His eyelids flutter open, revealing the world in hues of gray, as if color has yet to be reinvented. Mikal stirs, an involuntary shiver coursing through his blood-soaked limbs. His fingers, cold and numb, curl instinctively around something soft. With a dawning realization, he sees the wild dark brown curls, partially matted with blood and rubble.
The cold he feels is a stark contrast to the warm, sunny mountain they were now sitting on.
A long wooden spear connects the two of their bloody forms together, and the sight makes his insides churn with awful panic, especially when he sees the metal cuffs and his raw wrists.
"Este?" His voice is a ghostly whisper, barely disturbing the air.
A presence greets him in the silence—Death. They are dead. Gone from the earth.
It has been an elusive specter, always lurking at the periphery of life but never quite touching it… until now. He had imagined it as an eternal sleep or perhaps a journey to some far-off place where souls wandered, lost and disconnected.
But death isn’t some awful darkness, a rest after a life of pain. It is gentle. Full of song. His memories of the last few months are fragments, blurred around the edges like a dream upon waking.
The boy tightens his hold on his sister, the one who has protected him since birth. This closeness, this warmth—it is life after life.
"Estela," he repeats, a fervent whisper, waiting for her eyes to open and see the beauty around them. "Wake up. There is no more pain."
This would make her happy. She’d been through so much hurt, and, somehow, he could tell that he had been, too, though the memories were blurred and charred.
Just then, the world pulses anew, a gentle rhythm beckoning him. He feels it first in his fingertips, then coursing through his veins like the first flush of heat from a hearth. Every beat of his heart is an echo in the emptiness that death leaves behind, filling the void with whispers of color and sound.
Eyes still closed, he listens intently to the symphony of existence playing softly beneath Estela’s deafening silence.
And then she gasps.
The sudden movement puts strain on the spear connecting them. She looks around, tears already tugging themselves out her eyes, despite the surrounding beauty.
“No,” she sobs.
He reaches up and touches her with one hand.
“Este, please. You’re… hurting me,” he grunts.
She shakes her hand, her own hands placed on her stomach. She looks up at the sky
“Rholker was supposed to die!” she screams. “Not me. Not us.”
“Este, please. We need to remove this. Then there will be no more hurt,” Mikal says fervently, trying to refrain her from moving. “We will be free.”
Estela jerks her shoulder away, ignoring her brother. It is as if she were possessed, staring at the golden sky, streaked with cozy colors of summer sunsets.
“Put me back in the fight!Let us live,” she sobs to the empty sky. “Please.”
Light flashes.
Before him, a blood-soaked troll warrior stands, reaching across time and space for Estela. His arm strains, and his face is streaked with tears.
She reaches back, screaming words Mikal does not understand and jostling the pain in his chest. The troll’s silver braid falls over his shoulder, swinging toward them.
The whispers in the wind grow louder, weaving threads of vitality into his being. They speak in a language older than time, uttering words that only the heart could understand, calling Mikal back to the land of the living with a tender insistence.
He can feel the energy of life's tapestry entwine with his own, stitching together the frayed edges left by death's sharp scissors. With each thread, the boy's spirit mends, piecing together the fragments of who he was, who he is, and who he might yet become.
He wonders if Estela feels the same.
And then, as if the universe itself has leaned down to murmur into his ear, the final word comes, a secret carried on the wind:
"Live."
