The silence that followed was not empty.
It throbbed loud, suffocating, and stretched between Flynn and Khalid like a thread pulled too tight, ready to snap. The ruins still echoed with the distant fall of ice and the whispers of dying magic, but none dared to speak. Not yet.
Flynn took a breath.
"Now you know."
His voice, calm but raw, rang louder than any blade.
Elior stepped forward, lips parted, eyes wide. "You… you're Caelan. You've always been—"
"Yes," Flynn said without looking at him. "Reborn. Remembering. And still me."
Khalid didn't move.
He looked as though the ground had shifted beneath him, as though the entire foundation of what he thought real had cracked wide open.
"Say something," Flynn said, but it wasn't a plea. It was a demand.
Khalid's jaw clenched. His gaze those golden eyes once filled with warmth and hunger now flickered with something harder to define. Guilt. Regret. Shock. Fear.
"You were dead," Khalid said at last, voice hoarse. "I… I killed you."
"You did." Flynn didn't flinch. "And you swore loyalty to Winterbell to bury the evidence."
"I didn't know—" Khalid stopped himself, as if any excuse would sound pathetic. "I thought you were gone."
Flynn walked toward him, slow, measured. "You didn't just stab a general. You betrayed a kingdom. You betrayed me."
The silence again, thicker now.
Then Elior's voice, quiet but resolute: "He didn't know who you were, Flynn. Not until now."
"That makes it worse," Flynn snapped, but his tone cracked with something vulnerable. "He looked at me for months and didn't see me."
"Because you became someone else," Khalid said, finally lifting his head. "You changed. But so did I."
Flynn met his gaze.
"Then prove it."
Khalid stepped forward close now, too close. "How?"
"Tell me the truth," Flynn said. "Everything. No lies. Why did you betray Elaris? Why did you kill me?"
Khalid swallowed hard.
"Because I believed I had no choice."