Chapter 47. To kill a name.

The amber light was still singing when she said it.

“I am Arthure.
Son of Stone.”

The words slipped from her mouth like a prayer,
and for a brief, impossible heartbeat—
the Divide accepted it.
The wind hummed low, the stones trembled gently,
and every glowing bud on her arm flared as if in applause.

Even Ydoc…
almost believed it.

Froosta smiled. Tears in his eyes.

“You did it,” he whispered.
“You really—”

Then the voice came.

It did not come from the air,
nor from the earth,
nor from the stones.

It came from beneath them—
deep and ancient, like the mountain itself was remembering how to speak.

“Leanabh gòrach. Nighean a' gheamhraidh.”
(Foolish child. Daughter of Winter.)

“Dhìochuimhnich thu do bhrògan-snàmh.”
(You forgot your swimming shoes.)

“Uabhar. Buain.”
(Pride. Harvest.)

“Ach cha chuir thu sìol san talamh a-riamh.”
(But you never planted seed in the soil.)

The words reverberate.
They are not angry.
They are weary.
Like an old man scolding softly as he watches a child burn their hand for the first time.

The air turns heavy.
The earth draws breath.

And Vexira—no, Arthure—
freezes.

Her golden arm begins to shiver,
amber cracking under the skin like glass cooling too fast.
The buds shrivel instantly.
The light in them gutters out.

“No,” she breathes.
“No, I— I did it. You saw—!”

The floating stones tremble above her palm.
Their graceful orbit falters—
then collapses.

A snap like a thunderclap cracks the air.

The light dies.

And from her feet upward,
the silver-white of her true flesh returns—fast, furious, erasing the amber glow as if peeling back the illusion layer by layer.

Her name betrayed her.
Her soul obeyed the law that no one had written.

“She’s being pulled back,” Froosta gasps.
“The earth— it’s— it’s rejecting her!”

The stones begin to shake.
Hairline fractures race through the red slab she’d used.
One—two—three—

And then it shatters.
The entire face of it explodes outward in a spray of glimmering shards and dust.
The sound is like breaking bone.
Like something sacred tearing itself apart.

Ydoc barely has time to move.
He shoves Froosta down, wrapping his arms around the small Britter,
the air bursting with light and debris.

The blast stings.
Stone splinters bite into his leg and thigh—
not deep, but enough to leave black smudges of blood through the fabric.
He doesn’t flinch.
He looks back toward the crater.

The wind has stopped.
The song is gone.

The circle of stones stands silent, smoking,
and the one who called herself Arthure is no longer visible in the dust.

The air smells faintly of sap.
Of earth freshly torn open.
And of something bitterly wrong.

        The Winter Nymph Weeps

The dust drifted down in slow, pearled snow,
a hush following it—so complete it seemed even the wind was holding its breath.

When it cleared, she was standing there again.

No amber.
No buds.
No borrowed glow.

Just Vexira.
Her skin once more that delicate, unnatural white—
like ice made flesh.
A silver gash ran down her left cheek, glinting as sap dripped like mercury tears.

She blinked, touched it with a shaky hand, and—
laughed.

“Well! So much for Arthure,” she said, the grin painted wide and defiant.
“Guess I’ll try for Spring next time! Ha!
They like rebirth, don’t they?
Spring is for… new chances.”

Her words tumbled out, all brightness and bravado,
but her voice was quivering, stretched thin like glass about to splinter.

Froosta rose slowly from behind Ydoc, dusted in grit, still trembling.
He didn’t speak.
He just watched her—eyes wide, wet, tail limp behind him.

Ydoc, pulling two small stone shards from his leg, brushed the blood away with a quiet hiss.
Then he turned toward her.

Step by step, he crossed the fractured circle, the ground still faintly warm from her failed summoning.
He stopped before her, kneeled to one side,
and looked up into her bright, unsteady face.

Vexira scoffed, her lips curling even as her hands shook.

“Go on,” she muttered.
“Laugh, Bird Monster. Go ahead. Tell me how stupid I looked.”

But Ydoc didn’t laugh.
He just shook his head once—slowly.
Then said, in that calm, quiet tone that always sounded like the eye of a storm:

“I’m sorry, Vexira.”
“You tried. That’s all the world asks of any of us.”

He glanced at her hands, still trembling with the echoes of magic.

“We’ll practice,” he added softly.
“Next time, we’ll do it together.”

There was no mockery in his face, no cruelty.
Just the warmth of someone who knew what it meant to fail and keep moving anyway.

Vexira stared at him.
Really stared.
Into those black, ink-drowned eyes that didn’t quite belong to any mortal thing.
And all at once,
the mask she wore—
the strong, proud, snide facade—
broke.

Her shoulders caved in.
Her chest hitched.
She clutched at her face, silver sap streaking her fingers,
and sobbed.

Not the dainty cry of embarrassment.
But the raw, feral cry of someone who had finally been seen and couldn’t bear it.

Froosta crept forward slowly, his paws small against the stone, tail curling around her leg.
Ydoc stayed kneeling, head bowed,
a quiet pillar between them both as the sound of her grief filled the stone circle.

                           Where All Names End, and Some Begin Again

Vexira didn’t just cry.
She clung.

Ydoc’s hands were already gentle on her shoulders—
but as she latched onto him, arms tight around his waist, her weight pressed against him like a dying flower trying to root into warmth—
he held her.

Not like a friend.
Not like an awkward bystander.
But like a knight, like a father,
like a Prince who had sworn his life to someone’s broken heart.

He folded his arms around her,
one palm cradling the back of her neck, the other resting gently between her shoulder blades.
No words.
Just pressure.
Just presence.

Her sobs soaked into his shirt, silver sap mixing with red blood from his leg.
And he let it happen.
Like it was the only thing that mattered.

Froosta did not speak.

He simply looked.

He saw Ydoc—this monochrome shadow of a man who had once danced in madness and whispered to fog—
now cradling a weeping girl like he’d done it his whole life.

And Froosta saw it all.
Not just the moment.
But what it meant.

His head turned slowly…
to the final standing stone of the circle.

Something was happening.

The rock had begun to hum—
a soft, corrupted violet glow etching along its face like veins under skin.
Cracks opened, but no sound escaped them.

The magic wasn’t violent.
It was… heavy.
Like a memory pressing its weight into the world.

Froosta’s wide eyes followed the slow formation of the stone’s engraving.

And what appeared—
what the Divide itself chose to show—
stole the words from his heart.

Upon the violet-stained surface,
a giant Raven-like beast had been carved into the stone.

Wings folded back like ancient tapestries.
Thick feathers curling around a crown of stars,
woven with constellations—twinkling slightly, as if real.

Its head was bowed in sorrow.
Not rage. Not fury.
But something more sacred.

In its massive clawed arms it held a woman—
a Holokon woman, delicate and draped in veil-like silks.
She was weeping,
her mate's dead body limp in her lap.

The Raven had placed one claw gently on the fallen man’s chest—
a gesture not of violence,
but of blessing.

To send the soul onward.

Not devour.
Not consume.
But guide.

And for the first time, Froosta understood—

Why the Holokons still told stories of Stella Cronas.
Why they feared him…
and why they loved him.

He wasn’t just a monster.
He wasn’t even just a hero.
He was grief made flesh.
Grief that never left.
Grief that carried others when they couldn’t stand.

Ydoc didn’t even notice the stone changing.

He only looked down at the girl in his arms,
who had needed someone for far too long.
And now—at last—
had found someone who stayed.