But Ayla didn't rise.
Before Qaritas even realized it, she had fallen asleep—curled gently behind him, her body surrendering to exhaustion as if even speaking Mrajeareim's name had drained the stars from her bones. The balm jar rested beside her, glowing faintly.
Qaritas stood slowly. He picked up the jar and placed it back on the desk, careful not to wake her. She let out a soft snore—not graceless, just real. A sound from someone who hadn't slept this deeply in a long time.
A strand of her hair had fallen across her face—a curtain of cosmic silk, streaked with twilight and comet-flare. He reached out, hesitant at first. Then gently, reverently, tucked the strand behind her ear.
The colors shimmered under his fingers—red to gold to violet, as if her soul stirred in sleep and remembered he was near.
She didn't wake.
But something in the room shifted—like it had exhaled.
He stood a moment longer, watching the slow, steady rise of her breath.
Then, with a soft grunt of decision, he bent and lifted her. She didn't stir, only curled closer into his chest, weightless and warm. The motion felt familiar in a way that memory didn't quite explain.
He set her down on the bed and pulled back the blanket—a dark celestial weave threaded with gold and stardust, like a night sky folded into cloth. It shimmered faintly as he tucked it around her.
She murmured something in her sleep. A name, maybe. Or a memory.
Qaritas stepped back, unsure for a moment.
Then he dragged the desk chair over, settled into it with a tired sigh, and let his eyes close.
The room held them both—one in dreams, the other in half-light.
And for a little while longer, the war waited.
_____________________________________________
Time ran out.
A knock startled Qaritas awake—he nearly fell from the chair.
Komus's voice echoed through the door. "Ayla. Qaritas. Thirty minutes."
Qaritas sighed, not noticing Ayla had already risen.
Ayla stood, her voice brushing against his mind.
"I'll leave you to get ready," she said softly, already turning to go.
"I'll be with you. Every step, Ayla," Qaritas whisper.
As Ayla slipped into the hall.
He stood before the obsidian mirror, barefoot.
The room was silent, save for the quiet hum of the aether shard overhead, pulsing like a slowed heartbeat. This wasn't ritual. Not armor prep. Not ceremony. This was choice.
And he had to make it carefully.
Piece by piece, he pulled the outfit together—not with reverence, but with the precision of someone stitching himself back into a body he hadn't worn in years.
First came the sleeveless tunic, dark and obsidian-threaded, fitting like second skin over bone and memory. Reinforced where it needed to be—over ribs that remembered pain, over a spine that had once bent to curse and command alike.
Next, the bone-forged pauldron slid into place on his left shoulder—lightless, jagged, and scar-marked. The sigil on it was still split, still broken. But over the old burn, Ayla's goldleaf constellation shimmered faintly. A seal of unbecoming, now touched by cosmos. Chosen.
He paused.
The cloak fell across his back—shadow made sky.
As he adjusted the high collar, a sliver of moonlight caught the fabric—and for a heartbeat, constellations long lost whispered across his sleeves.
He didn't flinch.
He remembered them.
The sash came next—pale blue, torn, frayed, still stained faintly at one edge. He wrapped it around his waist, tying it once. No knots. Just memory. The cloth had come from Ranaesa. From the life before silence. From Ayla's hands.
Then the glove—just the left. Fitted to the runes already burned into his skin. Soulmarks, not scars. Names of the ones he'd carried out of darkness. Names no one else ever heard.
At last, the dagger.
Not for blood.
Just for the curse-breaking.
Its hilt bore one word, carved in quiet defiance: Witness.
The boots took the longest to lace. The stormhide still held dust from before. They whispered protection in a tongue only Mrajeareim recognized—and hated.
When he stood fully dressed, something shimmered behind him.
Qaritas looked into the mirror again.
Not to admire. Not to mourn.
Just to recognize.
And quietly, he whispered—not to himself, but to the one he used to be:
"I'm still here."
Then he turned, gathered his weight, and walked out of the room.
Silent as breath.
Heavy as reckoning.
The front courtyard waited. The air was sharp and expectant—no wind, just the hush before something ancient woke.
Somewhere, a chime rang once—distant and off-key, like time coughing up a bell.
The others had gathered. None of them spoke. Not yet.
Komus stood first. His robes were black and umber, embroidered with shifting sigils that shimmered only when not directly looked at. A mantle of grave-feathers ringed his shoulders, and his hands were wrapped in binding cloth from a place where voices never return.
Cree wore a shroud of colorless silk that twisted to mimic her mood—faint glints of starlight bleeding through the seams. Her arms were sleeved in soulthread—woven by dreamwalkers, shimmering with fractured prophecy. No weapons. Only a memory coil wrapped tight at her waist.
Hydeius was half-shadow, half-devotion. His armor was duskbone, marked in sacred ash. Each line a vow. His gauntlet bore the final sigil of the First Forge—given only to those who turned from godhood to protect mortals. A sword was strapped to his back, its hilt wrapped in nightrose leather.
Niraí had chosen silver—a flowing tunic cut with panels of crystalsteel and skyglass. Her boots were wind-forged, hovering just above the ground. She wore no cloak. Instead, her body shimmered with an aura of storm-magic—gentle now, but waiting to strike.
