They met in a ruined chapel.
Stone cracked where sermons once held weight. Vines crawled through broken stained glass, light dripping like memory. Lyra Finn waited at the altar—not to pray, but to confront.
Caelum arrived in grey. No entourage. No enchantments. Just tired elegance stitched from years of influence. They didn't speak for a moment. The silence stood taller than either of them.
"You stole hope," Lyra said.
"I reshaped it," Caelum replied.
She stepped closer. "You buried names. Mine. Yours. That child who wrote poems and believed systems could be taught to love."
"You think I forgot?" he said, voice low.
"I know you did."
He flinched—quietly.
Lyra pulled out a book. Worn. Annotated. His original thesis. The one she salvaged. The one Halron Vale read aloud. She placed it between them.
"I didn't come to argue," she said. "I came to ask."
Caelum tensed. "Ask what?"
"What does it feel like," she whispered, "to be worshipped by people who wouldn't have loved you when you were real?"
The question didn't wound.
It hollowed.
He touched the book's cover. "They needed someone strong."
"They needed someone true."
The chapel creaked. A window shattered gently in the wind.
Lyra stepped back.
"We won't fight you," she said. "We'll rewrite you."
Caelum turned away.
Didn't stop her.
Didn't stop the world.