Morning broke like a sigh across the ruins.
Dew clung to the grass that grew between the old stones of Elarion, and for the first time since Lysander could remember, the air was warm instead of strange. The crimson moon was gone; in its place hung a pale, ordinary sun.
Yet something in him refused to feel ordinary.
He woke beside the mirror-lake, the water still as glass. The events of the night clung to him like the scent of rain—half memory, half dream.
When he touched his chest, his heartbeat felt… doubled. One pulse his own, the other deeper, slower, older.
At first he thought it was fear.
Then he realised it was music.
A rhythm, faint but constant, echoing from somewhere far within the earth.
He whispered to himself, "The world remembers."
And the world answered—softly, through the breeze that stirred the reeds:
It remembers through you.
He wandered through the city all that day. Birds had returned; vines now crept along the marble, weaving flowers where once there were battle scars. He touched a wall and saw a brief image flash before his eyes—Arenne standing there centuries ago, her hand resting in Seraphyne's.
It lasted only a heartbeat, but when it faded, a tear ran down his cheek.
It hadn't been a vision. It had been memory—hers, living now in him.
As dusk came, he lit a small fire in the courtyard and opened his journal. He tried to write down what he'd seen, but the ink glowed faintly as it touched the page, turning silver instead of black.
He frowned. "What is happening to me?"
The fire flickered, and from its glow came a whisper—not words, but a feeling. Warmth that spoke without sound: The memory you chose to keep is taking root. Do not fear it.
Lysander stared into the flame. "Are you her?"
No. She is gone. But what she was cannot die.
The words filled him with a quiet certainty that wasn't his own.
That night, he dreamt.
He stood beneath the silver moon, but this time the world was whole. Elarion was alive again—its towers shining, its people laughing. And in the center of it all stood the Eternal Queen, serene and radiant, her eyes reflecting both dawn and dusk.
She looked at him—not as a stranger, but as someone she had known a very long time.
"You've carried me well," she said.
Lysander bowed his head. "Am I becoming you?"
She smiled gently. "No. You are becoming what I wished to be."
"What's that?"
"A remembrance that loves instead of rules."
When he woke, the fire was out, but in its ashes lay something that hadn't been there before—a fragment of silver glass, small as a coin, smooth as water.
When he lifted it to the light, it showed his reflection.
But behind his eyes glimmered a faint crescent of white—the mark of the moon.
He closed his fingers around it, heart steady, no longer afraid.
Over the following weeks, Lysander began his journey south again, away from the ruins. Wherever he passed, things changed. Dried rivers began to flow. Trees that had long been dead sprouted pale blossoms that shimmered faintly at night. People who met him felt lighter, though none could say why.
Rumours began to spread through the villages.
"A wanderer walks with the light of the forgotten Queen."
"He brings peace where he passes."
"The moon smiles when he sleeps."
Lysander never corrected them. He only smiled and kept walking.
One evening, as he reached the border of the old kingdom, he looked back one last time.
The ruins of Elarion glowed faintly under the silver moon—alive, remembering, forgiving.
And in that quiet moment, he heard a voice drift across the wind—soft, almost playful:
"You kept your promise."
He closed his eyes, whispering back, "And you kept yours."
The next morning, travelers passing that same road found wildflowers growing in the shape of a crown.
None could explain it, but they felt calm when they walked by.
The legend began again—this time not of the Eternal Queen who ruled eternity,
but of the Wanderer of the Silver Dawn, who carried her light through the mortal world.
And above them all, the moon shone clear and white, holding within it the memory of a love that had learned to live forever without needing to last forever.