Daviyi looked untouched by war—but only on the surface. His garments were ritual-woven, dark crimson etched with ancestral ink. A chain of vials hung across his chest—essence, blood, warding salts. His eyes, though calm, shimmered like glass. Something was watching through him.
And last came Ayla.
Around her, even gravity bent slightly—as if the world remembered who she was.
She wore no crown. No blade. Just the weight of everything she'd survived.
Just a robe made from voidthread and starlace, layered like collapsing galaxies. Her sleeves dragged traces of comet-light in their wake. Her bare feet touched the earth like gravity was optional.
Around her neck, she wore the broken shard of a Torment Crystal. It pulsed with quiet resistance.
In her eyes: a stillness vast enough to drown gods.
They didn't greet each other.
Didn't need to.
Each of them had dressed not for show. But for war.
A war of soul. Of memory. Of reckoning.
Ayla lifted her hand, fingers splayed toward the sky.
No words. No chant. Just will.
Seven stars appeared above them—slowly at first, then blazing. They weren't constellations, not truly. They were memories made light. Echoes of victory, defiance, and choices that rewrote the shape of fate.
One for each of them.
The First Star flared white, icy and sharp. A memory of a time Cree whispered truth into a tyrant's mind and walked away unharmed.
Cree stepped forward. Her fingers brushed the light—and it folded into her chest like a breath returning home.
She inhaled sharply, her posture straightening as though remembering how to stand as more than one self.
Her robe shimmered. Her hair lit at the edges. The colorless silk now bore threads of silver and song.
The Second Star pulsed gold, wild and ringing. It was Komus's—the moment he refused to kill a child made of shadow, and instead taught it how to sing.
The light surged into his chest. His grave-feather mantle rustled as if in wind. The sigils on his robe realigned, sharper, now edged in flame.
The Third Star blazed dark crimson—the blood-oath Hydeius had sworn in a ruined chapel, choosing a mortal life over the throne.
He bowed his head as the light struck him, silently. His gauntlet got brighter. The sword on his back flared once, then stilled.
For a moment, his shadow burned brighter than flame—then stilled.
The Fourth Star was ocean-blue, storm-lit. A moment when Niraí had scattered an enemy fleet not with power, but a single spoken word that made them remember their mothers.
She caught it mid-air like a wind calling home. The crystalsteel across her shoulders refracted now with radiant streaks of aurora.
The Fifth Star shimmered green and shadowed silver—a memory of Daviyi refusing to let a friend forget who they were, even after the soul-ripping.
The star curved into him gently. One of his vials lit up with new light. The sigils along his collar flared and rearranged. A new rune appeared on his palm.
The Sixth Star was violet and gold. Qaritas's star.
A single breath—when he knelt beside a dying god and whispered not forgiveness, but understanding.
The light sank into his chest without ceremony. His cloak fluttered as the air shifted. The sash at his waist now blink with faint light.
And then—
The Seventh Star.
It didn't fall. It descended. Slow. Reverent. Heavy with weight.
It was black and radiant, gold-threaded like a mourning veil in flame. The memory was not one moment—but all of them. Ayla choosing to walk into fire. Ayla standing between blade and child. Ayla holding broken gods in her arms and not letting go.
She extended her hand.
The star sank into her skin like ink dissolving into paper. Her voidthread robes shifted—not brighter, but deeper, galaxies folding in tighter. Her eyes shined from within. Around her neck, the Torment Crystal cracked once—then reformed itself anew.
She did not tremble. She did not shine. She endured—like the stars that survive collapse and become something new.
Behind her, even the shadows stepped back.
She opened her eyes and said, simply:
"Mrajeareim will remember us.
Not as victims.
Not as monsters."
"It will remember us as the ones who came back."
Komus stepped forward, lifting his satchel. "We training or dying first?"
Hydeius cracked his neck. "One will sharpen the other."
Cree grinned faintly. "Can't wait."
Daviyi's voice was even, but carried the weight of a thousand endings:
"Should I fall, don't mourn. Salt the ground. Burn the memory. Grief has no dominion there."
Niraí smiled—crooked, feral. Her voice was a storm that hadn't decided whether to laugh or strike.
"Please. If death wants me, it better send someone faster."
Ayla turned, meeting each of their eyes. Her voice was quiet but undeniable:
"To the Graveyard. Let Mrajeareim feel us coming."
Komus chuckled softly, but his voice had a shadow under it.
"Funny. Didn't think I'd ever step foot on Mrajeareim again. But here we are."
Qaritas tightened the glove on his marked hand.
"Let it remember why we left it burning."
They turned as one.
Luggage in hand. War in their eyes. Stars in their skin.
The stars ahead of them shimmered—then cracked open. Not with metal or hinge, but with the sound of memory folding.
As they flew into the Graveyard together.
Not gods. Not mortals.
Witnesses.
And the dark, at last, opened its eyes.
Far ahead, something screamed without sound.
Mrajeareim had felt them coming.
It did not welcome them.