"I woke hungry. I lived, but not as I had been. Not as I had asked."
His hand slips from my cheek, trailing slowly down, resting just above my heart.
"I have heard more prayers than you have drawn breaths. I have seen them whispered in terror, in love, in labor, in war. I have heard them in the silence of empty churches and in the roar of fields soaked with blood."
His thumb presses faintly against me.
"None stopped the dark."
The air feels colder.
"I was cursed long before your village knew fear," he says. "Centuries have passed beneath my steps. I have walked through kingdoms that no longer stand. I have watched empires rise and rot into dust." His voice does not rise. It does not need to. "I have buried those I loved until their names meant nothing to the world that followed."
My chest tightens.
"I could not return to them," he murmurs. "Not as I was. Not as I had become."
His hand shifts, drawing me closer against him, as though the memory itself has weight.
"I grew weary," he says. "Of hunger. Of wandering. Of the endless turning of time that would not release me." His gaze drifts again, distant, unfocused. "So I returned here, where no one would seek me. I let the earth close over me once more."
His fingers tighten faintly at my side.
"And then…"
His eyes return to mine.
"Something restless walked above me."
My breath falters.
"I felt you," his voice softens. "Before I saw you. Before I knew your name. The tremor of your steps above my grave. The defiance in them. The life."
His fingers trace lightly along my arm, following the path where the roots have woven into my skin.
"You called me," he murmurs. "You woke me."
The words are not accusation. They are recognition.
"And I rose for you."
The candles flicker, their light bending around him, around us.
"I have roamed this earth for longer than memory should allow," he says at last, his voice lowering further, intimate now, meant only for me. "I have seen all that can be seen. I have endured all that can be endured. I have prayed for oblivion and been denied it, again and again. I believed it a curse without end."
His hand stills against my skin.
"And then you stood before me."
The words fall softly.
"And I understood."
Something shifts in his gaze, something that feels like both ruin and salvation entwined.
"Why I was made to endure," he murmurs.
His thumb brushes once more along my cheek, slow, certain.
