The world was quiet for the first time in centuries.
No more twilight that never ended, no voices of the dead murmuring through stone. The Veil had closed, and the balance of dawn and dusk returned to the kingdom of Elarion.
But peace was not silence.
It was absence—and in that absence, Arenne walked alone.
The sanctum had long since turned to marble dust. Where the pillars once stood, wild vines bloomed through cracks, feeding on starlight that had seeped into the earth. The air smelled of rain and silver, of endings made gentle.
Arenne's bare feet left no prints.
She had not felt hunger or thirst for days. She slept sometimes, but dreams came only as light—warm, colorless, unburdened by form.
And though the world had forgotten the Eternal Queen, its heart still remembered something.
A fragment of song. A pulse.
A story without a name.
She reached the edge of the mirror-lake that lay beyond the city ruins. Its surface was impossibly still, reflecting not the sky above but the memories beneath it. She saw flashes: the balcony of her throne room, moonlight caught in Seraphyne's hair, a kiss that was once a promise.
The reflection trembled, and Arenne whispered, "I tried to forget you."
The wind did not answer—but the water rippled, forming faint words that glowed before fading:
You did not fail. You simply made room for something new.
Arenne closed her eyes. "Seraphyne?"
The lake glimmered. "No," the voice murmured—not quite hers, not quite anyone's. "We are what remains when love is remembered by the world itself."
Arenne opened her eyes. Before her stood a figure of soft light—no face, no flesh, yet carrying the unmistakable warmth that once lived in Seraphyne's touch.
"Who are you?"
"I am the whisper left behind. The world has learned your lesson. It remembers through creation now, not through pain."
Arenne's throat tightened. "Then what am I?"
"You are what remains when memory lets go."
The figure reached toward her, its hand dissolving into starlit dust before touching her cheek.
"Your time as the Eternal Queen has ended," the voice said. "But the shape of your love—what you gave—has begun its own life. A divinity born not from rule, but from remembrance."
"Another god?" Arenne whispered.
"Not god. Something gentler. A soul born from every act of mercy, from every tear shed for love that outlived its form. You cannot see her yet, but she walks in the hearts of those who still look to the moon and feel you there."
The figure began to fade.
"Wait!" Arenne cried. "Will I ever see you again?"
"You already do," it said softly. "Every dawn that breaks without sorrow, every night that ends in peace—you'll find me there."
And the light vanished into the horizon.
Arenne stood for a long while, the lake reflecting her face—a face both ageless and fragile, mortal and divine.
She felt the weight of eternity shift within her like a dying ember. The power that once ruled life and death had quieted, leaving only the faint glow of memory.
And for the first time since her awakening, she felt something she hadn't in eons.
Freedom.
As she turned away from the lake, she found herself on a narrow path leading into the wildlands. The city of Elarion was far behind, its towers now half-swallowed by trees, its people living simple lives under the rule of mortal queens who no longer prayed to gods they could not remember.
Arenne looked up at the rising moon—silver and clean.
It no longer bled crimson.
It no longer wept.
And though her name had been forgotten, the world still carried her gentleness in its breath.
That night, when she reached the edge of the forest, she found a small shrine of white stone standing alone beneath the moon. Upon it lay a single flower—the kind Seraphyne once wove into her hair.
A mortal woman knelt there, praying softly.
Her voice trembled as she said, "To the one who kept us alive when the world forgot how to hope."
Arenne froze. "Who taught you that name?"
The woman looked up, startled. Her eyes were clear, bright with the simplicity of belief. "It's not a name," she said. "It's just what my mother told me: the Queen who loved too long, and made the world kind again."
Arenne smiled faintly. "That sounds like someone I once knew."
The woman tilted her head. "You sound like her."
"Perhaps," Arenne whispered, and continued down the path, leaving no shadow behind her.
That night, the stars sang softly over Elarion—no longer in mourning, but in memory.
And high above, in the silver light of the moon, the faint outline of two figures could be seen holding each other, fading slowly into dawn.
The world did not remember their names.
But it remembered their love.
And that was enough.