Chapter 85- Again And Again And Maybe Once More

  Darkness.

  Stone pressed in from every side, cold and absolute. The weight of it sat on his chest, refusing to lift

  Ryn couldn't move.

  Couldn't breathe.

  He tried anyway. His lungs found almost nothing, just dust and the stale crushed air of the collapsed temple.

  Every small movement sent pain spiking outward from his torso in long, radiating waves that made his vision go white at the edges.

  He stopped moving.

  Laid still.

  Then a sound. Faint at first. The scrape of stone against stone. The shift and clatter of rubble being moved with desperate, uneven urgency. Something small. Someone small.

  Then light.

  A crack of it, pale and thin, splitting the dark above him. Then wider. a hand broke through — small fingers, bloodied at the tips, the skin torn from digging — reaching down into the dark.

  Ryn didn't think about it.

  He grabbed it.

  The pull came hard and immediate, far stronger than the hand looked capable of, and then he was moving — dragged upward through shifting rubble, stone scraping along his back and shoulders, dust cascading into his face. He broke the surface with a ragged, desperate gasp, lungs seizing as real air flooded back in.

  He didn't stop moving in time.

  His weight carried him sideways, and he tumbled free, rolling hard across broken stone before gravity made its final decision and dropped him flat against the rubble.

  He lay there.

  Breathing.

  Each inhale scraped like gravel.

  The sky, or what remained of it through the dust, sat bright and distant above him.

  He ran a quick, quiet inventory. One Arm. Legs. The wound on his torso.

  Still there, all of it. Still working, most of it.

  He turned his head.

  Lilia sat beside him, close enough that her knee nearly touched his shoulder. Her tunic was torn, her hands raw and bleeding from the digging, her silver hair falling loose and ash-grey at the ends. A cut ran along her jaw that she clearly hadn't noticed yet.

  But her chest rose and fell.

  Breathing.

  Ryn looked back up at the sky.

  Alive.

  Then it hit him.

  Ariel.

  Ryn sat up fast. His torso screamed in protest, and his arms buckled beneath him, dropping him straight back down into the rubble with a grunt he didn't quite manage to swallow.

  Lilia noticed.

  She didn't say anything at first. Just looked at him, then looked away, her eyes drifting somewhere into the ash and ruin ahead of them.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was barely there.

  "She's fine."

  A pause. Her jaw tightened faintly.

  "...As fine as she can be."

  She shook her head once, a small motion, almost involuntary.

  Then, more quietly still, "It seems killing the aberration stopped it. Whatever it was doing to us."

  Ryn absorbed that in silence.

  Then slowly…

  "…You're bleeding," he said. His voice came out rougher than he expected.

  Lilia blinked.

  Then, very quietly, so quietly it was almost lost in the sound of something still collapsing somewhere in the distance, she let out a single, unsteady breath. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob.

  Something between the two.

  "So are you," she said.

  ***

  They tended to what they could.

  Lilia tied the injury at her calf, finally removing the protruding end of the spike. The bleeding had finally lessened.

  Lilia exhaled shakily.

  The aberration’s death had ended it.

  It wasn't much. Strips of torn fabric pressed against the worst of it, tied off, Lilia worked quickly, quietly, and Ryn bore it without complaint

  Then she ducked under his arm, and they moved.

  He was heavy. They found a rhythm slowly, his limp, her smaller steps adjusting to meet it, and together they picked their way down through the rubble in silence.

  Lilia's eyes drifted as they moved.

  The temple lay in pieces around them. Great slabs of pale stone tilted against each other at wrong angles, columns split clean through, the roof entirely gone in places, open to the grey wash of sky above. Dust still rose in slow, lazy threads from the freshest collapses.

  She looked at it and felt something she didn't immediately have a name for.

  Sadness, maybe. Or something quieter than that. Something closer to guilt.

  She knew it was the trial construct, not the real temple, not the one outside these walls, which was almost certainly still standing intact beyond all of this. She knew that. And yet.

  It felt like she had trampled on a long-lived home. She wasnt quite sure why she felt this way.

  And the familiar silver stone — meant to last. Built to last. The kind of stone that was supposed to outlast everything built with it.

