The next day, Elira spoke.
Not all at once, not easily, but in fragments, like shards of a broken mirror. Caelen listened, sitting across from her at his small table, the fire casting long shadows. Her pain was a constant now, a tide he couldn't outrun, but he didn't pull away.
He couldn't.
"I was born in Vaeloria," she began, her voice low. "A city of spires, white as bone, built around a temple older than the stars. My family were keepers—scholars, priests, guardians of stories no one else remembered."
Her fingers traced the table's grain, as if grounding herself.
"I was training to be one of them. To protect the temple's heart."
"The heart?" Caelen asked, keeping his voice gentle.
She nodded, eyes distant. "A relic. Not gold or jewels, but… light. Pure, living light. It held the world's joy, its hope. They said it kept Aerthalin alive."
Her voice hardened. "Until he came."
Caelen felt it before she said it—a pulse of her fear, her loss.
"The one you mentioned. The end of everything."
"Yes." Her hands clenched. "He was a shadow, a man but not a man. His eyes were empty, like the Hollow's. He wanted the heart, but not to keep it—to destroy it. To make the world forget how to feel."
Her voice broke. "We fought. My mother, my brothers, everyone. But he was too strong. The temple burned. I ran."
Caelen's chest ached, her grief a mirror to his curse.
"You couldn't have stopped him," he said.
"I should've tried," she spat, then softened, her eyes meeting his. "I was a coward. And now he's coming. The Hollows are his harbingers. They're waking because he's waking."
Caelen leaned back, the weight of her words sinking in. A world without feeling—a world where his curse would be meaningless, but so would everything else.
"This temple," he said. "Where is it?"
"East," she said. "Beyond the Thornfields, past the mountains. It's ruins now, but… I think that's where he'll go. To finish what he started."
He nodded, his mind racing. Hearthollow was safe for now, but the distant pain he'd felt, the ash on the wind—it was all connected.
"Then we go there," he said, surprising himself. "We find the temple. We stop him."
Elira stared, disbelief flickering across her face. "You'd do that? For me? For a world that's never been kind to you?"
He thought of his mother's words, her hands on his face.
Don't let it break you.
"Not for the world," he said quietly. "For the people in it. For you."
Her pain shifted, softening, and for the first time, Caelen felt something new—not grief, not fear, but a spark of trust. It was fragile, fleeting, but it was enough.
"Then we're both fools," she said, and this time, her smile was real.