Chapter 24:
I Thought I Had Lost You...
The moment Errin took that step, the world trembled.
A rush of emotions surged through him—familiar yet distant, like echoes from a forgotten past. A warmth that he had not felt in ages. A presence that had been absent for far too long.
And then, a voice.
"I thought I had lost you..."
The words came not from the world around him, but from deep within. A whisper in his very soul.
Errin's breath caught. He turned, searching for the source, though he already knew—this was not a voice of the past. It was something beyond memory, beyond time.
It was her.
A name hovered on the edge of his mind, just out of reach. A name he had once spoken with reverence. With love.
A name that had been erased when he stepped into the valley.
His heart pounded. Had she been waiting for him all this time? Had she searched for him across lifetimes, across realms? Or was she just another fragment, another ghost of the past trying to reclaim him?
"Who are you?" he whispered.
For a moment, there was only silence.
Then, the world shifted—memories flooding in like a broken dam.
A face, blurred yet achingly familiar.
A hand reaching for his in the dark.
A promise made beneath a sky filled with falling stars.
And the weight of regret. Of choices that had led him away.
Errin clenched his fists. He had thought he had left the past behind. That he had moved forward.
But perhaps… not everything had been meant to be forgotten.
Perhaps some things were waiting to be found again.
He closed his eyes.
"If I lost you once..." he murmured.
"Then let me find you again."
And with that, he took another step—
Not into the unknown, but toward something he had always been searching for.