The next morning broke with a reluctant greyness. The sky above Elessyr held its clouds low, thick with unshed rain, casting a hush over the waking town. Ravine and Arana walked in silence, the paths now more familiar, the air less cold but heavier still.
They stopped before a house at the edge of the stone path—one with shuttered windows and vines curling over its walls, as though the earth was trying to reclaim it.
"This was his home," Arana said. "Tovin's."
Ravine turned to her. "You never told me you knew where it was."
"I wasn't sure it was still here." She took a step forward. "And I didn't know if you were ready."
The gate squeaked open. The garden was wild now, full of tangled herbs and dying flowers. The door didn't resist when Arana pushed it.
Inside, the house was a museum of ghosts.
There were no signs of life—no recent dusting, no footprints in the fine layer of ash-like grime on the wooden floor. But there was music. Not playing, but lingering. Sheet music scattered on a table, notes etched into the sides of a bookshelf, a broken violin tucked behind a faded curtain.
Ravine reached out and ran her hand across a dusty shelf. "He lived here alone?"
Arana didn't answer at first. "After he left his family, yes. He said the walls never judged him. That silence could be kinder than memory."
They wandered from room to room. A window overlooked the edge of a cliff, where fog clung to the forest below. On the windowsill sat a glass jar filled with old guitar picks. Each was painted with different colours, symbols—some worn off entirely.
A drawer revealed a journal. Arana picked it up, but when she opened it, the pages were blank.
"Maybe he stopped writing," she whispered.
"Or maybe he knew no one would read it."
Ravine sat down on a wooden bench near the fireplace. She imagined Tovin here, warming his hands, humming into the silence. Not seeking company, but refusing to be erased.
"It hurts," Ravine said. "Knowing how much he gave, how much he tried… and yet the world still tried to forget him."
Arana knelt by the hearth and lit a small fire. "Sometimes, it's not forgetting that hurts the most. It's being remembered wrongly."
Ravine turned toward her, watching the fire glow against the soft lines of her face. "You speak like you know."
"I do."
Silence settled again.
Arana finally stood and walked over to a narrow door hidden beside the stairs. She opened it slowly, revealing a small room, almost empty—save for a single chair and a faded tapestry on the wall.
The tapestry was embroidered with threads of gold and silver, depicting two figures beneath a tree. One held a lute. The other, a lantern.
Ravine stepped closer. "Is that—?"
"It's older than him," Arana said. "But he found it in the southern archives and brought it here. Said it reminded him of what music could be. A guide. A light."
They stood there a long while.
Outside, the wind picked up, shaking the shutters. A single note—a wind-chime long rusted—sang somewhere on the roof.
Ravine exhaled. "I want to remember him. The way he wanted."
"You already are," Arana said.
As they left the house, Ravine paused at the threshold. She turned back once, eyes tracing the walls, the air, the space where a voice once lived.
She didn't say goodbye.
She didn't have to.
The wind carried it for her.