CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:Echoes We Left Behind

Selene

She stood at the edge of the old ruins, where the Rift had once shimmered like a wound in the sky. Now, there was nothing — just wind, stone, and silence.

But Selene could feel it.

The absence.

A hollow space where two souls had burned so brightly, they lit the way for everyone else… and then vanished.

"They're really gone," she whispered.

"They are," Soren said behind her. "But not everything they left behind disappeared."

He held up the crystal compass Elianah had once touched. It no longer glowed. But it pulsed, faintly, like a fading heartbeat refusing to die.

Selene stepped closer. "I keep dreaming of her… even though I shouldn't remember her name."

"That's because some memories are carved into the soul."

Soren's eyes met hers. "And some love stories are too loud to forget, even when silence is all that remains."

They sat there, the two of them, in the ashes of destiny, wondering what came next.

In the city

People had changed — even if they didn't understand why.

A boy walked past the art wall and stared at the mural of two faceless figures holding hands, wrapped in stars. No artist remembered painting it. No one dared paint over it.

At the academy, a new student arrived — a quiet girl with storm-colored eyes and a ring she never took off, though she didn't know why.

And at the temple where the Hollowed once whispered, flowers now bloomed. Wild. Joyful. Defiant.

Elionys

She wandered the realm like a ghost now — no longer the Warden, just a woman with a story too impossible to share.

Sometimes she saw flashes.

Not faces.

But feelings.

A laugh in the market that made her pause. A gesture from a stranger that struck her heart. The scent of lilacs when there were none around.

"They left their imprint," she said aloud.

A boy nearby blinked at her. "Whose imprint?"

She smiled sadly. "The ones who loved us all enough to disappear."