Chapter 48. The Parting of Wings.

Where Winter Holds Her Own

She was still trembling.
Even as Ydoc cradled her, Vexira—once bold, once viciously proud—
was now no more than a fragile girl, her voice shrunk to a whisper.

“Froosta…”

“Take me home.”

The words were barely shaped.
More breath than sound.
Like the whimper of a lost child in snow.

Froosta had stepped forward without thinking,
already fishing into his cloak for bandages—
but at those words…
he froze.

His eyes met hers.
Then flicked toward Ydoc.
Then down… to the broken stone. The dust.

And something inside him shivered.

“O-oh… um…”
His breath left his lips in a small white puff. “That… that means I won’t…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.
But his eyes spoke it:

I won’t get to go to the party with you.
I might not see you again.

The Divide could be unkind.
Paths split.
Days passed differently between realms.
Some promises drifted like pollen—sweet, forgotten, impossible to catch again.

But Froosta’s kindness was bottomless.

And in the end, his heart chose sorrow over selfishness.

“Ydoc…” he said gently, turning his face up to him.
“Get a Druid to help you reach the party, okay? They know the safe ways. I—um. I’ll get her home.”

He stepped forward again, brushing a bit of Vexira’s silver-dappled hair back from her wound.
His fingers, gloved in soft white furs, worked quickly and quietly to bandage her.
One side of her face was wrapped in cool cloth.
The other still clung to faint traces of tears.

Froosta offered her a small smile.

“The Spring will still be waiting when you’re ready…”

And with a slow, deliberate movement,
he hoisted her up—an arm around her waist, supporting her,
half-dragging, half-carrying.

She leaned into him, dazed.

They walked away without fanfare.
No grand departure.
No trumpet of fate.
Just the sound of snow crunching softly beneath their feet—
as Froosta led her away into the quiet of the Winter Realm.

Ydoc stood in the circle alone.

The Divide had gone still again.
The stones hummed low, distant.

He exhaled.

His long black coat—once dry and crisp—was now streaked in silver dew,
the marks of Vexira’s grief and Froosta’s worry.
He didn’t brush them off.

Instead… he simply sat down.
There, by the shattered stone.
Among the moss and fragments of what could have been.
....
      He tried to speak.

Something small—just a word, just good‑bye.

But by the time the thought reached his throat, the world had already shut its door.
The sound of their steps had folded into distance; the snow had taken back its silence.
Even the trees had gone still—as if embarrassed to have seen him left behind.

So he sighed.
A long, hollow thing.
It rolled out of him and turned white in the air,
then drifted upward until it vanished between the leaning stones.

He walked a little, half‑limping from the splinters in his leg,
and looked around the ring.

Where moments ago there had been laughter,
there was now only absence.
The dust from the broken red stone had settled,
the air grown stale,
the scent of sap already fading.

The benches of moss looked abandoned,
scattered with small tokens left by someone else’s day:
a cracked quill,
a bundle of dried clover tied in string,
a few tiny footprints that led nowhere.

And in the grass,
a flower—just one—
its petals torn away in that childish ritual of hope.

“Love me…”
“Love me not.”
“Love me…”
“Not.”

Only the stem remained, bent toward him like a finger pointing out a fact he’d been avoiding.

He lowered himself beside it, the cold seeping through his coat,
and rested his elbows on his knees.
The ground was damp; his palms picked up bits of dirt.

The sound of the Divide was distant again.
No chatter.
No Froosta humming off‑key.
No Vexira’s sharp voice cutting through the quiet.

Just the faint hum of the stonehedge itself,
the kind of tone that lives between heartbeats.

It made the world feel too large.
Too wide to belong to one person.
Too quiet for two.

He looked toward the far tree line,
where their figures had vanished.
Snow was falling again—thin flakes that didn’t bother to melt when they touched his skin.

He rubbed the back of his neck and whispered, mostly to himself:

“Didn’t even… say good‑bye.”

There was no answer.
Only the wind, carrying nothing.

So he stayed seated a little longer,
watching his own breath rise and fade,
until even that small proof of living began to feel like an intrusion.

He was, again—
and perhaps had always been—

alone.

Not the lonely of empty rooms.
The lonely of echoes,
when the laughter is still in your ears but the mouths that made it are gone.

And somewhere beneath the earth,
in the hum of the buried stones,
the name he’d forgotten began to stir again—
a faint pulse of ink under skin,
the first reminder that even solitude has its watchers.

