The marsh felt empty without her.
Not quiet.
Empty.
Elion sat where she had left him, mud soaking into his clothes, blood drying dark against his skin. The men moved carefully around him now, no longer hostile, no longer kind. Professional.
One of them bound his shoulder without speaking. Another offered water. Elion accepted neither.
He watched the space where she had stood.
"You will heal," the leader said, approaching slowly. "The cut was not meant to kill you."
Elion laughed, sharp and humorless. "You misjudged how little that matters."
The man studied him for a moment. "She chose you."
Elion looked up, anger flashing despite the pain. "She chose to protect me."
"There is a difference," the leader replied. "And it will haunt her."
They helped Elion to his feet.
"Where are you taking me," he asked.
"Somewhere you will survive," the leader said. "That was her condition."
They led him away from the marsh as night began to fall.
Behind them, the land settled.
Ahead of him, the world narrowed into one unbearable truth.
She was gone.
---
She walked between them without chains.
That mattered.
They kept a careful distance, as if unsure what she might become if they stepped too close. The path they took avoided villages, skirted rivers, followed old roads carved by people who no longer existed.
No one spoke to her unless necessary.
She welcomed the silence.
It gave her space to feel the absence of Elion like an open wound.
Each step away from him felt wrong. Unnatural. As if the world itself resisted the distance.
At camp that night, she sat alone by a small fire. Not her fire. An ordinary one, built by hands that did not fear themselves.
She stared into the flames and felt nothing answer.
That terrified her.
Sleep did not come easily.
When it did, it brought memory.
The city.
The screams.
Elion's voice saying her name.
She woke with tears on her face.
Far away, Elion stared at a ceiling he did not recognize, heart aching with a loss he refused to accept as permanent.
Love had been separated.
Not ended.
And the world was already learning what that meant.