The festival had begun.
Valencrest's streets glowed in shades of gold and crimson, paper lanterns rising like quiet stars. Children chased fire-dancers. Merchants hawked sweets shaped like foxes. The air pulsed with memory… and something just beneath it.
Selene stood at the edge of the plaza, dressed in ceremonial white. The brooch pinned near her shoulder caught firelight and shimmered—no longer just a symbol, but a signature.
She didn't wave to the crowd. She watched. And waited.
Inside the Tower of Old Flame
Aro wandered corridors once sealed by decree. With Iris behind him, he followed faint echoes—voices that felt like dreams left unfinished.
In the final chamber, a basin waited.
Black water shimmered under runes too old for language. Aro leaned in. His reflection shimmered, then fractured.
A boy in a different life.
A name whispered in battle.
A voice saying: "You're not done."
He whispered, "Who was I?"
The water did not answer.
But behind him, Iris stepped forward and said gently:
"You were the one who stayed."
In the Festival's Heart
A masked figure stepped onto the storyteller's stage. Not part of the performance schedule. No herald. No introduction.
The crowd quieted.
The figure held up a scroll. It unrolled itself, blank. But as firelight touched it, words bloomed:
"Once, there was a boy who forgot every name but one.
And once, there was a girl who remembered names others feared to speak.
They were written differently, but by the same hand."
Gasps rose as the scroll lifted and disintegrated in red light.
Selene turned. Aro emerged from the crowd.
No speech. No confession. Just steps that closed the space between them.
She reached out.
He met her halfway.
Far Above, in a Watcher's Room
The developers watched.
Multiple. Silent. Uncertain.
"What name was he meant to have?" one asked.
No answer. Just shifting lines across a thread-board of possibilities.
Another muttered:
"Perhaps... it's not a name we gave him."
Back on the Ground
Aro whispered, "This wasn't how I imagined it."
Selene smiled. "No. It's how it remembered itself."
They didn't kiss. The moment didn't ask for it.
Instead, she reached behind his neck and gently clipped her second brooch beside his collar.
A fox. Facing hers. Thread between them.