It’s changing.
Right now, in real time, the gray wasteland I’ve been traveling through for weeks is waking up. Patches of green breaking through dead stone. Hills shifting from ash to moss and gold. Rivers shaking off their darkness and running clear.
Trees bursting into color — reds and golds and deep greens — like someone flipped a switch marked “autumn” and the whole realm responded.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“It always wanted to be.” The God steps up beside me. “The corruption kept it frozen. Now that the Gate is open, now that souls can pass through again…” He gestures at the healing landscape. “Balance returns.”
I watch a hillside bloom gold. Watch a river run silver. Watch the world become what it was supposed to be.
My parents never got to see this.
The thought rises unbidden, and suddenly my chest is too tight again.
“My parents,” I say quietly. “Did they know? When they sent me through? Did they know any of this would happen?”
The God is quiet for a long moment.
“They knew you would live.”
Something cracks behind my ribs.
“They sent you through time because it was the only door Alekir couldn’t follow you through. The only way to save you.” His voice is soft in a way that makes my eyes burn. “They never regretted the choice. Not for one moment.”
I can’t look at him. Can’t look at anything. My vision is blurring.
“They didn’t die in despair, Kaia. They died in hope.”
A sound escapes me. Something between a sob and a laugh.
“You were their last thought.” The God’s voice drops even quieter. “And their first prayer.”
I break.
Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just tears streaming down my face and my shoulders shaking and centuries of grief finally having somewhere to go.
They died hoping I would live.
They died believing I would become this.
“Thank you,” I manage when I can speak again. The words feel tiny against everything he’s given me. “For telling me that.”
He inclines his head.
Then he steps back a few feet. Gives me space.
But he doesn’t leave.
I can feel him there, waiting. Because he’s not done. There’s more coming — I can feel it in the way he’s watching me, in the way the bonds are humming, in the way Absentiakeeps unfurling beneath us like it’s been holding its breath for centuries.
But for now, I just stand here.
Watching the world heal.
Feeling Finn’s chaos spark bright and strange in my chest — different than before, happier somehow — and making a mental note to find out what the hell happened while I was busy being a professional Ed-watcher.
The wind carries the smell of growing things. Of life coming back.
