The road turned narrow and treacherous, winding into the heart of a forgotten forest where the trees leaned too close and the light dared not follow.
Ash still clung to her cloak, a fading reminder of the sorrow they had left behind.
Each step forward was harder now. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of damp earth and something older something like the breath of long-dead gods.
She pressed a hand against a tree trunk as she stumbled, its bark rough and cold against her skin.
The shadow reached out instinctively, steadying her with a hand at her elbow.
She didn't look at him.
Couldn't.
The shame of what she had remembered still burned too fresh against her ribs.
"Are we close?" she asked, voice hoarse.
"Closer than you think," he said.
She hated how much his voice calmed her.
They moved on.
The forest grew stranger, the trees gnarled and twisted, their roots exposed like veins torn from the ground. Strange symbols had been carved into the trunks long ago, now blurred and eroded by time.
Each symbol pulsed faintly as they passed, as if recognizing her.
She shivered, pulling the cloak tighter around herself.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
"A threshold," he said. "Beyond here lies the part of you that even you tried to bury."
She hesitated.
The mist thickened around them, and the path ahead dissolved into shadow.
"I don't know if I want to remember."
"You must," he said gently. "Or you will be trapped between who you were and who you could become."
The choice lay heavy in her hands.
Turn back, and forget everything.
Move forward, and face a past written in blood and regret.
She drew a breath, the cold biting her lungs, and stepped into the mist.
The air shifted at once.
The sounds of the forest dulled to nothing. Even the faint pulse of magic from the earth below seemed to hush itself.
Ahead, a structure loomed half-chapel, half-crypt, built from black stone that absorbed what little light remained.
At its apex, a window shaped like a broken circle gaped open to the grey sky.
"This is where it ended," he said behind her.
She turned to him.
"And where it began again," he added.
She crossed the threshold.
The air inside was colder still. Heavy.
The floor was littered with shards of glass and wilted petals, crunching softly beneath her feet.
At the far end of the chamber, upon a cracked altar, lay an object wrapped in rotted cloth.
It pulsed.
She approached it slowly, heart hammering.
"What is it?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Some knowledge had to be taken, not given.
Her fingers hovered above the cloth.
Every instinct screamed to turn away, to flee into the welcoming arms of ignorance.
But she had come too far.
She pulled the cloth aside.
Beneath it lay a sword.
Or what was left of one.
The blade was shattered, the hilt twisted and scorched. Runes once carved in brilliance now lay scorched and dead.
Yet despite its ruin, the sword pulsed faintly at her presence, as if recognizing the hand that had once wielded it.
She staggered back, hand pressed to her mouth.
Images battered her senses
She, standing atop a hill as armies clashed below.
She, lifting the blade and speaking a word that split the sky.
She, breaking the very world she had sworn to protect.
And at the center of it all
Him.
Always him.
Kneeling before her, offering up his own sword, his heart, his life.
And she…
She had taken it.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of love.
Out of necessity.
Tears blurred her vision.
She fell to her knees before the altar, the broken sword lying between her trembling hands.
He came to stand behind her, silent.
Waiting.
He would not touch her.
He would not pull her back.
This was her burden to lift.
Her truth to claim.
And she would.
Even if it broke her again.
Her fingers brushed the broken blade.
A jolt of cold fire raced up her arm, but she didn't pull away.
The memories came sharper now, cutting through the fog of her mind with the precision of a knife.
Not just battlefields and ruin.
Not just the fall.
But the moment she made the choice.
The moment she raised her sword not against her enemies but against the very soul she loved most.
To save a crumbling kingdom.
To preserve a dying world.
To buy one more breath for those who still believed.
She had struck him down with her own hand.
She had killed the one who had never once turned away from her, even when the world did.
She bent forward, forehead resting against the altar's cold stone, tears soaking the dust.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, the words cracking apart in her throat.
She felt him kneel behind her, his presence a steady, silent thing.
Not accusing.
Not bitter.
Only there.
"I'm sorry," she said again, louder this time.
His hand hovered just above her shoulder, not touching, but close enough that she could feel the warmth of him bleeding through the cold.
"You were never meant to carry it alone," he said quietly.
She lifted her head, eyes red, breath shuddering.
"I did it," she said. "I destroyed everything."
"You made a choice no one else could make," he said. "You bore a burden no one else dared touch."
She shook her head, hair falling into her eyes.
"I was weak."
"You were strong enough to break your own heart to save others."
The broken sword pulsed once more beneath her fingers, its light no brighter than a dying ember.
She gathered the pieces in her arms, feeling their weight not just of metal, but of memory, of cost.
"What do I do with this?" she asked.
"Carry it," he said.
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes."
She rose slowly, clutching the remnants of the blade to her chest.
The chapel seemed darker now, the shadows thicker, the mist pressing close against the broken windows.
Yet she felt steadier than she had before.
Weighed down, yes.
But also anchored.
The world outside had not changed.
But she had.
She turned to face him fully, the first time since entering this forsaken place.
In the dim light, his face was almost visible beneath the hood sharp lines softened by sorrow, eyes dark and endless, carrying the weight of countless promises unspoken.
He looked at her as if she were something precious.
Something he had lost and found again, against every cruel twist of fate.
And in that look, she found her first fragment of forgiveness.
Not from him.
From herself.
She reached out, fingertips brushing the edge of his cloak.
"Will you walk with me still?" she asked.
He smiled a real smile, faint but unmistakable.
"Until your shadow needs no name."
She nodded.
Together, they stepped out of the ruined chapel, the broken sword wrapped in cloth once more, hidden but never forgotten.
The mist swallowed them at once, but they did not falter.
Not this time.
The road ahead was long.
The darkness would deepen.
But somewhere beyond it, light waited trembling, fragile, but real.
And for the first time, she believed she could reach it.