Chapter Six – Where the Doctrine Does Not Look
Part One – What Cannot Be Spoken
The mask lay forgotten beneath the ash.
The cloak still clung to his shoulders.
But the weight of the years—
That had never left him.
Zephryn didn't speak. He simply stood there, eyes low, the flickering wreckage of the cliffside village softening the glow in his irises. Smoke rose between him and the three who'd once stood beside him at the edge of silence.
Kaelen stepped first.
Yolti followed with trembling breath.
Selka—Selka didn't move.
He looked older. Not just in body. His presence had shape now, like a memory with breath. The kind of breath that came after fire. And grief. And too many nights without a name.
"…Is it really you?" Yolti asked. It came out softer than she meant.
Zephryn looked at her, but not all the way. As if his gaze passed through her, to something deeper. A time, maybe. Or a song that had stopped before the chorus.
Kaelen's voice broke the pause. "You could've come back. We would've listened."
"I know."
That was all he said.
His voice cracked around the syllables, not from emotion—but erosion. Like it had been buried for years, and he was only now digging it up.
"You're not even going to ask?" Kaelen pressed. "What we've been through? What's happening in the Veil? The Grinn, the Choir—"
"I know," Zephryn repeated. Firmer now. "I've seen it."
Selka flinched at that.
And still, he didn't step forward. He didn't offer an embrace, or an explanation. Just a presence. And that presence was heavier than silence.
"Then why now?" Kaelen whispered. "Why here?"
Zephryn looked past them, toward the edge of the woods. His eyes narrowed. "Because this village still remembers… and the next one won't."
"What does that mean?" Yolti asked.
He didn't answer.
Kaelen took one final step. "Come back with us."
This time, Zephryn's gaze rose, steady, unwavering. "No."
"But—"
"I'll walk with you," he said. "To the next village. That's all."
Yolti opened her mouth to protest. Selka cut in, voice low, throat tight. "Then let's go before the Doctrine sends more."
Kaelen nodded once. "We'll talk on the way."
Zephryn didn't reply.
But when he stepped forward, the smoke parted around him—like the wind itself remembered him.
And the three who had once buried Solara followed the boy who no longer needed a grave.