  Even that hadn't been immune to time.

  The whole structure had collapsed, just like solvaras walls had

  She crossed the last stretch of pale stone and let herself set the thought down.

  They slowly limped their way to Ariel

  She lay where Lilia had left her.

  The bleeding from her shoulder had finally stopped, the wound darkened now and still, no longer pulling at the cloth Lilia had pressed against it. That was something. That was enough for now.

  But the cracks were worse.

  They ran along her right side in pale, luminous lines, tracing her leg, her hip, her ribs, branching finely as they reached her neck and jaw and eventually her brow.

  her eye, even closed, the lid seemed lit from beneath.

  She was shifting in her sleep. Small movements, restless, her fingers curling and uncurling against the ground like she was reaching for something just out of reach.

  But her chest rose and fell.

  Lilia looked at her for a moment longer than she meant to.

  Then she looked away.

  She lowered Ryn carefully until he was sitting against the nearest stable piece of stone. He moved to help her near the end, taking some of his own weight back.

  For a moment, he just sat there. His eyes moved to Ariel, then away. He opened his mouth once, seemed to think better of it, and closed it again.

  Then, quietly:

  "I'm going to rest for a while."

  Lilia nodded.

  She watched him close his eyes. Watched his breathing slow and deepen, the lines of his face easing by degrees until the exhaustion finally won over.

  She sat.

  The world around her was very still. The six suns hung where they always had, blazing and silent, indifferent to all of it.

  There was no journal entry that day.

  She just sat. Her hands rested in her lap, palms still raw from the digging, dried blood dark at the edges of her nails. Ariel shifted once beside her. Ryn's breathing stayed deep and even.

  Lilia didn't move for a very long time.

  Eventually, she sighed, her head lowering as she finally drifted off to sleep as well.

  She woke to the sound of Ariel gasping.

  Lilia was upright before she was fully conscious.

  Ariel sat rigid in the grass, both hands outstretched, her tunic dark and clinging with sweat. Her chest heaved in and out in sharp, uneven pulls, like someone who'd just broken the surface of deep water.

  Lilia crawled forward.

  "What's wrong?" Her voice came out small, still rough with sleep. "Ariel—"

  Ariel breathed. Once. Twice.

  "I had a dream."

  A pause. Still catching it.

  "A dream." Another breath. "A strange dream."

  She stopped again, pressing her lips together. Her eyes were distant, fixed somewhere past the grass, past the ruins, past all of it.

  Across from them, Ryn stirred.

  He pushed himself upright slowly. It took longer than it should have. His eyes moved to Ariel, then to Lilia. He said nothing. Whether it was exhaustion keeping him quiet or simply himself, it was impossible to tell.

  Ariel continued.

  "I was in a child's body." Her brow pulled together. "It was like here, but back when everything still stood."

  Her eyes drifted over the pale ruins scattered across the grass, the broken walls half-swallowed by the field.

  "It was so much like home."

  Something in her voice changed on the last word. Something she didn't try to hide and didn't try to keep.

  "It felt warm," she said quietly. "It felt nice."

  She pushed herself upright, moving too fast for the state she was in. Her teeth clenched immediately, a sharp, pained expression crossing her face as the cracks along her right side caught the light.

  One of her eyes, bright and gold, flashed even brighter.

  She steadied herself, barely, then her gaze landed on the rubble of the collapsed temple.

  "The temple." She stared at it. "It was new. It had just been built, and it was full of—" She stopped. Tilted her head. "Huh."

  Her eyes moved slowly over the wreckage.

  "Where did it go."

  It wasn't quite a question. The answer was obvious; it seemed she just needed a moment to accept it. Then she shook her head, and her legs gave out, dropping her back into the grass with an ungraceful thud. She didn't fight it.

  Lilia watched her. Said nothing.

  Ariel stared at the ground for a moment, still sweating, still catching her breath.

  "That's not the point." She pressed on before anyone could respond. "I think the dream was real. Not a dream — a memory. Someone else's."

  A beat.

  "I saw someone. Someone Sol mentioned." Her voice went shaky. "Aureli. He was the one Sol gave the lineage blessing to. The founder of Solvara." She paused. "My ancestor."

