Chapter 44. Of Warm Sun, My Softest Memories.

The circle opens wider here.
Not just a stonehedge anymore—but a living training ground.
The leaves crunch like syllables beneath your boots.
The wind carries old knowledge, crisp and confident.

Dozens of smooth, carved stones are planted upright in the soft earth, like totems and tablets all at once.
Each stone holds a lesson—etched in winding pictograph and colored grooves.

There’s no need for elders here.
The stones teach themselves.

Spaced between the stones are wide stumps and hay beds where young druids, nymphs, and spirits gather in little classes—some meditating, some shaping soft branches with magic, others testing out tiny spells that let mushrooms bloom in their footprints.

Over near the moss stones, a lesson is in progress.

Young furbolg children, mossy-haired and wide-eyed, are gathered around a particularly large patch of glowing lichen.
Their instructor—oh, what a sight:

A Holokon of towering grace, shaped like a feathered serpent.
Her long, shimmering body curls protectively around the class, like a soft mother dragon with tea-stained breath.

She wears a giant wide-brimmed hat, far too floppy and covered in wild flowers, hanging moss, and red ribbons.
Two massive wings—each feather more leaf than plume—fold gently behind her like tents made of color.

And though she’s clearly busy, her gaze drifts often.

Toward Ydoc.

Each time, she smiles with her many teeth—softly.
Her tail wiggles like a delighted cat trying to remain professional.

She knows him.
   -Or maybe—she just remembers him in that peculiar Holokon way.-
     -As if all dreams are shared property, and she’s found a good one today.-

Just off the central circle, beneath a hanging tree with bark that glows like fire-ember, there rests a solitary stone.

Not massive—but proud.
Not glowing—but inviting.

Dark, earthy green, veined in quiet cracks.
Across its face is a sunflower sigil, but not yellow—

A deep red sunflower, petals extended like flame, the center made of a carved spiral rune.

Vexira gasps so hard it’s almost theatrical.

“THERE it is!” she says, dramatically pointing. “I saw this once in a broken dream when I was a teen! I KNEW IT EXISTED!”

Froosta’s eyes widen.
“Oh wow… that’s an Old Autumn Sigil—before the peace treaty with the mists. I didn’t know any survived…”

Ydoc is quiet, still glancing toward the instructor and her excited tail.

But the stone beckons.

There are instructions carved into the edges in curving leaf-script.
Not spells. Not warnings.
But… choices. Poses. Movements. Words to say aloud.

It is not just a stone.

It is an invitation.

..... 
....
                                               ==--A Name Remembered--==  

The sun in the Realm of Fall is strange.
It drapes itself like warm silk—never too harsh, never too dim.
Here, Ydoc forgets the coldness of The Divide’s darker paths.
He forgets the bruises behind eyes.
He forgets, for just a second, the ache that lives in his spine like an unspoken tune.

Froosta and Vexira are up ahead now, huddled over the red sunflower stone.
Their coats puff around them like mischievous clouds, giggling with excitement.
Vexira’s tail has already started flicking with impatience.

But Ydoc—
Ydoc lingers.

The sun hits him square in the face, warm and golden.
He closes his eyes.

There is a hum in the air—not music, not wind, but something internal.
Like holding your breath beneath a piano's open lid.
Like the moment before someone calls your name.

He breathes in deep.

The light turns amber behind his eyelids.
A sweetness.
Something burnt orange and sad in the back of his throat.

He hears her.

“Can I try the stone first?”

A gentle voice.
Bright.
Confident.

He smiles—softly, without thought.
The chuckle rises from him naturally, with no guard, no filter.

“Oh of course, Lucy.”

His own voice answers, airy and warm.

But the moment cracks—
like eggshells under the foot.

His eyes snap open.

In front of him stands Vexira, her hand almost reaching for his.

Froosta is looking back, smiling that soft, confused smile he always gives when Ydoc seems to drift off again.

The stone is glowing faintly.
The sun is real.
The moment… was not.

And in the distance, where he swore Edwards was—

Nothing.
Just the long wing of the Holokon teacher, curling in the breeze.

The echo of Lucy’s name lingers in the corners of his mind.
So do her hands. Her laugh.
The way she always called him first.
Always pulled him in.
Always—

Gone.

Ydoc doesn’t speak, but his smile falters only for a breath.
He nods gently at Vexira, gesturing for her to go on.

Inside his chest?
A soft burning.

Not from sorrow.
Not yet.
But a promise—

Find Lucy.
Find the truth.
And this time—bring them home.

The light is softer here.
Filtered through vines that curl downward from spirit-carved trees, the air smells faintly of salt and clay.

