Reunion

“Even the margins can be rewritten. But only if two hands hold the pen.”
— August Denier

The city dwindled behind us, its broken walls shrinking into the haze until they were only a jagged outline against the plain. The road narrowed, pressed on either side by pale trees that rose like bones, their branches brittle and stripped bare. The air felt lighter out here, though not in a way that brought ease. It was more like the weight had shifted from stone to breath. It was a relief to leave something heavier behind.

Ashen walked close at my side, quiet. His presence was steady, grounding, but he didn’t press me with words. He knew better. He must have seen it in my face, that I was carrying something heavier than the silence between us.

I kept my hand on the book, though I didn’t open it. It wasn’t the fog or the Proofreaders that gnawed at me now. It was the absence. Lina hadn’t spoken since the council. No whisper, no quarrel, not even the faintest stirring against my ribs. At first I’d told myself it was a relief. But now, with every step down the narrowing causeway, the quiet started to feel less like abandonment and more like waiting.

I stopped suddenly, the words spilling out of me before I could think better of them. “You’re not gone, are you?”

The trees creaked softly in the still air. Ashen glanced at me, but didn’t interrupt. He just kept walking, letting the question hang.

For a long moment there was nothing. Just the scrape of my boots on the stones, the whisper of brittle branches overhead. Then, faint, hesitant, as though she feared even being heard, her voice stirred. The words slid through me like a shiver, fragile and unsure, but real.

Her voice was quiet, almost apologetic. “I don’t know if you want me to be.”

I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, letting the sound of her wash over me. I had missed it more than I cared to admit. “Of course I do,” I whispered. “But you’ve been gone. Empty. Like you didn’t want to come back.”

There was a pause, long enough that I thought she might slip into silence again. But then it broke, soft at first, then sharper.

“I’m tired, Elyne. Tired of being the ghost of every mistake. Of being nothing but the warning you whisper to yourself when you’re afraid of becoming me. Do you know what it feels like to live as a cautionary tale?” Her voice trembled. “I’m not afraid of being erased. I’m afraid of being remembered only as failure incarnate.”

Her words hollowed me out. I had wanted her voice gone, but now, hearing the raw edges of it, I understood the cost of her silence.

I pressed my palm against the book at my hip, the scar burning faintly beneath it. “You think I don’t understand? I’ve been afraid of you since the first word you spoke in my head. Afraid that letting you in meant surrendering myself. That I’d vanish into you. That my freedom would be just another cage.”

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of rain though the sky above was still dry. Ashen kept walking ahead of us, giving me space to speak to the one only I could hear.

“But I see it now,” I said. My throat was tight, but I forced the words out. “Freedom without connection is just another kind of silence. I’ve been clutching it so hard I didn’t realize it was hollow.”

Lina’s presence stirred more strongly, no longer a faint breath but a pulse against my ribs. Hesitant, but alive. “Then what are we?” she asked, her voice thin but searching. “If not author and character. If not jailer and ghost.”

I let the silence stretch a moment before I answered. “We’ll write together. But not one over the other. If there’s a page left, we share the ink.”

She didn’t argue. Instead of fighting me, she yielded, and that shook me more than any of her anger ever had.

Ashen hadn’t said a word while I spoke to her. He had walked a step ahead, shoulders squared, gaze scanning the road the way a soldier always does. But when the silence between Lina and me settled, he slowed and looked back.

“You two,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “You don’t sound like writer and written anymore. You sound like co-creators.”

The words landed heavier than I expected. For the first time since I’d woken in this broken world, I felt Lina steady inside me. Not pressing, not retreating. Just there. Present. Balanced.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and rested my hand on the book at my side. The scar in my palm didn’t burn this time. It hummed, a low vibration, like a chord finally in tune.

Ahead, the road climbed a gentle rise, and at the crest, just visible through the thinning haze, a pale glow trembled against the horizon. A tower, or maybe a gate, the outline blurred with distance, but unmistakable in its promise.

The Master Draft was waiting.