The honeyed light did not illuminate. It replaced.
The gritty stone, the iron scent of blood, the tomb's oppressive silence—they dissolved like sugar in warm tea. There was no disorientation, no wrenching shift. One reality simply… ceased, and another, older one, resumed.
Ezra stood in a sun-drenched courtyard. The air was sweet with lemon blossoms and the drowsy hum of bees. He was home.
A shadow fell over him, warm and familiar. He looked up.
A man knelt before him, holding out a pie with a stolen slice missing.
The man had Ezra's own soft purple eyes, but they were crinkled with easy laughter. His hair was dark as a raven's wing, untouched by silver. "There you are, you little scamp," his father said, voice warm as the afternoon. "Your mother's been turning the house upside down looking for you." He winked. "Managed to snag this before she caught me. C'mon, let's head back before we're both in trouble."
Ezra's breath caught. Father. The word was a stone in his throat, a sob waiting to happen. He looked at the man's hands—strong, capable, clean. No scars. No trace of the sword-calluses or the weary lines Ezra somehow felt should be there. A faint chill, no more than a passing cloud over the sun, touched his spine. Why would his father have sword-calluses?
The thought evaporated as his father ruffled his hair, the touch sparking a physical memory so potent Ezra's knees nearly buckled. It was the touch from before the world ended.
"Hey," his father's voice softened. He set the pie on a sun-warmed stone bench and knelt, putting them eye-to-eye. His gaze was deep, concerned. "You're miles away, kiddo. What's on your mind? You can tell me."
"I…" Ezra's throat closed. He couldn't articulate the wrongness. The feeling was a stone in his gut, cold amidst the warmth. He remembered… darkness. A door. Weeping stone. But those memories were thin as smoke, dissipating in this solid, golden light. "I just missed you," he whispered, and it was true, a truth so profound it felt like dying.
He threw his arms around his father's neck, clinging. The man's arms came around him, solid and real. He smelled of sawdust and sunshine and home.
"Missed you too, son," his father murmured into his hair. "Every day."
They walked inside, his father's hand a steady, comforting weight on his shoulder. The house was bright, filled with the hum of a contented life. From the kitchen, a sweet, familiar melody wound through the air—his mother's humming.
She stood at the counter, her back to them, a long braid of white hair like a fall of moonlight down her back. She was sliding a cake from the oven, her movements graceful as a dance. She turned, and her face—
Ezra stopped breathing.
She was young. More beautiful than any memory could hold. Her skin was smooth, her smile radiant and unshadowed. Her eyes, a clear, startling blue, found his and lit up.
"There you are," she said, and her voice was the song given words. It wrapped around him, a blanket of pure safety. "I was starting to think the pair of you had eloped."
She wiped her hands on a simple apron tied over a blue dress and came forward. She was shorter than him. She had to reach up to cup his face, her palms warm and smelling of flour and vanilla. "My Ezra," she murmured, her thumbs stroking his cheeks. "You look… older." Her brow furrowed, a tiny, beautiful line of confusion. "Did you have a growth spurt while you were out?"
He laughed, the sound strange in his own ears. "Maybe." He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes. This was it. This was the center of the universe. Mother.
He hugged her, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Lavender and sugar and her. He held on as if she were the only solid thing in a spinning world. He felt her arms come around him, tight and sure. He could have died there, perfectly happy.
After a long moment, she gently pushed him back, her hands lingering on his arms. Her smile turned secretive. "Easy now, love. Mind the passenger."
She placed his hand on her abdomen. Through the soft fabric of her dress, he felt the gentle, firm curve.
The world tilted.
He looked from her smiling face to his father's proud, beaming one. A sibling. A new beginning. The family, whole, and growing.
"Sit," his mother urged, steering him to the worn kitchen table. "Tell me everything. Where have you been all afternoon?"
He sat. The chair was comfortable. The sunlight pooling on the table was liquid gold. His father brought the pilfered pie, and his mother sliced the cake, and they sat together, a perfect triangle of love.
The afternoon unspooled in a haze of gentle contentment. He helped in the workshop, the rasp of sandpaper a soothing rhythm. He walked in the garden, his mother's hand in his. The sun hung motionless in a perfect sky, a jewel in a crown of eternal afternoon. The cold knot of wrongness was a distant dream.
Yet, the splinter remained.