  Her teeth pressed together.

  "But that's not the part that matters." She pushed forward again, something urgent climbing into her tone now. "There were dancers in the temple. They wore masks — animal masks, gold — and there were eight of them. Eight dancers. Each mask looked like the creatures we've fought."

  She looked up.

  "The aberrations. So I'm guessing that each one represents—"

  "Ariel."

  Lilia's voice came out quiet. She didn't even try to look at her.

  "Relax—”

  "How can I relax?" Ariel's voice rose immediately, sharp and breathless. She shook her head, hands pressing into the grass. "The solution is right there. We're so close — one more night, that's all, just one more—"

  Lilia didn't say anything.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A long silence stretched between them. Then Lilia's jaw tightened, and when she spoke, it came out fast and uneven, like something that had been held under pressure for too long.

  "And if you're wrong?"

  Ariel blinked.

  "If I'm wrong—" Her brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

  "You wake up gasping." Lilia's voice climbed despite herself, each word landing harder than the last. "You can barely sit upright. You're drenched in sweat, and your hands are shaking, and the first thing out of your mouth is this dream you had right after you collapsed from pain—"

  "Because it matters—"

  "And you want us to just believe that." Lilia's voice cracked slightly on the last word. "You want us to trust it."

  She pressed her lips together.

  "I would love to believe it, Ariel. I mean it. I would love nothing more than to believe that today is the last day. That after tonight it's just — over."

  She exhaled.

  "But I can't. I can't do it anymore. I can't survive another promise like that."

  "No, no, you don't understand." Ariel shook her head quickly, leaning forward. "I'm certain. This isn't just a dream, I know."

  "So you want us to trust this strange dream," Lilia cut across her, voice rising again, "when you couldn't even trust us with the most basic things about yourself?"

  Ariel went still.

  "Why didn't you tell us?" Lilia's voice shook now, something raw climbing into it. "Why didn't you tell us your power couldn't heal you? Why did we have to find that out the way we did?"

  "I told you I was sorry—"

  "And why didn't you tell me how you knew about the trial? That you met with a god?"

  Lilia pressed on, like she hadn't heard her,

  "Why didn't you tell me what actually happened to Solvara? I had to piece that together myself, bit by bit, from things you let slip when you were too exhausted to catch them." Her voice broke on the next word, and she pushed through it. "You hid all of it from me."

  "Lilia—"

  "Aren't we friends?"

  The words fell quiet. Quieter than anything else she'd said.

  Lilia's eyes were bright, her jaw set hard, and she still wasn't quite looking at Ariel directly.

  "Do you really think I'm so pathetic that I don't deserve to know? That I can't handle it?" Her voice dropped further. "That there's nothing I could do — that I'm just someone you carry around and keep in the dark and apologize to after the fact?"

  Ariel opened her mouth.

  "Lilia, I'm sor—"

  "But do you know what I'm most tired of?"

  Lilia finally looked at her.

  Her eyes were exhausted.

  "It's your apologies."

  Ariel went silent

  But Lilia wasn't finished.

  She stepped closer.

  "You said you'd stop. After that first night — when you tried to fight alone — you looked at us like you understood. That we were in this together."

  Her voice dropped.

  "But you're still doing it. You're still carrying everything alone and calling it protection. She shook her head. "Like if you just take enough onto yourself, somehow we'll all come out of this clean."

  She pressed her hand briefly to her own chest.

  "Do you know what it's like? Watching you destroy yourself and not being able to do a single thing about it?" Her voice cracked on the edges. "You come to me afterward, you rush over, apologizing, telling me it was for my sake. What am I supposed to do with that?"

  "I hate it." The words came out raw and sudden, "I hate it so much. I hate watching you hurt yourself and knowing its all supposedly for me, and I hate that you keep doing it, and I hate that I can't stop you—"

  She stopped herself.

  Breathed.

  Then, very steadily:

  "You don't trust us."

  Ariel flinched.

  "You don't trust us to handle the truth. You don't trust us to make our own choices. You don't trust us to carry any of this with you." Lilia's eyes held hers, unwavering.

  Ariel didn’t speak for a long moment.

