Time passed strangely in the memory.
Miles stood in the silence of it, an echo that was more than sight and sound. It was feeling, vibration, intention. He watched the boy and the girl, still so young, and yet so changed, walk side by side out of the temple.
The sword rested in the boy's hands, wrapped in cloth, and the crown shimmered faintly atop the girl's head, like a thing half-real, dreamt more than forged.
The forest parted for them, not with reverence, but with a kind of watchful tension, as though the world held its breath.
Neither child spoke much on the way back. They didn't need to, they walked slowly, steadily, the rhythm of their footsteps in sync. Miles followed, unnoticed by the memory, but drawn to the boy in particular. There was something in the way the kid carried himself now, like he'd grown into the edges of something vast.
But he still smiled, from time to time, when the girl made a joke or when a strange bird flew overhead.
