The road ahead was long, but Kael had stopped measuring time in miles or days. Now, he measured it in silences the ones that stretched between words, between glances, between breaths. In how heavy his pack felt after a few hours of walking. In how often he caught himself staring at Liora when he thought she wouldn't notice. She always noticed.
They had left the city behind at sunrise, moving quietly through the woods that edged the ruin's border. The trees were denser here, the air thick with the scent of moss and distant rain. Every step away from the walls felt like a step toward something less certain, but maybe that was the point.
Kael adjusted the strap of his satchel, breaking the hush. "You ever think about what we carry?" he asked. "I don't mean the gear. I mean all of it the guilt, the names, the places we can't return to."
Liora didn't answer right away. She paused beneath a tree, letting her fingers brush the bark like it was some old friend. When she did speak, her voice was soft but sure. "Every day. I think about the things I've done. The people I've failed. I think about the weight of surviving when others didn't. But I also think that… maybe carrying it means it mattered."
Kael nodded, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. "That's what scares me. That it mattered and I still couldn't change anything. What good is power or skill if it only buys you regret?"
"You changed more than you think," she said. "You made sure I didn't fall apart when I could've. That matters. And maybe that's the trick. We look for meaning in these big moments, these grand choices… but maybe the quiet things we do for each other are what last."
They walked on in silence for a while, not because there was nothing left to say, but because some truths sit better in the air between two people than in speech.
Later, they reached a shallow stream. Kael knelt and splashed cool water on his face, then looked up at the overcast sky. "Feels like a storm's coming."
"Let it come," Liora said from behind him. "We've walked through worse. And we're still walking."
He smiled at that not because it solved anything, but because it was honest. They were still walking. Still carrying. Still choosing, every day, to keep going.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.