Something in her expression shifts.
Not forgiveness.
Not surrender.
But something fiercer. Something older than regret.
Resolve.
"I didn't come here to leave," she says, and the dream shudders again—as if her truth is too sharp for its edges to contain. "But I'm not staying if you're going to rot inside a memory that never loved you back."
Cecilion lifts his eyes. There's a flicker of the boy he once was—lost and hopeful, full of questions he never dared ask aloud. But it's buried under years of silence, cowardice, and the comfort of a lie too vivid to abandon.
"I don't know how to leave," he whispers.
Zixuan stands. The broken dream cathedral groans behind her, its bells tolling a sound like splintering bones. The stained glass behind the altar melts, revealing not light—but shadow. The Fold, waiting. Watching.
"You do," she says simply. "You just keep choosing not to."
