He stood where shadow touched light.
Tall. Calm. Dressed in a dark tunic lined with silver thread. His features were unsettlingly familiar—Ael's jaw, Vel's eyes, a smile that felt like neither. But most terrifying of all was the stillness around him.
Birdsong vanished. Wind ceased. Even the shrine's runes dimmed, like they dared not shine in his presence.
Ael stepped in front of Vel instinctively.
"You're the fragment we left behind."
The young man inclined his head. "You gave me shape. You gave me purpose. I am the silence between your words. The void you both carved out and buried."
Vel's voice was tight. "We never meant to create you."
"And yet you did," he replied, tone serene. "When the king removed his heart, and the priestess silenced hers, what you left behind was me—the soul unchained by emotion or doubt. A being of pure will."
Nirra whispered behind them, "He's not just a shadow. He's a soul-born manifestation of sacrifice."
Ael narrowed his eyes. "Then you're incomplete."
The figure—no, the Third Soul—tilted his head.
"I am what remains after completeness is burned away. I am clarity. Freedom. Serenity."
"Erasure," Vel said flatly.
The Third Soul smiled. "Peace."
—
He stepped closer, hands clasped behind his back, walking with the grace of a sovereign and the precision of a sword.
"Look around you," he said. "This world festers with conflict. With noise. Pain. Endless grasping. You, Ael, have walked the lands of the healed, yet even in peace, you find grief. Betrayal. You see the cracks. The rot beneath the gold."
He turned to Vel.
"And you—your flames consume you. Every soul you save, another slips beyond your reach. You are burning from both ends."
His voice softened, almost kindly.
"You don't have to suffer anymore."
Ael's hand moved to his sword. "What are you offering?"
"A choice," the Third Soul said. "A final one."
The air pulsed with invisible tension, a pressure behind the ears, in the chest, in the mind.
"Fuse your halves. Reclaim your full soul. One of you may do it.The other… will vanish."
Nirra gasped.
Vel took a step forward. "You mean kill one of us."
"No," the Third Soul replied calmly. "I mean complete the cycle. You were once one soul. One flame. I am the wound where you split. If one of you fuses with me—becomes whole—the other will no longer exist. Not as an enemy. Not as a memory. As nothing."
He smiled faintly.
"And with that union, I will fade as well. There will be no need for silence. Because there will be no more conflict."
—
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Even the sky seemed to wait.
Ael's thoughts churned. Not from confusion, but from feeling. He had emotions now—so many, and all of them tangled: the bitter guilt of his past, the aching connection to Vel, the drive to protect, to build, to matter.
He looked to her.
Vel was staring at the shrine. At the stone altar where once, lifetimes ago, they had chosen to sever what made them human.
Her voice was steady. "If I take him in… I become whole. But you disappear."
"If I do it," Ael replied, "you vanish."
They didn't ask each other to make the choice.
Because some questions were too sacred for answers.
—
But Nirra stepped forward, her eyes hard with sudden clarity.
"You're manipulating them," she said to the Third Soul. "Framing self-destruction as healing."
The Third Soul turned slowly.
"I offer resolution."
"You offer extinction. And only by splitting them did you come into being. If they choose neither, what happens to you?"
He blinked.
For the first time… uncertain.
—
Ael's sword slid halfway from its sheath.
Vel's eyes burned faintly.
And the wind returned.
Not strong.
Not violent.
Just present.
"I think," Ael said quietly, "we don't choose either path."
Vel smiled slightly, the same way she once had under a moonlit tree in a life now returning in fragments.
"I think we make a third choice."
The Third Soul stiffened.
"There is no third—"
But Ael moved.
Not to strike.
To touch.
His hand pressed to the chest of the Third Soul.
Vel stepped beside him, her palm joining his.
And together, they spoke—
"We reclaim not by erasing.Not by consuming.But by forgiving what we abandoned."
The Third Soul trembled.
"Don't—"
But it was too late.
They pulled him in.
Not as prey.
As family.
—
Light burst from the shrine, not in brilliance, but in recognition. Three threads entwined—red, silver, and shadow.
Not to bind.
Not to destroy.
To heal.
—
And for the first time since the soul had been torn…
The silence wept.