The room had not changed since they first stepped into it—firelight licking the stone walls, shadows dancing in the folds of the elder's worn robes, and the crystal in her palm glowing faintly with an inner rhythm that mirrored the beat of something long buried. Yet time seemed to move differently here. As if each moment, stretched across the tension in the room, weighed heavier than the last.
Kael stood unmoving, every part of him poised between protection and curiosity. It was not the elder's knowledge that unsettled him—it was her certainty. She had looked at Liora not as a girl but as a key, and Kael had seen enough of that look in other eyes to know how quickly reverence could turn into hunger.
"You say there is light in her," he said slowly, his voice edged with steel softened by restraint. "But what do you mean by that? Don't speak in riddles if you know something. Say it."
The elder tilted her head, fingers curling tighter around the shard of crystal. "You fear for her because you love her. That is good. Love is an anchor in dark tides." Her eyes, gray as storm-soaked skies, shifted to Liora. "But light draws shadows. Always. And she carries both now."
Liora, standing between the two adults, kept her gaze on the flickering flame. Her shoulders were still, but Kael knew that stillness—she was absorbing every word, filing them away not as riddles but pieces of a puzzle that had lingered just out of reach. She didn't interrupt. She was learning.
The elder continued. "Before the Sundering, there were cities made of starlight, and people who walked through dreams as easily as breath. When the sky shattered and the world was torn from the firmament, that light scattered. Some was buried in stone, some in bloodlines, and some… in children left forgotten."
Kael's fists curled at his sides. "She is not forgotten."
"No," the elder said, nodding once. "Not now. But once. And the light remembers even if she does not."
Liora raised her eyes. "You think I'm not human?"
The question did not tremble with fear. It carried a quiet steadiness, one that Kael felt in his bones. The kind of courage that didn't shout.
The elder's voice was gentle. "You are human. And something more. Like a melody layered into silence. You were not made. You were found."
Kael stepped forward, a protective instinct rising, but Liora raised a hand slightly. Not to push him away—only to steady him.
"I'm tired of not knowing," she said, not to the elder, not even to Kael, but to herself. "I hear things in dreams. Songs I don't remember learning. I see places I've never been. Sometimes… when I touch things, I feel what they felt. It scares me."
The elder placed the crystal on a small stone plate beside her and leaned in. "That fear is natural. But what's inside you doesn't wish to harm. It only wants to be whole."
"Whole with what?" Liora asked.
But the elder only looked at Kael. "She cannot stay here. Not long. The ones who hunt the light will come."
"And what about you?" he asked, his voice quiet now, almost tender. "Why help us?"
The old woman's gaze did not waver. "I am the Lantern Keeper. My purpose is not to fight the dark. It is only to pass the flame before it goes out."
They left the lodge before dawn.
The sky was still veiled in velvet blue, the stars hidden behind a veil of mist. Snow had begun to fall again—gentle at first, dusting the village rooftops in silence. Liora walked with her hood drawn, her eyes focused ahead, her thoughts somewhere far from the road beneath her feet.
Kael didn't speak. Not yet. He knew her mind needed space to wander before her heart could catch up. He'd seen that look before—the quiet after a storm, when her soul was still chasing the thunder in its wake.
Wren and Seran waited near the edge of the village, already prepared for departure. Wren's gaze passed over Liora, then Kael, and though she said nothing, her posture eased ever so slightly. Seran, ever the one to speak when no one else would, let out a long breath.
"Well," he muttered, "I suppose this means we won't be enjoying a second bowl of stew by the fire."
Kael gave him a glance that wasn't quite a glare. "We're not here for comfort."
Seran chuckled. "No, clearly not. Still, would've been nice."
They began the descent into the valley before the sun had risen. Winterlight disappeared behind them as though swallowed by the mountain's shoulder. The road ahead wound through the forest, half-buried beneath snow and the hushed breath of trees weighed down by the storm.
They traveled in single file for a time, the only sound the crunch of their boots and the occasional creak of branches bending under frost. After some distance, Liora spoke.
"She said there are people hunting the light."
Kael turned slightly, careful with his words. "Yes."
"Do you think that's why we keep moving?" Her voice wasn't accusatory—just curious, thoughtful.
"In part," he answered honestly. "But also because the world isn't safe. It wasn't safe before I found you. It's just… more complicated now."
She didn't reply right away. Then, after a few steps, she said, "I'm not afraid of being different."
He smiled at her back. "I know. You never were."
"But… do you think you'll stop seeing me as your daughter?"
He stopped walking.
She froze a few steps ahead, her question lingering in the cold air between them.
He crossed the snow and rested a hand gently on her shoulder. "Liora. Nothing the stars or the world says will change what you are to me. I didn't find you because of what you carry inside. I found you because you were meant to be loved."
Her throat bobbed, and when she turned, her eyes shimmered not with starlight—but with something older. Something raw.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
She leaned against him, and he held her close.
The world might call her a light-bearer, or the key to some forgotten age. But to him, she would always be the girl who once burned her fingers trying to light a candle on her own. The one who fell asleep against his shoulder when storms howled. The one whose laughter reminded him why he still walked, day after day, across a world that had already tried to take too much.
She was not just his daughter.
She was his reason.
They reached the lowlands by dusk. The forest thinned, giving way to broken paths and frozen creeks. The snow had thickened again, blotting out familiar trails, but Wren found the markers—scratches on trees, stones set in unnatural formations, signs of old movement from when she still roamed as a ghost through forgotten roads.
"There's a glade up ahead," she said quietly. "We'll camp there. Safer than out here."
They reached it before the winds rose. The glade was encircled by old trees whose roots twisted like ancient hands, sheltering the ground beneath from the worst of the snow. Kael built the fire while Seran foraged deadwood. Wren set perimeter signs—charms, some old, some new, bound with thread and salt.
Liora sat near the fire with her knees pulled to her chest. Kael sat beside her, close enough for warmth but not crowding. She stared into the flames, the orange light reflecting in her eyes.
"I don't want to be someone else," she said.
"You aren't," Kael replied.
"But what if this… power? What if it changes me?"
"It won't," he said gently. "It's part of you. Not all of you."
"I don't want to hurt anyone."
"You won't," he said, brushing a lock of hair from her brow. "And if it ever tries to, I'll be here. I'll always be here."
The wind howled outside the circle of firelight. But within it, two figures sat close—one forged in fear, the other rising in wonder. The world had started shifting, one piece at a time. And the smoke from the fire curled into the sky like a thread reaching toward a destiny still unwritten.