I held her gently, carefully—like she was made of something breakable, not just bone and blood and sorrow. My arms wrapped around her with a softness I didn't know I was capable of, the way you hold something sacred. I said nothing. There wasn't anything worth saying.

Her body trembled against mine, but she didn't pull away. The funeral pyre behind us—Elanith's pyre—still glowed faintly, casting long, flickering shadows across the brittle walls of frost and forgotten books. It was our only fire. That, and the warmth of her body pressed against mine, her grief bleeding through layers of resolve she no longer had the strength to hold.

It took only a few minutes for the mask to crack completely. Then came the wailing cries. Real ones. Raw and keening, the kind that came from a place far beneath speech. From a wound too deep to see.

It was hard.

Very hard.

Did I know Fallias? Not truly. We weren't childhood friends or trusted companions forged through a dozen missions. But in these last few hours, she had bled beside me, cried before me, and revealed more of herself than most do in years. She wasn't just clever—she was brilliant. She wasn't just brave—she had chosen purpose over survival, again and again.

And she was beautiful.

Even now, her tears reflected the hearthlight, refracting like gemstones across her pale cheeks. Some of them froze before they reached her jaw, hanging like crystals from her chin. Her face, gaunt from exhaustion and quiet duty, was made no less striking by grief. Her stained-glass eyes shimmered with mourning, and in that shimmer, I saw fire and frost meet without breaking her.

Were we friends?

Not yet.

But we were something. Something close. Tragedy and survival forge connections faster than peace ever could. In a way, this felt like the most honest moment either of us had lived in weeks.

The girl in my arms—because that's how I saw her now, not as a scholar or a dragon or an archivist, but simply a girl—had chosen to carry the weight of a dying mythos. Chosen to be the final bulwark between extinction and remembrance. She had been willing to stay behind in a frozen tomb if it meant even a sliver of story would survive.

That kind of strength… that kind of heart…

It humbled me.

Did I have a purpose like hers? In many ways, yes. I had direction, I had obligations—gods knew I had expectations. But conviction? No. Not like Fallias. Not that quiet, burning certainty that turned frozen halls into her battlefield. I could wear a thousand faces, put on whatever mask the day required—general, heir, scholar, pretender. But her? She was only ever her.

She didn't hide. Not from grief, not from duty, not from me.

Did I want to be her savior? Yes. In the deep, selfish way a person wants to protect something radiant and raw. But could I save her from this?

No.

I wasn't a god. I wasn't a hero.

I couldn't rewind the clock.

Time Manipulation—real time manipulation—is one of the rarest and most volatile Artes known. Even William Constant, the prodigy who stunned all Three Thrones at his Walker evaluation and earned a triple-S classification, couldn't do more than flirt with the edges of time. A mere minute was the most he could rewind, and even then, it left him hemorrhaging blood and consciousness. Stopping time was slightly more viable, but only in short bursts and only for limited things—each additional variable added to his domain pressed against his skull like a vice. And speeding up his personal field? That was the easiest trick. But acceleration and temporal self-haste weren't the same as true time control.

He was a miracle. I was not.

I wasn't that hero.

I couldn't bring back the dead. I couldn't undo whatever cruelty had etched itself into Fallias's soul or carved grief into her ribs like a second spine.

Looking down at her in my arms, trembling and silent now, I felt it in every fiber of my being:

My title was a façade.

My classification was a crown for a play-king.

I wasn't strong. Not in the ways that mattered. I had power, yes. But strength? The kind that endures when your story burns? The kind that keeps standing after everyone else has collapsed?

Fallias had that. Not me.

My fingers brushed against something smooth and fabric-soft against my side—something that had clung to me through frost and fire, undamaged.

The sash.

Her sash.

Celeste's Sash.

I paused, thumb running slowly along its celestial weave. I remembered her laugh, the way she danced barefoot through rain. I remembered the way her story ended—if it ended at all.

Celeste…

How I loved her. How I missed her.

Did she exist? I think she did. Not just in my memory. Not just in a play, or a page, or a story someone else wrote. She existed in every heartbeat I spent chasing wonder. She existed in my will to keep going when I had no path.

But right now, I couldn't chase a reflection. I couldn't fall into longing for something behind glass when someone else—someone living, breathing, hurting—was right in front of me.

Fallias was real. Here. Shivering in my arms.

And in that moment, Celeste wasn't the story I had to follow. She was the compass that reminded me of who I was. Who I chose to be.

Thanks, I whispered into the quiet, offering the thought to whatever realm or page she drifted in now.

I'm no hero.

And I don't need to be.

Because sometimes, it's not the hero that carries the flame forward.

Light swirled around it.

Around me.

It wasn't slow. It wasn't gentle. It was ravenous. A tidal pull that had no respect for whether I was ready, no interest in whether I wanted it. Like frost catching fire, it surged upward through my fingers, through the cloth of the sash, and poured itself into me.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Was it being absorbed? Devoured?

I didn't know.

I didn't want to know.

I didn't want to. But I couldn't stop it.

Not this time.

The Library of the Last Night—the entire frozen hall of endless shelves and unread stories—was shivering with starlight and sound. The walls no longer whispered. They sang. The snow, even the falling specks of it, refracted each burst of brightness with crystalline beauty. It should have been peaceful. Transcendent.