Snow drifted sideways, thin as ash.
The silence had become heavy, not the peaceful kind—
the other kind,
the kind that presses on the ears until every heartbeat sounds too loud.

Ydoc sat hunched forward on the stone bench, hands clasped,
watching the breath leave him in faint, broken clouds.
Each exhale looked smaller than the last.
He didn’t shiver. He just let the cold crawl in.

It was quieter inside his head than it was in the world.
And yet… not empty.
Something moved there.
Softly. Purposefully.

A slither against thought, like wet paper sliding across glass.
It didn’t have a shape; it didn’t need one.
It simply was.
And the more he tried not to think of it,
the clearer its presence became.

A memory struck him sideways—
Vexira’s arm, amber and shining.
Her laughter.
Then her scream.
If he had just—

“If I’d said no,” he muttered.
“If I’d offered to take her myself…”

The words bled into the air,
but no one was there to hear them.

Except the thing that lived between his thoughts.

And it answered.

“And you caused all of it.”

The voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t even sound cruel—
just factual,
a sentence passed by something too tired to be angry anymore.

Ydoc’s fingers dug into his knees.
He stared at the ground until the shapes blurred.
The cold had bitten through the fabric now,
a damp ache rising up his thighs and into his ribs.

Maybe it’s true.
Maybe Froosta only smiles because he pities me.
Maybe she got hurt because I stayed still.
Maybe everything I touch ends up broken.

Another slow, patient slither in the skull.
A thought not his own,
curling close, whispering where comfort should have been.

He drew a hand up to his temple, pressed hard as if he could crush the sound.
His breathing hitched once, then steadied,
but the steadiness was only surface.

The Divide’s hum had changed pitch.
Or maybe it was his ears.
The world felt a little tilted,
the air too thick, the color too pale.

He shut his eyes,
leaned back against the cold stone,
and let the sadness have him—
not as punishment,
but as gravity.

A necessary weight.
Something familiar.

For a long while he didn’t move.
And the unseen thing in his head didn’t either.
They simply sat together,
in the same body,
listening to the snow fall.

Ydoc sat on the stone bench still,
but his shoulders weren’t as sharp with guilt now.
They sank,
not as if he had been stabbed,
but as if the blade had been there all along,
and he’d simply learned to sit with it.

“It started with her shouting about cobblestone names…”

He spoke aloud, to no one.
But maybe the trees heard.
Or maybe the bench.
Or maybe the Divide itself, always listening when no one else does.

He let out a breath—
long, slow, quiet at the edges.

“Daughter of Pies…”
he muttered, a hint of a smirk twitching at his lips.

A pause.
Then a soft, helpless chuckle.
The kind people make when they miss something too recent to be called a memory,
but too distant to be called a moment.

The wind carried it away.

He remembered Froosta’s hands.
Too cold for someone so warm.
Napkin in hand.
Dabbing his face gently,
scolding with whispers,
as if embarrassed to show kindness too loudly.

“You got goo on you again.”

Ydoc let out a breath that sounded like a laugh, but wasn’t.
It faded.
Froosta’s face remained in his mind—
those big eyes,
that soft tremble of lip when trying to be brave.
The sheer amount of courage it took to walk Vexira home,
even if it meant missing everything.

“He’s too good.”
“Too kind.”

He hoped…
gods, he hoped they’d be okay.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

The sky answered.

A bead of moisture slid from the pine above,
struck a bare spot on the bench beside him.
He blinked slowly—
watched another one fall.
Then another.

The wind stirred.
Not harsh.
Not yet.

But it brought with it a feeling—
like someone brushing fingers through hair before they speak the bad news.

Above, the sky was turning.
Not black.
Not gray.
But low.
Heavy.

Clouds pressing in from the distance like slow smoke,
like silk dragging across the world’s scalp.
The air felt static,
like a held breath too long in the chest.

Callio’s Rain…
The real storm is here.

And like always,
the Divide reflected it.

The colors around him dimmed.
Not gone.
But dulled.
Like looking through wet glass.
Even the distant birdsong was quieter.

Because emotions had changed.
And the forest,
always feeling,
was feeling him.

He did not smile again.
But he did not cry either.
He simply sat.
Let it all drip in.
Every memory.
Every breath.
Every fear he had about what would happen next.

Because the storm had begun.
And storms—
like grief—
don’t ask permission.