  Her lips parted, then closed again.

  She hesitated.

  “I was trying to protect you,” Ariel said quietly.

  Barely above a murmur.

  Lilia looked at Ariel, really looked at her.

  "Is wanting to protect us," she said, voice rising despite herself, "really the same as taking away our choice entirely."

  Ariel opened her mouth.

  "Is protecting me—" Lilia's voice cut her off— "watching the cracks spread across your skin?"

  Lilia's eyes were fixed on her, on the gold lines tracing up her jaw, branching finely toward her brow.

  "Every time a new one appears," Lilia said, quieter now, "I count them." Her voice barely held.

  "I count them because I don't know what else to do. Because you won't tell me what they mean or how bad it's getting or when it stops—"

  She stopped herself.

  Her hands curled at her sides.

  Ariel's mouth opened.

  Closed.

  Opened again.

  Nothing came out.

  Lilia pressed on.

  "The temple has collapsed." Her voice had gone flat now, methodical, like she was reading from something she'd already made peace with. "Our supplies are gone. The water. The food. The materials." She paused. "You probably can't even heal us anymore."

  She let that sit for a moment.

  "All we have left are scraps, Ariel. That's it. That's all that's left."

  Her eyes finally found Ariel's and didn't let go.

  "Three days. Maybe less. And then we die." Her voice didn't waver on it. "Not from an aberration. Not from something we can fight. We die from thirst, slowly, on the ground, in the middle of this field."

  "So what then?"

  The question came out almost gentle.

  "When me and Ryn are dying—when it's actually happening—will you apologize then too?" Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "Will you just sit there and say sorry as we go?"

  "No." Ariel shook her head hard, something desperate cracking open in her voice. "No — it won't happen, it can't—" She pressed forward. "Remember what we said. Sol wants me alive. Sol needs me—"

  Lilia laughed.

  It was a short sound. Hollow at the edges.

  "That was something I said." She shook her head slowly. "And looking back on it now, I think I just… needed to believe it. I needed something to hold onto, so I said it out loud, and it sounded true enough."

  She exhaled.

  "But even if it is true, even if Sol wants you alive… that says nothing about us." Her voice went very quiet. "For all we know, this trial was built specifically to keep you breathing. Just you. And everything else—"

  She didn't finish it.

  She didn't need to.

  Ariel's face went white.

  "That's—" She shook her head fast, almost frantically. "That's ridiculous—"

  "Maybe." Lilia looked down at her hands. The dried blood still dark in the lines of her palms. "Maybe it is."

  "But everything we've been through has been ridiculous. Every single thing. So why would I assume whatever comes next will somehow be different?"

  Silence.

  Then, softer, and more final than anything else she'd said:

  "But none of that changes the simple fact that we're here at all. However it ends." She looked up. "Because you brought us."

  The words didn't come out cruel.

  The silence that followed was long and absolute. The grass barely moved. The six suns burned on overhead, indifferent.

  Then Ariel muttered.

  "I know."

  She paused before continuing

  "...It's not about trust."

  "I didn't want you to suffer for what I did." Her voice dropped further, something unsteady beneath it. "They were my sins."

  A beat.

  Then quieter still—almost like she hadn't meant to say it out loud:

  "Why would I hand that to someone else?"

  Her jaw tightened as she pressed on, the words coming slower now.

  "If I put it in your hands, and something went wrong anyway—" Her voice dropped even further. "Then it's yours too. Then you carry it too."

  She looked away.

  "I didn't want you to carry it."

  “I don't want any more blood on my hands.”

  For a moment, the field was very quiet.

  Lilia heard every word.

  "So I know," Ariel whispered

  Barely audible.

  Then something shifted in her face, her voice rose, raw and breaking.

  "I know!"

  "I know I dragged both of you in here. I know it was desperate and selfish and— and suicidal, I know that—" Her voice cracked clean through and she kept going anyway, words spilling out faster than she could shape them. "And now you're both paying for it and I'm standing here and there's nothing I can do to take it back, there's nothing—"

  She pressed her fist hard against her sternum.

  "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I regret it — I regret it so much it hurts, every single second it—"

  "You're still doing it."

  Ariel stopped.