But all I could feel was pressure. Light pressing into the hollows of my bones, fire behind my eyes, words blooming where no breath had gone.

Fallias stood beside me. I think she spoke. She might've mouthed a word, reached for me. But I couldn't hear her. Couldn't hear anything—

Except for her.

That voice.

Hers.

Soft as wind chimes in a quiet garden. As real as the first warmth after a long winter.

Alexander…

I froze. My body, my mind, my soul responded to the sound of my name spoken like that—like a lullaby stitched into moonlight.

If you are hearing this… you finally found out something about yourself.

The voice curled through me like silk, like fire, like memory.

You strive to be the heroes of legends. You chase their silhouettes across the snow, hoping one day to stand among them. But you lack their strength. That's not where your strength lies.

I couldn't breathe. Not from shock. Not from pain. From truth.

You are compassionate. You are kind. You are, above all… amazing.

The tears fell before I noticed them. Hot streaks on frozen skin. A contradiction, just like her. Just like me.

I want you to take this. One last vestige. A final gift. Not from the Library, not from your title. From me. From what's left of my echo, sealed inside the sash I wore the day I met you. My Arte once called forth beauty, form, and reflection—so I hid this sliver in that cloth, waiting for the moment you were ready.

And then silence.

A silence that filled everything.

Not emptiness—but presence. Like the silence that comes before a symphony. The held breath before a story's first line.

Then it began.

A song.

Brilliant, golden, and stitched with meaning. Strings. Wind. Choral voices. Each note unfurling like a flower under moonlight.

The ice beneath our feet cracked, not from pressure—but from heat. Each bar of music defied the cold. The entire section of the library around us began to thaw. Lights ignited in the distance, illuminating books thought long lost. Ice sculptures of forgotten myths melted into color, forming new stories from old sorrow.

And the world…

Changed.

A ballroom bloomed into being.

It didn't replace the library—it simply unfolded within it. Light danced on the frost-covered chandeliers, transforming icicles into hanging crystals. Where frost once choked out warmth, now gold filigree spiraled across walls and archways. The scent of ancient pages gave way to lilac, wine, and ash.

Fallias gasped. Her breath caught in her throat as the snowfall around us shimmered into petals—no longer snow, but drifting sakura blossoms, made of light and memory. Her hand found mine without thinking, her other clutching the last ember of flame she kept for warmth.

Then I felt it.

The shift.

I looked down. My outfit—once the practical robes and traveler's garb I'd long gotten used to—was now noble. Courtly. Styled like the romantic princes of long-lost theater plays. Velvet midnight hues, embroidered with celestial constellations, and lined in gold thread. My shoes clicked gently on the now-polished marble floor. My gloves—white with trailing lines of ink across the wrist—felt custom-made to fit only me.

I exhaled, and light spiraled in the air with each breath.

And the music rose.

A waltz. The kind played when two fated partners meet at the end of their story.

Fallias blinked at me. Her robes remained, but light played around her too, crowning her head in a delicate halo of stars. Her hair danced like it was underwater. She looked… otherworldly.

"Are you doing this?" she asked, voice barely a whisper.

"No," I said honestly. "She is."

Fallias paused. But she didn't argue.

Because she felt it too.

I felt her again, the whisper fading like a last kiss on the wind.

If you ever find a way to bring me to your world, I promise… I'll follow you wherever you go.

Celeste.

You beautiful, foolish dreamer.

I closed my eyes, breathed in the warmth she left behind, and let it settle in my heart.

"Are you alright?" Fallias asked.

"I think so," I said.

But that wasn't the whole truth.

I wasn't sure if I would ever be the same.

Not after a gift like that.

Not after her.

She didn't need to say goodbye. She wasn't gone. She was now… part of me. Her dream, her strength, her presence—it burned in me, stitched into the ink of my Arte and the blood in my veins.

I would not waste it.

A pulse echoed through the floor—a tremor, soft, but growing.

Fallias tensed.

"We're not alone," she whispered.

I looked up.

Across the ballroom—a presence. Cold. Ancient. Wreathed in black velvet ice.

A figure entered.

Antlers scraped the ceiling.

Eyes like black stars.

The Black Stag.

Winter incarnate.

It stepped onto the mirrored ballroom floor, its hooves cracking glass that wasn't there, each step silencing more of the thaw.

The waltz faltered.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

I stepped forward, slowly, planting my foot with certainty. My breath was no longer visible. The cold couldn't touch me.

Fallias stared.

"Are you insane?" she hissed. "That's him. That's the end of winter."

I smiled.

"No. That's the keeper of winter."

Fallias blinked.

"You're not going to fight it, are you?"

I shook my head.

The lights swirled once more, my new Arte wrapping itself around me like a second skin.

"No," I said, stepping into the center of the ballroom.

I raised my hand.

"I'm going to invite it to dance."

Fallias gasped. "Alexander—"

But it was too late.

The song resumed.

Slow. Somber. Majestic.

I bowed to the Black Stag.

It did not blink.

It lowered its head in return.

We were no longer hunter and hunted.

We were partners.

And I understood then—this was never about destroying winter. It was never about killing the cold.

It was about changing the story.

Rewriting the ending.

I exhaled, took one more step onto the mirrored floor and smiled.

"Let's dance, Cailleach."

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