The last of the smoke had thinned by dawn, leaving the sky a washed-out gray tinged with sorrow. Varan was silent, still licking its wounds. Where there had once been a tavern, now there was only charred ruin and ash that blew like pollen in the chilled breeze. Kael had stood for hours in the aftermath, unmoving, as if the destruction might answer something.
It didn't.
When Aerin found him again, he hadn't moved far. Just beyond the edge of the village, near the old creek bed, he sat on a broken column. Arms slack. Eyes distant.
"You should rest," she said.
Kael didn't look up. "I don't sleep well when the world burns."
She exhaled slowly, then sat beside him without asking. Her coat flared slightly as she moved, the fabric whispering against the grass. Her presence was a quiet one, not comfort but witness. The way a historian waits for a story to finish telling itself.
A long pause.
"They'll rebuild," she murmured.
"I know."
"But they'll never look at you the same again."
Kael turned his face toward the low morning sun. "They never did."
Aerin studied him, head tilted slightly. "You don't flinch at blame. That's rare."
"I've earned enough of it."
A crow landed nearby, picking through the scorched ground for something that no longer existed. Kael watched it, then said, "You knew this was going to happen."
Aerin didn't deny it.
"The mercenaries weren't here for coin. Not really. They were testing me."
Her expression was unreadable. "Testing your restraint. Your power. The aftermath."
"Someone sent them."
"Yes."
He looked at her now, fully. "And you know who."
"I suspect," she said carefully, "but knowledge without proof is the luxury of poets. Not historians."
"You're too smart to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," she replied. "I'm calculating."
Another silence. Then, without looking at him, she asked, "Where will you go now?"
Kael stood slowly. His movements were stiff with bruises, but the fire in him hadn't dimmed. If anything, it burned more quietly now. Controlled. Focused.
"North. There's a scholar in the high steppes. One of the old sects. He knew my father."
"Name?"
"Velin. They called him the Quiet Sun."
Aerin blinked. That name stirred something. Old texts. Fringe annotations. Myth.
"Dead men don't give answers."
"I'm not looking for answers," Kael said. "Just reminders."
She was quiet for a beat. Then: "You'll be followed."
"I know."
"And hunted."
"I always am."
Aerin stood too. The sun was rising higher now, catching in the thin strands of her dark hair. A moment passed between them—wordless but understood. Something shifting.
"I'm coming with you."
Kael arched a brow. "You don't strike me as the pilgrimage type."
"I'm not. But I've read enough prophecies to know when one's moving."
"I'm not a prophecy."
"Exactly," she said. "You're unpredictable. That's what makes this worth documenting."
Kael gave her a sideways glance. "So you're here to write my eulogy early?"
She smiled faintly. "I write to remember. Not to bury."
They walked together for a time, leaving the smoldering remains of Varan behind. Past fields yellowed from neglect. Past standing stones etched in forgotten tongues. The road north was narrow and cracked, winding like a scar between distant hills.
As they traveled, Aerin fell into her rhythm: jotting quick symbols, scribbling thoughts in the margins of maps and notes. She didn't ask Kael questions often, but when she did, they were sharp, surgical:
"How long can you sustain the heat before your body resists?"
"Why do your shockwaves seem directional instead of radial?"
"Have you ever met another?"
He answered some. Others he let hang.
At one point, she showed him a page from her book—an old etching of a mural long buried beneath a coastal ruin. It depicted figures wreathed in sunfire, their hands stretched toward a rising shape.
"They called them the Emberborn," she said. "Said their hearts pulsed with the breath of dying stars."
Kael stared at it a long time.
"Looks nothing like me," he said.
"That's why it matters."
They camped that night near the skeleton of an abandoned windmill. The stars were cold and unblinking. Kael sat sharpening a short blade. Aerin boiled water from a nearby spring, mixing it with dried herbs.
"You're used to this," he noted.
She stirred the pot. "Field work doesn't exactly come with room service."
Kael chuckled. "I just didn't expect someone like you to rough it."
"I wear boots, not glass slippers."
He glanced at her. "You always this snarky?"
"Only with people worth the effort."
The fire crackled. Shadows danced against stone.
Then, after a lull:
"Why did you really come with me?" Kael asked.
Aerin didn't answer immediately. She sat down across from him, her legs crossed, hands wrapped around the steaming cup of her makeshift tea.
"Because I've spent years studying stories," she said at last. "Trying to understand what makes people become more than themselves. Saints. Tyrants. Legends. And I've come to believe something simple: the ones worth following never ask to be followed."
Kael looked into the fire. "And if I become something else?"
"Then I'll be the first to write it down. And the last to let it be forgotten."
He gave her a look that was half-grim, half-grateful. "You're not exactly comforting."
"Good," she said, draining her tea. "You don't need comfort. You need clarity."
The next morning came pale and cold. They packed quickly, neither speaking much. The world felt larger someho
w, like the air itself had noticed their union and shifted slightly in preparation.
Two travelers now.
A weapon that didn't want to be one. And the historian who refused to look away.
Together, they set their sights on the horizon.
The story was no longer his alone.
And in the pages Aerin carried, the ink had only just begun to dry.