphyne's hand found her shoulder. "She has always been near you."
Arenne turned. "Was she me?"
"She is you," Seraphyne said, "and more than you. The part of you that has walked with me through every ending."
The wind grew louder. The sky cracked faintly, the color of dawn deepening into crimson. A tremor ran through the street, and light spilled from the seams between the stones.
"The world is remembering too quickly," Seraphyne murmured. "It must learn to breathe, or it will shatter again."
Arenne took her hand. "Then teach it."
Seraphyne looked at her for a long moment. "It can only learn through those who live. I can show, but you must stay."
Arenne shook her head. "Not without you."
The goddess's wings flickered, translucent against the rising sun. "You will not be without me. Every dream that touches this new world will carry my echo. But you must walk among them as their queen once more."
The words settled between them, heavy and tender. Arenne understood what Seraphyne was asking—not separation, but faith. The same faith that had broken and remade the heavens once before.
She nodded. "Then I will remember for both of us."
Seraphyne smiled. "And I will wait beyond the moon."
The light around them brightened until the air itself became luminous. The city began to breathe again — bells faintly ringing, doors opening, people stirring as if waking from a long sleep.
When the first full ray of dawn touched the shore, the goddess stepped back into the radiance, her form dissolving into a thousand fragments of light that rose into the sky.
Arenne watched until the last one vanished.
The wind quieted. The sea lay still. The world was new again.
She stood alone in the empty street, her heart calm, her eyes silver in the dawn.
And though the goddess was gone, the air still whispered softly around her — words too faint for anyone else to hear.
"Remember. Dream. Reign."