The land did not remain empty for long.
As evening light thinned across the plains, movement appeared along the distant ridges where broken stone rose unevenly against the sky. At first the shapes were only shadows, small disruptions in the gray horizon, but as the light shifted she began to make out the rhythm in their motion. They were not wandering survivors. They moved with formation and caution, spreading in a pattern meant for battle, not flight.
Lyria felt the tension in her chest before she understood why.
He sensed them without turning.
The air around him tightened, not violently as before, but with quiet awareness, like a surface drawn taut in anticipation.
"They're soldiers," she said, her voice low enough that it barely disturbed the stillness.
A line of armored figures crested the ridge and descended slowly. Shields rose. Spears angled outward. Even at a distance she could see hesitation in the way they stepped, the way they kept space between one another, as if unsure how close they dared come.
They had seen the destruction.
They had still come.
"They believe resistance is possible," he observed, as calmly as he might comment on the shape of a mountain.
Her stomach twisted.
"They don't know what you are."
"That changes nothing."
The soldiers halted far beyond bow range, forming a staggered defensive line instead of advancing recklessly. One stepped forward, cloak marking him as an officer, and raised his voice. The words carried faintly across the plains, clipped and controlled, though strain edged the command.
She did not catch every word, but the intent was clear.
Surrender. Identify. Release the girl.
Her pulse quickened.
"They think you took me," she murmured, a strange mix of fear and disbelief tightening her throat.
"That assumption is acceptable."
She looked at him sharply.
"That's not the point."
The officer shouted again, louder now, urgency replacing discipline. Archers shifted behind the shield line, bows rising in a motion drilled into muscle memory long before today.
Lyria felt a wave of something painfully familiar.
Human fear.
"They're just people," she said. "They're scared."
"They are obstructing."
"That isn't the same thing."
A murmur rippled through the formation as more soldiers focused on her instead of him. She saw the shift in their aim, the way their bows angled toward the easier target. She was smaller, unarmored, human.
Her breath grew shallow.
The air changed.
It did not erupt outward in collapsing waves as before. Instead, it gathered. The distortion around him drew inward, condensing into something controlled, shaped, deliberate. The world seemed to narrow around the space he occupied, like reality itself had chosen to stand still and listen.
The officer gave the order.
Arrows flew.
The dark shapes cut through the air with the sharp hiss of speed. Her body knew she should move, should duck or run, but the moment stretched too thin for thought to become action. She could only watch as the arrows closed the distance.
The air in front of her folded.
The arrows stopped.
They did not break or deflect. They simply halted, suspended inches from her as though the world had forgotten how to let them move forward. Light bent around their still forms, the air warping with the strain of holding them in place.
Her breath trembled in her chest.
He stood between her and the soldiers.
She had not seen him step forward, yet he was there, his presence filling the space before her. The weight of his authority pressed outward, not in chaotic ruin, but in contained force shaped by intent rather than impulse.
He told them to retreat.
The command did not travel through sound. It pressed into the soldiers' bodies, into bone and nerve, into the instinct that knew when it faced something beyond survival. Several dropped their weapons. One fell to his knees, breath forced from him without touch.
The officer tried to shout another order, but his voice broke under the pressure.
Lyria felt that presence too, immense and overwhelming, yet it curved around her without harm, bending as though an unseen barrier stood between her and its full force.
The arrows fell.
They struck the ground at her feet with soft, meaningless thuds.
The soldiers broke formation. Discipline unraveled into instinct as men stumbled backward, dragging one another away. Some fled without even turning around, eyes wide, weapons abandoned in the dirt.
Silence returned gradually, carried in on the fading sound of retreat.
Lyria exhaled slowly, only then realizing how tightly her chest had been clenched.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
"I did."
She studied him, trying to read the stillness in his expression.
"For me?"
"They targeted you."
"That doesn't mean you have to"
He turned fully toward her, his gaze steady.
"They would have harmed you," he said. "That outcome is unacceptable."
The words settled over her in a way that made her pulse quicken for reasons she did not understand.
"Because I stabilize things?"
"Yes."
She shook her head.
"That's not what I meant."
His gaze lingered on her longer than before, as if the difference mattered in ways he had not yet measured.
The ground trembled faintly again, though the cracks did not spread as far as they once had. The distortion around him remained drawn inward, controlled rather than leaking.
Something had shifted.
Not in the world.
In him.
She looked toward the horizon where the soldiers had vanished, imagining the stories they would carry back, the fear that would grow with each telling.
"They'll come back," she said.
"Yes."
"With more."
"Yes."
The certainty in his voice carried no concern.
"You could have erased them," she said. "Like before."
"I chose not to."
She blinked.
"Why?"
His gaze moved briefly toward the distant sky before returning to her.
"Unnecessary destruction increases instability."
It sounded like logic.
But she had watched closely enough to see the truth.
The arrows had not stopped when they flew toward him.
They had stopped when they flew toward her.
"You protected me," she said quietly.
"I prevented interference."
"That's still protection."
He did not respond.
The quiet stretched between them, filled with the fading tremor of the land and the thin watchfulness of the sky above.
For the first time since the heavens had split, Lyria felt something unfamiliar beneath the fear.
It was not safety.
It was the quiet, terrifying certainty that if the world came for her again
He would stand in front of her.