It all felt like a dream after the Heartstone was set right. Yumi and Ren walked across lands that were being healed even as they strode along. Not weeping, trees were whispering instead. Rivers sparkled as they rightfully should. Villages that had lost the will to live now sang with raw, random music.
Their news spread quicker than they could. When they arrived at the city gates, the streets were filled with people holding candles and flowers—some crying, some laughing. Not to honor the heroes—rather to honor the very act of feeling.
[LOCATION RETURNED: Vaen – City of Memory] Status: Restored; Population: Grieving, Healing, Hopeful
Lyra and Alistair met them at the gate. Lyra's tears started before she could speak. "You did it."
"Nonononononon," Yumi said, shaking her head softly. "We did. All of us. Just by choosing to feel again."
They ascend toward the city center where the waters of the Fountain of Feeling ran, if even by change. No more a monolith, it was now a meeting ground. Children played there. The old meditated there. Couples intertwined hands and soaked in the spray.
The Heartstone had not once again resumed its place.
No, it had disappeared somewhere into the world.
"What happens now?" Ren asked the gathering crowd.
A voice responded: one of the locals. An old woman who once seemed to have lost everything.
"Now we live. Fully."
For a couple of days, Yumi and Ren helped repair what could be repaired. Not buildings-those were repaired long ago. Trust. Dialogue. Small circles of conversation, responding to questions, listening to strangers tell their stories.
That evening, with twilight coursing over rooftops, Yumi sat once again in the watchtower, while Ren joined her with two cups of tea and a quiet smile.
"I keep expecting the next disaster," he said. "Some hidden threat. Some ultimate test."
Yumi drank the tea. "Maybe the test is this. Can we allow ourselves to rest?"
They gazed at the stars as they came into view.
Below, the city hummed—not with urgency, but with life.
Then came the dreams.
They were not dreams but visions: sweet flashes of far-off places, still darkened. The memories are still shattered; the villages had never returned. Echoes that still roamed.
"The Veil is healed," Yumi murmured one morning, "but it left scars. The world remembers the silence." Ren just nodded slowly. "Maybe we're not meant to save it all.
Maybe we're just meant to light the way."
[NEW OBJECTIVE: Chronicle the Lost Lands]: Optional Quest, Visit the Silent Realms.
For this was the time of preparation not for war or crisis but for peace, a journey of stories. The Ember Choir sent news of rising other Heartshard bearers: chosen ones, people themselves, forging new paths by emotion. Not everyone favored the return of feeling. Not everyone welcomed it.
But that was the nature of choice. That day Yumi wrote a letter, not to a ruler, nor to a god, but to the world.
Emotional state is never weakness. Grieve not failure. To hope is not naivete. To love is not a luxury, it is power. We go to listen, not to conquer. Not to lead, but to walk alongside. Signed: Witnesses of the Flame.
And so, when they next found themselves packing their bags, Ren added something new to his already stuffed satchel-a small vial of light, which had been given to him by a child they once saved.
"For the next dark place," the child had said, "in case they forget."
Yumi surveyed the city. "Ready?"
"Always," Ren smiled.
And with the Heartstone's legacy carried in their hearts, not their hands, stepped forward.
Toward the quiet spaces.
Toward stories left untold.
Toward the quiet between worlds where feeling had only just begun to return.