Saelthiryn found the valley by following silence rather than path.
The mountain pass thinned into broken stone and wind-scoured ledges, a route too old and narrow to appear on modern maps. She moved with the steady patience of one accustomed to long distances, her steps light despite the climb. Storm clouds gathered above the peaks, but she did not hurry. Weather was a matter of hours. She thought in spans longer than that.
When the path finally descended, it opened into a basin cradled between sheer cliffs—a hidden valley shaped more by oversight than concealment.
The valley was quiet.
Not empty.
Not abandoned.
Quiet in the way elven places became when they were no longer spoken of.
Grass grew tall and untrimmed, bending in uneven patterns. A thin stream cut through the basin, its water cold with melt from higher snow. At the valley's center stood the cathedral.
It was massive.
Stone walls rose in solemn arcs, buttresses reaching upward as if expecting an answer that had never come. Moss and lichen traced slow claims across the stone, not decay but coexistence. The roof was unfinished—ribs of pale stone framing open sky where vaulting should have been.
Time had not destroyed it.
Time had simply passed around it.
Saelthiryn approached without hesitation.
There was no road leading here, no markers of pilgrimage or conquest. The doors—great slabs of carved stone—stood open, unfinished enough that they had never been closed. She crossed the threshold and felt the air change.
Not sacred.
Settled.
The cathedral breathed like the mountain itself—cool, patient, unconcerned with presence. Light spilled down through the open ceiling, illuminating drifting dust that moved slowly enough for her to follow its paths. Unfinished pews stood in uneven rows, some barely shaped, others abandoned mid-carving.
At the far end stood the altar.
Or what would have been one.
A single block of pale stone rested there, smooth on one face, raw on the others. No sigils. No divine marks. No name etched or erased. It felt… undecided.
Saelthiryn stopped several paces away.
Her breath slowed into the measured rhythm of elven rest—not sleep, but a waking stillness where thought softened without fading. She did not kneel. She did not bow.
She listened.
The boon did not stir.
The world did not lean.
Nothing waited for her.
This place was not undecided.
It had simply never been finished.
She set down her pack and removed her cloak, folding it with habitual care. She rested against a pillar whose carvings had never been completed—faces half-emerging from stone, eyes suggested, mouths unshaped.
"Someone began this," she murmured in Elvish, the words instinctive. "And then chose not to finish."
Hours passed.
Light shifted slowly across the floor, tracing the long bones of the cathedral. Saelthiryn entered trance, her awareness drifting outward rather than inward, thoughts moving like leaves on still water. When she rose again, hunger and fatigue were distant things, acknowledged but unurgent.
She drank from the stream and returned to the altar, studying it with an artisan's eye.
"What were you meant to become?" she asked quietly.
Stone remembered longer than flesh, but it did not answer.
That night, she did not sleep.
She rested beneath the open ribs of the roof, stars visible above, her mind walking old paths while her body remained still. Dreams brushed past without weight. When she opened her eyes again, the valley was unchanged.
And for once, she felt no sense of being observed.
That absence was… notable.
She stayed.
Days passed—not counted, merely experienced. Saelthiryn cleaned the nave in small, deliberate motions. She did not attempt restoration. Elves knew the difference between preservation and intrusion. She cleared debris, righted fallen benches, swept dust into corners where it could settle undisturbed.
She spoke aloud sometimes, letting her voice echo properly against unfinished stone.
"I won't complete you," she told the altar one evening. "Completion binds."
She imagined priests arguing over doctrine, masons waiting for patronage, nobles debating which god deserved such a monument. She imagined the work halting when consensus failed.
Better unfinished.
Better unclaimed.
Mist rolled down from the peaks one afternoon, pooling inside the cathedral like breath held too long. As it did, she felt a subtle alignment—not the world hesitating, but something acknowledging.
She did not turn.
"I didn't come here for you," she said calmly.
"I know," came the reply—not from stone or air, but from the space where attention rested.
Saelthiryn closed her eyes.
Aporiel did not appear.
He did not need to.
"This place belongs to no one," she said. "That's why it holds."
"Yes," Aporiel replied. "It was never completed."
"On purpose?" she asked.
A pause—not hesitation, but consideration.
"Completion requires agreement," he said. "Agreement was never reached."
Saelthiryn smiled faintly. "Then it was spared."
The boon remained quiet, folded into her like a sense she no longer needed to test. Outside the valley, laws tightened and names resurfaced. Here, none of that applied.
"I'll remain for a time," she said. "If that's acceptable."
"Nothing here forbids it," Aporiel replied.
She regarded the altar once more—unnamed, unmarked, unclaimed.
"Do places like this matter?" she asked.
"They accumulate," Aporiel said. "Eventually."
That was an elven truth, if ever there was one.
Saelthiryn lay back on the cold stone floor and watched clouds pass through the open ceiling, her mind drifting into rest that was neither sleep nor wakefulness.
For the first time since exile, she allowed herself to pause.
Beyond the valley, the world continued to narrow—rules tightening, systems straining.
But here was a place that had never finished becoming something else.
And that, Saelthiryn decided, was worth keeping.