[Stop.]
The command had come together with two warm paws pressed firmly over Lucavion's eyes, cutting away the moonlight, the distant stars, and everything else his gaze had been using as a pathway into memories that seemed determined to drag him farther from the room.
For a few seconds, the darkness remained.
Gerald's fading silhouette still lingered somewhere behind it. Alexander's broken farewell followed close behind, along with lavender eyes, rain against glass, and the uncomfortable shape of a question Lucavion had somehow spent years without asking.
Then his own voice broke through them.
"Why?"
The sound surprised him.
He had grown so accustomed to speaking with Vitaliara through thought that hearing his own voice in the quiet room felt strangely foreign, roughened slightly by exhaustion and carrying more weight than the single word deserved. Yet the moment it left his lips, something inside him shifted.
His voice belonged here.
To this room.
To the Academy.
