Page 23 of In Your Light

Hadeom’s breathing lost its rhythm. Something in his memory felt so unbearably heavy, but he couldn’t release it, no matter what he tried.

He pressed his palms against his temples until his fingernails bit into skin. Somewhere beneath flesh and bone lived the memory of eternity, but whenever he reached for it, it recoiled as though someone else's hand already held it captive.

“I was a god once,” he whispered to the empty hut.

The words sounded foolish. Cern didn’t reply. Not even a whip of wind or a crack of thunder for the blasphemy.

He had no proof beyond vague memories. His instinct was long gone. Now he was simply a tired human body sitting on a small bed in a hut, his back and head aching.

He tried again.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel the form of his bones. He visualised what he could remember, and he listened to his instincts.

Nothing.

His frustration rose so quickly, it frightened him. He struck the table once with his fist, and the table answered with a dull thud. But outside, the river kept flowing, utterly unimpressed.

He lowered his head. “Why can't I remember?”

The question vanished into the quiet. And, as always, his mind betrayed him. Not looking towards forgotten forms, but towards somewhere that frightened him the most.

Fyn.

Hadeom hadn't meant to think of him.

Yet there he was, arriving effortlessly to the front of his mind where divinity could not.

Fyn laughing, his eyes glinting emeralds in the sun. Fyn talking on the pier. The way he sipped his tea. How his gaze caught Hadeom’s in ways he wished it wouldn’t. In ways he dreamed it would.

Fyn smiling at him, content in the silence, as if he was just happy to be there.

Always that smile. Like standing in sunlight after weeks of rain.

Hadeom opened his eyes with a quiet sigh.

This was all so ridiculous.

He had once held worlds in his hands—or believed he had—and now the brightest thing he could remember was the way a man smiled across a mug of tea.

He should resent it. Instead, the knot behind his ribs loosened. Just a little.

He remembered the blush on Fyn’s cheeks when he’d admitted the food he’d brought was from his own supplies. He remembered how the sun weaved gold strands through Fyn’s hair.

Now, alone in the hut, the memory returned with impossible clarity.

Hadeom leaned back against the rough timber chair.

His body still hurt. His mind was still crowded and heavy, and the barrier around his true form remained immovable.

But whenever Fyn entered his thoughts, the pressure eased. And not because the answers appeared, but because, for a few fleeting moments, they no longer felt important.

It was infuriating. Dangerous but somehow comforting. Perhaps all three.

The river continued its endless conversation with the earth as night began to fall, and Hadeom listened. He couldn’t hear Cern’s voice now. But still, Fyn had told him to listen to the river, so he tried again. And for the first time that evening, he stopped demanding the water tell him who he had once been.

Instead, he wondered when Fyn would return next.

He’d been foolish to offer Fyn a place to stay. Even more foolish to hope he would.