The stars above them flickered like distant memories barely clinging to the sky.
She pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders as the night grew colder, each breath rising in small clouds that vanished almost instantly. The path twisted before them, narrowing into a thin trail swallowed by mist and silence.
He walked beside her, steady as a heartbeat. Always there. Always close.
A part of her found comfort in his presence, even though her mind whispered warnings she could not fully understand.
Ahead, the ruins gave way to a barren field.
Charred earth stretched in every direction, broken only by the skeletal remains of trees scorched down to bone. No flowers bloomed here. No wind stirred the ash that clung to the ground like a shroud.
She hesitated at the edge, toes barely touching the blackened soil.
"What happened here?" she asked.
He stood still, his cloak brushing against the dust, the hem gathering the shadows like spilled ink.
"This was once a city," he said quietly.
She swallowed, staring into the desolation.
"Was it mine?"
"No," he said. "But it fell because of you."
The words struck her harder than she expected.
She didn't remember. She didn't know how or why.
But she felt it the guilt, sharp and ancient, blooming in her chest like a wound reopening.
She stepped forward.
The ash crunched beneath her bare feet, soft and brittle. Each step left a hollow imprint, as if the earth itself remembered the weight of sorrow.
"What did I do?" she whispered.
"You tried to save it," he said. "But some things are not meant to be saved."
She glanced at him sharply.
"Then why try at all?"
He didn't smile, but something softened in his voice.
"Because the attempt matters."
A soft sound broke the silence a low, broken chime, like a bell buried deep beneath the ash.
She tilted her head, straining to hear.
There it was again, faint but insistent, calling from somewhere ahead.
Without thinking, she followed it.
The ash grew deeper, rising to her ankles, coating the edges of her cloak and hair with grey dust.
Still, she pressed on.
The shadow followed without question, a steady presence at her side.
They came upon a small rise, a place where the earth cracked open like a wound.
At its center stood a relic half-sunken, scorched but still intact.
It was a bell.
Small, silver, tarnished black by flame and time.
She knelt before it, brushing ash away with trembling hands. The metal was cold beneath her fingers, yet it pulsed faintly, as if alive.
"This…" she began.
He crouched beside her, his voice low.
"A memory. A promise made in sorrow."
She stared at the bell, her reflection warped across its ruined surface.
"What was the promise?"
He hesitated, then spoke so softly she almost didn't hear.
"That you would never let despair take root in your heart."
Her throat tightened.
"I failed, didn't I?"
"No," he said. "You forgot. There is a difference."
She reached out and touched the bell fully, and at once, images rushed into her mind
A city aflame.
Civilians crying out.
Herself, standing atop a broken tower, screaming a word into the storm that tore the skies apart.
The word was a promise.
The word was a curse.
She gasped and recoiled, falling back onto the ash.
He was there instantly, catching her with hands that were warm despite the cold.
Her breath came fast, heart hammering against her ribs.
"I… I destroyed it."
"No," he said firmly. "You tried to save it. They made their choice. Not you."
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, blurring the ruined field into little more than smears of grey.
"I don't want to remember anymore."
He didn't let go of her hand.
"I know. But you must."
She turned her face into the folds of his cloak, breathing in the scent of stone and rain.
And for a moment, she allowed herself to simply exist there, sheltered against the ruins of the world she had once loved.
The ash seemed thicker as they pressed onward, blanketing the world in a muted, endless grey.
She wiped her eyes and forced herself to rise, brushing the dust from her knees. Her legs trembled, but she stood.
Ahead, a faint shimmer broke the monotony of the field a place where the ash did not fall.
Drawn to it, she walked, her feet sinking deeper into the brittle earth with every step.
At the heart of the desolation stood a lone tree.
Dead, blackened, its branches twisted against the dying sky. Yet from its highest bough hung a single object: a ribbon of silver cloth, fluttering weakly in the still air.
She stopped beneath it, craning her neck to see.
"That belonged to you," the shadow said quietly behind her.
She reached up, but the branch was too high.
Without hesitation, he knelt before her, lacing his fingers into a cradle.
She placed her foot in his hands, and he lifted her effortlessly, as if she weighed nothing.
Stretching, she grasped the silver ribbon and tugged it free.
The fabric felt warm against her palm, pulsing faintly with a heartbeat not her own.
Memories teased the edge of her mind laughter beneath a golden sun, a voice whispering promises in the dark, the brush of lips against her hair.
She clutched the ribbon to her chest.
"I tied this," she murmured, tears burning the back of her throat.
"You did," he said.
"To remember…"
She couldn't finish.
The ground beneath them shuddered.
Startled, she stumbled back into him, and he caught her instinctively.
Across the ash field, faint figures began to stir shadows of the past, rising from the earth like smoke.
They were not alive.
They were echoes.
Faint impressions of the lives once lived here.
Children running with laughter that no longer carried.
Lovers embracing in alleys now reduced to rubble.
Soldiers raising swords against a storm they could not defeat.
She watched, unable to move, as the memories replayed themselves in silence.
"What is this?" she whispered.
"The remnants of grief," he said.
She turned to face him, heart twisting.
"They're trapped."
"They're waiting."
"For what?"
"For you."
She looked back at the shades, their forms flickering like candle flames in a storm.
A woman knelt in the ashes, weeping into her hands.
A man stood guard over an invisible door, sword drawn though no enemy approached.
Everywhere she looked, there were pieces of sorrow, shards of what had been broken.
And at the center of it all
A little girl, standing alone, clutching a wilted violet flower.
The sight broke her.
Tears spilled down her cheeks unchecked as she stumbled forward, falling to her knees before the child.
The girl looked up at her, eyes wide, ancient sadness shining through a face too young to bear it.
Without thinking, she reached out, offering the silver ribbon.
The child hesitated, then smiled a small, radiant smile and vanished like mist caught in sunlight.
The ash lifted with a sudden breath of wind.
The shades flickered, their faces softening, their burdens falling away.
One by one, they disappeared into the light.
The field grew still again, but no longer heavy.
Something had shifted.
Something had healed.
She knelt there, sobbing quietly, the ribbon still clutched in her fist.
He knelt beside her, his hand resting lightly against her back.
"You remembered enough," he said gently.
"I don't deserve to be forgiven," she choked out.
"You don't have to be. You have to forgive yourself."
The wind stirred the ashes around them, carrying away the last remnants of sorrow.
She closed her eyes and let it go.
When she opened them again, the world seemed a little less grey.
The path ahead was still uncertain, still cloaked in mist and shadow.
But for the first time since she awoke in the ruins, she felt strong enough to walk it.
She rose, the silver ribbon wrapped carefully around her wrist.
He rose beside her, silent and steady.
Together, they left the field of ashes behind.
The shadows thinned.
The light ahead grew warmer.
And though she did not yet remember her name, she remembered this:
She had loved.
She had lost.
And she had chosen, again and again, to walk forward.