The treehouse felt strangely smaller in the late afternoon light.
Tia moved through the space with quiet purpose, folding blankets into neat squares, rolling dried herbs into oilcloth packets, stacking spellbooks into a waxed canvas satchel.
Every motion was deliberate, almost ceremonial.
She paused frequently—fingers lingering on the spine of a worn grimoire, tracing the carved initials on a chair back, brushing dust from the windowsill where she had once watched snow fall for an entire winter without speaking to another soul.
Ed stood near the trapdoor to the mana basin, coiling the last of the spare rope they would carry.
He watched her without speaking, giving her the silence she needed to say goodbye to this place in her own way.
When she finally closed the satchel and straightened, her eyes were bright but dry.
"I thought leaving would feel like running away," she said softly.
"But it feels more like… stepping out of a room I've been sitting in too long."
Ed set the coiled rope aside and crossed to her.
"It's both," he said. "Running toward something usually means leaving something else behind."
She looked around one last time—the four chairs, the three beds, the small kitchen corner where she had once cooked meals for ghosts.
"I kept it ready for them," she whispered.
"Alexis. Okasa. You. Every day I told myself if I just kept everything clean, everything waiting, maybe one of you would walk through the door."
Ed reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were cold.
"They're not coming back," he said gently.
"But we are. Right now. We're walking out that door together."
Tia squeezed his hand once—hard—then let go.
She moved to the small wooden box beside the hearth, lifted the lid, and took out a single object: a tiny carved wooden fish, no bigger than her thumb.
The paint had long since flaked away, but the shape was unmistakable—the same leaping fish from the ruined fountain in Lirien's Rest.
"I took this the day I left the city," she said.
"After the transfer. After I woke up in that hidden room and realized I was the only one who came back. I told myself I'd return it someday. Put it back in the fountain when everything was over."
She pressed the carving into Ed's palm.
"Will you carry it for me?" she asked.
"Until we find a place that feels like it could hold hope again?"
Ed closed his fingers around the small wooden fish.
It was warm from her touch.
"I'll carry it," he said. "As long as you need."
Tia nodded once—sharp, decisive—and turned toward the door.
She paused on the threshold.
The elder tree creaked softly, almost mournfully.
A single leaf drifted down from high above and landed on the platform between them—green edged with gold, still alive.
Tia knelt and picked it up.
Held it between thumb and forefinger.
"Thank you," she whispered to the tree.
"For every day you kept me breathing. For every night you listened when I had no one else."
The tree answered with another soft groan—branches swaying though no wind moved through the forest.
Tia tucked the leaf carefully into the breast pocket of her tunic, over her heart.
Then she stepped out onto the platform.
Ed followed.
They stood together at the railing for a long moment, looking down at the forest floor where the dragon's bones were already half-covered in new moss and fern.
The clearing looked smaller in daylight—less like a battlefield, more like a wound that had finally begun to close.
Tia took a deep breath.
"Ready?" Ed asked.
She looked at him—really looked—and smiled.
The smile was small, tired, but real.
"Ready."
They descended the rope bridge side by side.
When their boots touched earth, Tia paused one last time and looked up at the treehouse—high, quiet, waiting.
"Goodbye," she said simply.
Then she turned her face northwest, toward the red banner on Mara's map, toward whatever waited beyond the safety of these branches.
Ed fell into step beside her.
The forest path was narrow but clear—sunlight dappling the ground in shifting patterns of gold and green.
Somewhere ahead, a stream chuckled over stones. Birds called from high branches, unafraid.
Neither of them spoke for the first half-hour.
There was no need.
They walked shoulder to shoulder, pace matched, breathing synchronized.
For the first time in ten years—for the first time in a hundred—Tia did not walk alone.
And Ed—after a century of doors opening onto new worlds and closing behind him—finally felt one path stretching forward that might not end in another goodbye.
The road waited.
They took it together.