The night after Vaelion's Ruin was still.
No visions. No firestorms. No whispering gods.
Just quiet.
Elliot sat by the campfire, his boots off, bare feet in the cold grass, watching embers drift upward into a sky full of stars he hadn't looked at in days. Maybe weeks. Everything had been survival, prophecy, pain.
Now… silence.
And he didn't know what to do with it.
Kaelith sat across from him, sharpening her blade — though the edge didn't need it. She wasn't sharpening for battle. She was grounding herself. Like she always did.
Elliot watched her for a moment.
> "You never ask me what I see," he said.
She paused, looking up. "Because you're not ready to say it yet."
He smiled — tired, but genuine. "You always do that."
"Do what?"
> "Let me be broken without fixing me."
She set the blade down, finally.
Crossed her arms. "If you were really broken, you wouldn't carry this fire like you do."
There was a pause. The fire crackled between them.
---
"You were crying back there," she said softly.
Elliot nodded, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Not from pain," he said. "Not even from memory. Just… the weight of it. I think Vaelion loved too much. And it broke him."
Kaelith leaned back against a tree. "Sounds familiar."
That made him laugh — quietly, but honestly.
Then the silence returned. But it was different now. Not cold.
Curious.
---
After a while, Kaelith moved beside him.
Not to speak. Not to comfort.
Just… to be close.
Their shoulders brushed. And for the first time since all of this began, Elliot didn't pull away.
His hand, without thinking, brushed hers. She didn't move.
Then their fingers laced — slowly, naturally, like something long overdue.
Kaelith didn't speak.
Elliot didn't either.
But the way they looked at each other — full of exhaustion, scars, history — it wasn't young love.
It was earned.
---
"Do you think this ends with us alive?" she asked quietly.
"I don't know," he said. "But I think… if it does, I want it to be with you."
Kaelith turned to him, eyes shadowed in firelight.
> "Then don't die, Elliot Finn."
> "Not unless you do too," he whispered.
And then she kissed him.
Softly. Fiercely.
Not like a fairytale.
Like war survivors finding something worth surviving for.
---
They didn't go further that night — not yet.
But the tension had broken. The wall had cracked.
And something deeper was beginning to burn.
Not prophecy. Not flame.
Want.
---