Night settled over the wasteland, but for Erik and Seth, there was no rest to be found.

The past did not wait for sleep.

It returned—uninvited, unrelenting.

The conversation faded into silence once more, though this quiet was different. It no longer carried the suffocating weight of things left unsaid, but something lighter—like the first breath drawn after breaking the surface of deep water.

The embers glowed faintly in the fire pit, their warmth fragile against the cold. Above them, the stars stretched endlessly across the heavens. Chandrapura loomed somewhere beyond the horizon, waiting. But for this brief moment, here beside the fire, there was still space to simply exist—to be human.

As the night deepened, Erik and Seth drifted into memory.

The firelight flickered, casting restless shadows across the cracked earth, but their thoughts were no longer anchored in the present—no longer bound to the wasteland or the hushed presence of their companions. They were somewhere else entirely.

They were children again, standing in the echoes of a world that no longer existed.

Seth remembered the walls of Vishalapura—his home. A city of towering temples and gilded spires that caught the sunlight like living flame. He could still hear the distant chime of temple bells, the steady cadence of monks’ chants woven into the pulse of the city. The streets had once been alive with music, with the scent of incense curling through the air, with the unending rhythm of merchants calling out their wares. Chandrapura had been a land of ambition and strength, where warriors were raised on stories of ancient kings and gods who shaped the stars themselves.

He remembered his mother.

Her hands—calloused from years of wielding a blade—had been impossibly gentle when she held him as a child. He remembered the way she guided his stance, correcting his grip with quiet patience and unmistakable pride.

“A warrior does not hesitate,” she had told him. “Hesitation is a blade turned against yourself.”

He had believed her. He had wanted nothing more than to make her proud.

But memory had teeth.

And it always led him back to the moment that pride was taken from him.

He remembered the fire. The screams. The sky choking black with smoke as the Riftwalkers descended. He remembered the sound of chains tightening around the throats of those too weak to resist. He remembered the moment his mother—the strongest person he had ever known—was forced to her knees beneath the weight of her captors.

And he remembered running.

He remembered leaving her behind.

Seth’s fists tightened against his knees, his jaw locking as if he could force the memory back into silence. But it lingered, as it always did—like a wound that refused to close.

Erik remembered something different.

The lush green expanse of Lakshmivana Forest. The way sunlight filtered through the leaves, painting the world in warm gold. The scent of ripening fruit drifting lazily through the air. The soft hum of bees. The gentle rhythm of life untouched by war.

He remembered running barefoot through the fields, chasing after his siblings, their laughter rising like birdsong through the trees.

He remembered his father’s voice—warm, steady, unwavering—as he spoke to them beside the fire.

“The wind is always moving,” his father had said. “That is its strength. It cannot be chained. It cannot be broken. And you, my son—you are the wind.”

But even the wind could be caged.

Erik could still hear the crack of the whip—sharp, merciless, cutting through the silence of that final day. He could still feel the cold weight of iron locking around his neck, the burn of metal biting into his skin. He had been only a child—too small to fight, too powerless to protect those he loved.

He had been torn from his home, dragged away from warmth and laughter, and thrown into a world of chains and darkness.

And now…

he was returning to it.

Chandrapura had not fallen in a single moment.

It had bled.

Slowly. Relentlessly.

Its strength drained by hands that had never belonged to it. Its people taken piece by piece—stolen, sold, broken—until nothing remained but echoes and ruin.

The fire crackled softly, embers shifting in the quiet.

Neither Erik nor Seth spoke.

They did not need to.

The past was a burden they both carried—unyielding, inescapable.

And now, they were walking back into it.

The fire dimmed.

The night deepened.

And somewhere beyond the horizon, Chandrapura waited...

not as a home…

but as a grave.