Ilahash didn't speak for three days.
The forest around him had dimmed—less like a living thing and more like a ghost of itself. Trees that once leaned toward him now stood still. The river, once warm with glimmering magic, passed him by without sparkle. Even the wind had fallen quiet.
Hope was gone, and the space she left behind in him ached like a missing limb.
He sat alone beneath the firelight tree—the one she had once called their "silent sun." His fingers trailed the carved initials they'd etched into the bark, now softening with time and weather. H + I. Her laugh had echoed around that tree once. Now, silence echoed louder.
He tried to write her. Each time he pressed his pen to the page, the words caught in his chest. What could he say? I miss you felt too small. Come back felt selfish. And I'm falling apart felt too true.
The letter stayed unwritten.
Elsewhere, Amara watched from the shadows. Not because she wanted to see him like this, but because she had to. Her magic was tied to his now. She could feel his pain like a pulse in her own body.
"She wasn't just your heart," she murmured into the trees. "She was your magic, too."
But he didn't hear her. His thoughts were folded into the memory of the last time Hope had looked at him, eyes brimming but sure. Her love hadn't ended—it had only stepped away. But that didn't make the hollow in his chest any smaller.
He wandered, sometimes. Down paths they used to walk, hoping the wind might carry her scent. Once, he found a single silver ribbon tied to a branch. He didn't know if she had left it, or if the forest was playing tricks on him.
Still, he kept it.
And still, he waited.
One morning, he woke to a dream—her voice calling out softly, as if across water.
Don't forget me.
He whispered into the dream, "Never."
But when he opened his eyes, only light remained.
The hollow inside him pulsed gently—constant and quiet, like a bruise beneath the skin. He carried it wherever he went. And strangely, that ache began to shape him. It made him gentler with the trees. Kinder to the stars.
Hope's absence hurt, but her memory became something sacred—something he tended like a flame.
And in that hollow place, something began to grow.
It wasn't healing. Not yet.
But maybe… it was the beginning of it.