As his mother took his hand, he looked down. Her skin was flawless. No scar from the burn she'd gotten saving him from the oven when he was five. He looked at his father's hands. No nick from the chisel that had slipped the day they'd built his first bed.
The memories were his, but they had no place here. In this world, no chisel had ever slipped. No oven had ever burned. Perfection had no history.
Something is missing.
The thought was the nagging voice, the flaw in the jewel.
"Tell me about your day, Ezra," his mother said again later, as dusk—a painterly, gentle dusk that never truly darkened—tinted the windows.
Ezra. She said his name with such natural affection. But the way she said it… it was the name of a boy. Not the name of a man who carried a cursed light. Not the name of someone who had left a garden of stone tears behind.
Behind.
The word echoed. Where was behind? He looked at the kitchen window. It showed a sun-drenched garden, vibrant and endless. There was no 'behind.' There was only this 'now.'
The cold knot tightened.
He looked at his father, who was stealing a bite of cake when his mother wasn't looking, a boyish grin on his face. He looked at his mother, her blue eyes soft with contentment as she watched them both.
The love for them was a physical pain in his chest, a sweet, devastating ache. He wanted this. Gods, he wanted this more than breath. It was the marrow-deep longing of the orphan, finally answered.
But the voice nagged, a system alert in the paradise.
Where is Asli? it whispered. Where is Silas? Where is the weight you carry?
Names. Faces. They flickered at the edge of his awareness—a man with wolf-amber eyes, a woman with fire in her fists. Ghosts. Or were they the reality, and this was the ghost?
His father caught his eye, the playful grin softening into something deeper, more knowing. "You seem a million miles away, son." He reached across the table, his hand covering Ezra's. The touch was grounding. Real. "Whatever it is, you're home now. You're safe. That's all that matters."
Safe.
The word was a key, but it turned the lock the wrong way.
He was not meant to be safe. He was meant to be a shield. A light in a dark place. He had… people. People who were not safe. People waiting in the dark. A duty that was his not by blood, but by chosen bond. A cohort.
The perfect scene began to subtly fracture. Not visually, but in its essence. The warmth of the sun through the window felt staged. The melody of his mother's hum was a loop, perfect and unchanging. The love in their eyes, while devastatingly real in its feeling, had a fixed, museum-quality stillness to it.
This was not life. It was a diorama of life. A breathtaking, soul-crushing exhibit built from the raw material of his deepest longing. The grove of Narcissus was not a battle of selves, but a funeral for a possibility. A funeral he had to officiate.
He was not choosing between a flawed self and a perfect one.
He was choosing between a living truth and a beautiful, dead lie.
The cold knot in his gut spread, becoming a chill that reached his bones. He looked from his father's loving, expectant face to his mother's tender, concerned one.
"I…" His voice was a hoarse crack in the perfect harmony of the kitchen. "I have to go."
The words were treason against this paradise.
His father's smile didn't fade. It… solidified. The warmth in his purple eyes didn't cool, but it deepened, acquiring a glassy, timeless quality. "Go?" he asked, his voice still gentle. "Go where, son? You are home."
His mother reached for his hand again. "Stay, my love. We have so much time now. All the time in the world."
All the time in the world. The phrase echoed, hollow. Time did not pass here. The sun did not move. It was eternity, and eternity was a beautiful, silent prison.
The longing was still there, a hook in his heart, pulling him to stay, to forget, to be their child forever.
But the nagging voice was now a shout. It had a name. It was called duty. It was called love for the living, not the perfectly preserved.
He stood up, the chair scraping on the floor. The sound was too loud, too real in the pristine scene.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, tears streaming down his face, genuine grief for the paradise he was murdering. "I'm so sorry. But they're waiting for me. I have to go back."
The faces of his parents did not twist in anger or betrayal. They settled into a profound, infinite sadness. It was the sadness of the diorama realizing it will never be more than a reflection. The sadness of a dream seeing the dreamer wake.
His father stood.
The easy, woodworker's posture was gone. In its place was a warrior's balance, a lethal, effortless grace that this version of the man should never have possessed. The love in his eyes was still there, but it had transformed. It was no longer the love that lets go.
It was the love that preserves. Forever.
The warm, sun-drenched kitchen, the scent of cake, the liquid gold of the afternoon—all dissolved, sucked back into the formless, honeyed haze.
Ezra stood alone in the gilded void, facing the perfected, sorrowful ghosts of his heart.