The second stone waits ahead----

Ydoc lingers near the edge of the second stone, that blue one etched with yellow-tipped arrows frozen in an eternal arc. The color itself seems alive—richer than the sky, deeper than any sea. And yet, the base of the stone is barren, as if something monstrous once lay there. The earth has never healed. No grass dares to grow.

Froosta, a soft voice to the right, reads the markings aloud in fragments. Vexira adds her guesses, her excitement like a candle flame flickering brighter with every new symbol uncovered. The pattern is clear: two smaller arrows, one great lance—two allies, one target.

This is more than art. This is history. It’s a record of one of the great Color Wars—a time when more than one hue of power aligned, not to dominate, but to survive.

It tells of a brief alliance. Color joined color—Yellow, Azure, Crimson perhaps—to slay something only whispered about now: the Dragon of Tomorrow.

Ydoc breathes, slowly.

That name alone pulls at the string inside his ribs, that deep piano string vibrating with dread.

The Dragon of Tomorrow was no beast of fire or wings—it was time itself. Living time. A colossal, knowing creature that moved events forward, ushering destinies with a flick of its tail. When the Dragon was slain, the Divide lost its future.

No ticking clock. No fated path. Time became disjointed, folding over itself like cracked glass, each shard a different moment. For spirits—creatures of memory, dream, and repetition—this was both tragedy and liberation. Their endless present became bearable. Their pain, looped and ritualized, softened. They stopped aging. They stopped dying.

They began to endure.

And yet...

Ydoc feels the ache at the edges of this truth. The Dragon’s death made it easier for some. But what about him? What about the dreams that whisper with names like Lucy and Edwards? What about that memory—just moments ago—of warm bubblegum breath and a kiss from a creature long gone?

The absence of a “tomorrow” traps him. He’s not a spirit, not fully. He should remember, but doesn’t. He should have healed, but hasn’t. The world without time keeps letting him forget.

He places a hand on the stained ground where the grass has refused to grow.

The soil is warm, soft from sun, but haunted. Something terrible happened here. And something worse may still live beneath.

Vexira waves from the next stone, laughing about how her scales shimmer in its light. Froosta is explaining a fable about color being born from silence—nonsense, maybe. Or holy truth. Or both.

Ydoc watches them, two strange souls wrapped in curiosity and wonder.

Then he glances back at the monument again.

The arrows still rise. The dragon is still missing. The future is still gone.

He breathes through the ache and follows his friends.

(pan Left to a Holokon and Her Terrible, Perfect Class)

Just a few stone paths away,
behind a leafy curtain of glowing vines and chirping yellow-beaked spirits,
the world becomes… chaotic.

Not dangerous.
Just ......children....

The Holokon teacher—a slithering marvel of scale and feather,
wrapped in a woven brown shawl, with wildflowers blooming out of the brim of her massive hat—
has been trying to teach moss safety for nearly ten minutes now.

“Now this one, the soft green with little gold specks? That’ll draw heat from a fever like nothing else.
And this purpled clover one can help… what, Tobias?”

A hand shoots up.
A very loud, very squishy-faced Furbolg child, with moss-stained teeth and no indoor voice:

“IS THAT MYSTERY MONOCHROME GUY YOUR BOYFRIEND??”

There is a gasp.
Followed by a tsunami of tiny voices:

“OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH—”
“You LIKE him!!”
“I SAW YOU WIGGLE YOUR TAIL!!”
“You SMIIIIILED~!”

The Holokon teacher recoils like she’d just been struck by lightning.
A massive grin of way-too-many-teeth bursts through her floral composure—
which she immediately tries to slap a wing over.
Her tail flutters like it’s caught in a romantic earthquake.

“Ah-ah-ah!! Quiet now! QUIET—you scoundrels! I— I am FAR too busy and wise and wise- smelling to have a boyfriend!”

More giggles.

She huffs. Looks away dramatically, playing up the moment like a blushing opera serpent.

“But also… I could never be that lucky...”

(Awwwwww.)

One small child—serious, arms crossed—asks:

“Then what is he?”

The teacher pauses.

Her tone shifts.
Softer. A little mysterious. A bit proud.

“He is… the Stella Crona.”

Silence.

Then:

“...The whatnow?”
“Is that a sandwich?”
“Does that mean spooky ghost prince?”
“Can I be a stella cronut?”

The teacher laughs—a real laugh, deep and fluttery and bright like ringing chimes.

“No, my little spores—
It means star crown.
It is a title reserved for those whose lives have… cracked the sky.
Changed the story.
The kind of person whose soul is still on fire even after they've lost their name.”

“...I like cronuts,” one kid mutters.

“Me too,” she says, dramatically swooning back against a stone.

And somewhere—unaware of the giggling chaos his existence causes—
Ydoc stares at the spiral-ground beneath the blue stone,
feeling something ancient ache inside his ribs.