What Remains
Some things did not vanish with the unbinding.
They lingered.
Habits. Scars. The way people still paused before speaking truths that might hurt. The way shadows still felt companionable instead of cruel.
Lumi learned herself again in fragments.
At twenty-two, without the truth humming constantly beneath her skin, silence felt strange. Thoughts wandered. Doubt crept in where certainty once lived.
She discovered she laughed more easily.
She discovered she was afraid of small things now—heights, sudden noises, the idea of waking up alone.
Blake noticed everything.
"You're quieter," he said one evening as they sat on the steps overlooking the lower markets.
"I'm louder inside," Lumi replied. "I just don't know which thoughts deserve air yet."
He smiled faintly. "That sounds human."
The council asked Blake to take the crown.
Formally. Publicly. With ceremony that still smelled faintly of the old order.
He declined.
"I was trained to rule an unchanging night," he told them. "That night is gone."
Instead, he proposed a steward council—rotating, accountable, unfinished by design.
It unsettled many.
That was the point.
When he told Lumi, she searched his face. "Are you sure?"
"No," Blake said honestly. "But certainty hasn't been kind to this city."
They walked the streets after dusk, blending easily now. No whispers followed them. No bowed heads.
A child ran past, laughing, shadows chasing her feet playfully instead of clinging.
Lumi felt something ache—soft, almost joyful.
"What will you do?" Blake asked quietly.
She considered the question carefully.
"I think," she said, "I'll write things down. Before I forget them."
"Truths?"
"Stories," Lumi corrected. "They last better."
They stopped at the overlook where she had once chosen an ending.
The sky was wide.
Stars moved slowly, indifferent and present.
Blake took her hand—not as promise, not as oath. Just contact.
"What remains," he said, "is choice."
Lumi squeezed his fingers, grounding herself in warmth instead of destiny.
"Yes," she agreed. "And time."
Below them, Noctyrrh lived—imperfect, grieving, laughing, unfinished.
The night did not rule it anymore.
It simply stayed.
And for the first time, Lumi felt no need to hold the world together.
She let it be.