The garden is dead.
Twisted trees claw at the sky, their branches blackened and brittle, stripped of leaves, of life, of anything that might have once been beautiful. The ground is littered with ash, bones, and the hollow shells of flowers long turned to dust.
It's not a place meant for trials.
It's a graveyard.
And yet the path ends here.
I stand at the garden's edge, staring at the rotted gate that bans the way forward. It's made of the same brittle vines and splintered wood, curling around a symbol I don't recognize—-something old, something hungry.
Justin stops beside me, his breath shallow, the bond between us tight like a rope straining under too much weight.
He doesn't speak.
Neither do I.
The pendant is silent now, the glow all but extinguished. There are no clues. No guides. Only this place.
I take a step forward, and the air changes.
The garden breathes.
Whispers curl through the dead branches, not words exactly—-more like fragments of memories. My memories.
A child's laughter, soft and small.
A woman's voice, calling me home.
The sound of the pendant shattering in my dreams.
I close my eyes, but the whispers don't stop. They thread through the cracks in me, finding the places I've been holding shut since the vault. Since the lake. Since long before that.
I stumble forward, past the gate, into the heart of the garden.
The earth crumbles beneath my feet, soft and hollow, swallowing my footsteps.
And then I see them.
Shadows.
Versions of me.
Worn down. Hollowed-eyed. Kneeling in the ash, hands reaching for something that isn't there.
This is what you become, the garden seems to say.
When you forget who you are. When you let them hollow you out until there's nothing left.
My breath stutters.
I feel Justin behind me, but I can't look at him.
I don't want him to see this.
I kneel beside one of the shadows, brushing my fingers through the ash. It's cold. It sticks to my skin.
It doesn't wash off.
The weight of it pulls at me, heavier than anything the Spires tried to throw at me.
I don't want to move.
I don't want to try anymore.
Justin kneels beside me—-but he doesn't touch me.
He just waits.
And for once, the words slip out before I can stop them.
Fragile.
Barely a breath.
"I don't know if I can do this."
The truth tastes bitter, but it's the only thing I have left.
Justin doesn't say anything right away.
And maybe that's the answer I need.
The Ash Gate looms ahead, carved from crumbling stone and tangled vines, its surface covered in sigils too worn to read. It hums with old magic, pulsing faintly in time with the ache in my chest.
There's no lock.
No riddle.
No threat waiting in the shadows.
Just…..the door.
And the silence.
Justin stands beside me, watching the gate like he expects it to spring to life and devour us whole.
Maybe it already has.
I press my hand against the cold stone.
Nothing.
No reaction.
No path forward.
Only the suffocating stillness pressing heavier on my skin, my breath, my thoughts.
Freyr's voice drifts from nowhere—-soft, quiet, like a memory.
You walk this path alone, Sarah. You always have.
I swallow hard.
I know what the gate wants.
It wants me to choose.
To cross.
But not alone.
I pull back, forcing myself to breathe, forcing the weight in my lungs to loosen enough to speak.
"It's not going to open," I say quietly. "Not unless we do it together."
Justin doesn't answer right away.
Then, softly, like he's afraid to push too hard, he offers his hand.
I stare at it.
At him.
At the bond between us, fraying, raw, aching.
I don't want to take it.
But I do.
Not because I want to.
Because I have to.
My fingers brush his, cold, numb, mechanical.
The gate shudders at the contact.
Justin's grip tightens—-but only slightly. Enough to ground me. Enough to pull me back from the edge I've been standing on since the Spires.
The sigils flare, the vines unlacing slowly, reluctantly, as if the realm itself is displeased we've done what it demanded.
The door creaks open, revealing the next path.
I let go of Justin's hand the moment it does.
Neither of us say anything.
I step through first.
He follows.
Always a step behind.
********
Justin's POV
She sleeps with her back to me.
Or maybe she's pretending.
I sit in the shadows a few feet away, watching her chest rise and fall, slow and shallow, like even in sleep, she doesn't let herself breathe deeply.
The clearing we stopped in is cold, silent. The kind of stillness that doesn't feel like peace—-it feels like surrender.
The realm forced us to stop. Forced us to rest.
But there's no comfort in it.
Sarah hasn't said a word since the gate.
She let me touch her hand, but only because she had to. And the moment the trial ended, she pulled away again—-like my presence is something she tolerated, not something she needs.
The bond between us is still there.
But it's thin now.
Fragil.
Barely holding.
I press a hand to my chest, to the place where the bond used to feel like fire.
Now it barely stirs.
I close my eyes, breathing in the silence that's heavier than any scream.
I've spent my life knowing how to survive.
Survive the cold.
Survive the darkness.
Survive monsters.
Survive the things that tear you apart from the outside.
But this?
This…..I don't know how to survive.
I lean back against the cold stone wall, closing my eyes, whispering the truth I've been trying not to
"I could survive this place, Sarah…..the trials, the darkness, the monsters—-I've always known how to survive those."
I pause.
Swallowing the part of me that wants to say it louder, to make her hear it.
But I don't.
Because if she wanted to listen, she would have by now.
"But I don't know how to survive you walking away from me. And I think…..I'm more afraid of that than anything waiting for us in this realm."
The words hang there in the dark.
Raw. Unsaid for too long.
She doesn't stir.
She doesn't answer.
A part of me wishes she heard me.
And maybe that's the worst part.