The first dawn after Gulor.
The sky over Wamena slowly changed color. The gray that had lingered began to shift into soft blue. The sun appeared not as blinding light, but as warm memory. People dtepped out of their homes, their eyes still uncerntain, but their steps lighter. Te=her didn't fully remember, but they knew something had returned.
Yohwa stood atop the cliff, his armor cracked but whole. The hammer in his hand no longer blazed, but pulsed gently, like a heart relearning how to beat. He looked down at the valley, Where the ancestral stones now glowed softly, each radiating a different hue red, blue, gold, green. Resonance had returned. Not as power. As legacy.
Numa approaached, carrying a freshly carved stone. "This is for you," he said. "The final stone. The final carving."
Yohwa accepted it. The stone was plain, with a single spiral etched in its center. But as he touched it, he felt everything that had happened—mist, Kelam, Gulor, light, memory. The stone wasn't a symbol of victory. It was a symbol of the courage to remember.
In the village, children began to sing an old song. A song once reserved for harvest ceremonies. But now, they sang it without reason. Simply because they remembered. And that was enough.
Yohwa walked among the sacred stones. He touched each one, and each responded. He didn't speak. He simply existed. And his presence was enough to make the stones sing.
In the center of the valley, he stood. People gathered. There were no speeches. No celebration. Only silence filled with meaning.
He raised his hammer, then placed it on the ground. The final light spread—not as an explosion, but as a whisper. A whisper that the world had changed. That light didn't belong to one person. It belonged to all who dared to remember.
Yohwa looked to the sky. He didn't know what would come next. But he knew he had become a guardian. Not of power. Of resonance.
And that light, once hidden in a cracked stone, now lived in all who chose to remember.