  "You're still apologizing." Lilia looked at Ariel, "You're sorry. You regret it."

  She shook her head.

  "If Ryn and I die in here — will you spend the rest of your life apologizing for that too?" Her voice barely made it to the end of the sentence. "Is that what you do? You just… carry it? You collect every person you couldn't save and you say sorry to them in the dark for the rest of your life and you call that—"

  "You let me."

  Lilia stopped.

  Ariel's voice had come out sharper than she intended. But she didn't take it back.

  "Every time I didn't tell you something—" She met Lilia's eyes, something tired and honest in her own. "You let me not tell you. You noticed. You always noticed." A beat. "You just… let me keep going anyway."

  Lilia said nothing.

  "I was trying to give you a way out." Ariel's voice dropped further, worn down to something very small and very true.

  "That's all I was ever doing. Every time." She pressed on before the words could stop coming.

  "If I didn't give you the choice, if I kept it from you before you could decide, then the weight stays with me. Not you. You wouldn't be responsible for your own suffering."

  Her hands curled in her lap.

  "...I would be. Just me."

  She exhaled.

  "I thought, if it all went wrong, at least it would only be mine to carry."

  A pause. Barely a breath.

  “But it didn’t even work.”

  The words fell quietly into the grass between them and stayed there.

  Lilia stood very still.

  the sounds of the field crept back in—the faint shift of grass, the distant settling of ruins, the hollow, windless quiet of a world that didn't care what happened inside it.

  Then Lilia's shoulders dropped.

  Just slightly. Just enough.

  "To be honest, Ariel…"

  Her voice had changed. The anger was gone. What was left underneath it was smaller, and far more honest.

  "I'm scared."

  She said it plainly, like a fact. Like something she'd been carrying around in her pockets for weeks and had finally just set down on the ground between them.

  "I'm terrified. Every single day in here I wake up and I'm terrified." She exhaled slowly. "I want to go back. I want things to go back to the way they were. I want our biggest problem to be rumours about Ryn, and fights with Dolrak, and whether we'd make it to Frill's before he sold out of the lavender cake."

  A breath caught somewhere in her chest.

  "I miss his cakes," she said quietly. Almost to herself. "I really do."

  She paused before continuing

  "I had friends in Solvara, you know. They gossiped terribly. They said unkind things sometimes, about me, about Ryn— " A faint, brief shadow of something crossed her face. "They could be awful, honestly. But it was fun. A lot of the time it was just— fun. And stupid. And small." Her voice dropped. "And I miss small."

  The grass shifted softly around her feet.

  "Ariel." She said the name differently this time. Not to get her attention. Just to say it. "If I'm being completely honest with you—"

  Her voice faltered.

  She pressed on anyway.

  "I'm not just scared of the aberrations. Or the trial. Or whatever else this place still has waiting for us." She paused, and when the next words came out they came slowly, like she was being very careful to tell the truth. "I'm scared of you."

  Ariel didn't move.

  "Because you took it," Lilia continued, voice fraying at the edges now. "All of that. That life. Those stupid small problems and those awful gossipy friends and those cakes—" Her breath hitched. "You took all of it away."

  The first tear slipped down her cheek.

  She didn't wipe it.

  "I know it wasn't your fault." Her voice shook, but she held it. "I know you didn't choose it, I know you didn't plan it, I know you would take it back if you could, I know all of that." She pressed her lips together briefly. "But where am i supposed to put these feelings,Ariel, it would be so much easier—"

  Her voice broke fully, just for a moment.

  "—it would be so much easier to just hate you. Just decide it was your fault and hate you for it. That would be so simple." She laughed, a small fractured sound that had tears in it. "Easier than hating the whole world."

  She looked up.

  Her cheeks were wet, her eyes red-rimmed, her smile painful.

  "But I can't."

  She shook her head slowly.

  "I love you too much for that, Ariel. "

  The smile stayed. Trembling, but staying.

  "And that's the most terrifying part of all."

  Ariel stood frozen.

  Then She stood up — too fast, her feet unsteady, pain flickering open and obvious across her face before she could hide it. The cracks along her jaw caught the light as her expression crumpled, and for once she didn't try to smooth it back into something composed.

