The fire burned low.
Guts slept near the edge of the clearing, wrapped in his cloak, hand still resting on the hilt of his sword. The branded girl lay curled beside a tree, lips parted slightly in sleep, her breath soft and steady.
Aeon did not sleep.
He hadn't in hours.
He sat near the dying embers, watching the last pieces of flame curl inward like closing fingers. Something moved in the quiet — not sound, not motion. A pressure behind the skin. A ripple.
Then, the stars above shifted.
They twisted slowly, unnaturally, until they bent into a spiral.
And Aeon blinked—
He stood in a white field.
Snow fell, but not cold. It drifted like ash, disappearing before it touched the ground. The sky overhead was blank — no sun, no stars, only light without source.
The world felt warm. Familiar.
He turned.
A tree stood nearby, bare and white, its roots stretched across broken stone tiles. At its base sat a girl.
Not the branded child.
Another.
She was younger. Hair the color of old straw. Barefoot, in a simple white dress. Her face was calm.
And her hands were cupped around something glowing.
A small, flickering bird of flame.
She didn't look up. But she spoke.
"You were supposed to come sooner."
Aeon didn't answer.
He stepped closer. The world didn't shift — but accepted him, as though waiting for him to arrive.
The girl looked up.
And he knew.
Liora.
The dreamscape shimmered.
Briefly, it warped. The snow hissed. The light above darkened. From the edges of the sky, something bled inward — lines of gold and pale blue, forming a distant silhouette with a winged helm and outstretched arms.
Griffith.
He didn't speak.
He only watched.
And smiled.
Liora turned her head and frowned.
"That's not the light I wanted."
Aeon knelt beside her. His voice was raw.
"Why are you here?"
"I never left," she said simply. "You did."
He reached toward her — and paused.
A chain ran from her wrist to the base of the white tree. Not metal. Not iron.
Memory.
Old, tangled threads that shimmered like light filtered through tears.
"You gave me to the story," she whispered. "So I could live again."
Aeon's breath caught.
The bird of flame in her hands lifted gently and flew upward, circling the tree once.
"But you forgot why."
He turned.
And saw a shape at the far end of the field — distant, broken, barely real.
A doorway.
No, a mirror.
Cracked, but pulsing.
He didn't recognize it.
But he felt something… like a plan he had made in another life.
A vow.
A sacrifice
Something that had no name, only purpose.
The dream began to tear.
The field unraveled into black mist.
Liora looked at him one last time.
"Find me again."
Then the bird vanished.
And so did she.
Aeon woke gasping, the fire before him cold, the branded girl still sleeping peacefully.
But a new shape had formed in the ashes.
A perfect spiral.
Drawn with a child's hand.
And Guts stood watching from the shadows, silent, but no longer unaware.