  She looked at Lilia. Really looked. The limp. The raw hands. The cut at her jaw

  "Then what do I do?"

  Her voice broke on the last word.

  "I always think I'm doing the right thing." Her hands pressed hard against her eyes, gold tears slipping silently from beneath her right palm, trailing down her cheek in faint, glowing lines. "Every single time. I think, this is right, this is the only way, I'm doing this for them, and then I look up and I've made the exact same mistake again."

  A short, desperate sound escaped her, half-laugh, half-sob.

  "I always end up thinking I'm protecting everyone and I just—" Her voice collapsed entirely. "I just end up doing harm anyway."

  She stood there, hands pressed to her face, shoulders shaking, gold light leaking through her fingers.

  Then, very quietly. Small in a way she almost never was:

  "So what do I do, Lilia."

  It didn't even come out as a question. Just a plea, stripped of everything else.

  "Please."

  Lilia didn't answer for a long time.

  The grass moved faintly around them. Somewhere distant, something in the ruins shifted and settled. The six suns burned on overhead without comment.

  Then, quietly:

  "That's the scary part." Lilia's voice shaking. "I don't have an answer."

  She looked down at her shaking hands.

  "I wish I did. I really do. I've been trying to think of one, and all that comes back is—" She stopped. Laughed faintly, a hollow sound. "That we might actually die here. That this is it. That I'm going to die in a trial I didn't even know existed a months ago."

  She shook her head slowly.

  "If I'd known that—" Another small laugh, sadder this time. "Maybe I would have tried living a little more selfishly."

  Then she lifted her eyes and met Ariel's.

  The gold tears were still falling. Lilia looked at them for a moment, really looked, and something in her expression ached before it steadied.

  "But if there's one thing you should start doing." She paused, choosing the words carefully.

  "Try letting us choose. Try trusting us enough to make our own decisions and live with them."

  Her voice was soft, but it didn't waver.

  "And stop placing our lives' value above your own."

  She held her gaze for one moment longer.

  “Live a bit more selfishly.”

  Then she turned away.

  She walked slowly, her limp pulling unevenly at each step, her silver hair hanging loose and ash-pale against her back. Then she stopped.

  Just for a second.

  "I need some time to myself."

  And then she kept walking, until the distance swallowed her.

  Ariel watched her go.

  Gold tears tracked silently down her cheek, one after another, She wanted to call out, some part of her reached out instinctively, the same part that always reached, that always tried to fix and smooth and make right—

  But what would she even say.

  Sorry.

  Again.

  ***

  Lilia found a piece of white rubble at the edge of the field and sat down beside it, drew her knees to her chest, and pressed her forehead against them.

  She didn't move.

  After a while, uneven footsteps approached through the grass, slow and dragging, the particular rhythm of someone working hard not to let on how much each step cost them.

  Ryn slumped down beside her without ceremony, close enough that his shoulder nearly touched hers. He said nothing. Just sat, sword resting across his knees, and looked out at the pale ruins scattered across the endless gold-washed field.

  Lilia didn't lift her head.

  "W-What are you doing here."

  It wasn't really a question.

  Ryn was quiet for a moment.

  "Keeping watch."

  Lilia made a sound — somewhere between a scoff and a laugh — and let her head drop back down against her knees.

  The silence stretched.

  Then, muffled against her own arms:

  "I–I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. At a time like this."

  A pause.

  Ryn looked up at the six suns. Studied them like they might say something useful. They didn't.

  "You could try crying," he said.

  Lilia said nothing.

  A long beat passed.

  Then she sighed, slow, deep from somewhere below her chest.

  "I always forget," she murmured, "that you're absolutely terrible at this."

  Ryn considered that. "I thought I'd gotten better."

  Lilia didn't answer for a long time.

  "...Of course you did."

  And then — quietly, almost without deciding to — her shoulders began to shake.

  The tears came without sound at first. Then with it, soft and uneven, breaking through in small waves she didn't try to stop. She sat with her forehead on her knees and cried, really cried, the way she hadn't let herself since any of this began.

  Ryn sat beside her.

  He didn't speak.

  He just stayed.

  And for now, that was enough.