The days stretched long between Elessyr and Delnira.
They walked.
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in light conversation. The terrain shifted beneath their feet—from whispering meadows to tangled brush, from quiet hills to old, broken roads where moss had overtaken stone. The wind here felt gentler, but colder. The sun hung low for days at a time, as though the sky itself held its breath.
"How many days left, do you think?" Ravine asked one morning as they crossed a stone bridge half-eaten by ivy.
Arana glanced up, measuring distance in her mind. "Two weeks, give or take. We're halfway there."
Ravine nodded. Her body ached, but she didn't complain. Her thoughts were full. Too full.
They stayed in roadside inns when they could. Tiny places, run by quiet innkeepers who looked at them with cautious eyes but asked no questions. They would eat in silence, or with the soft clatter of cutlery, and sleep to the hum of wind pressing against old shutters.
One night, at a highpoint in the trail, Ravine stood outside the inn while Arana rested. The stars above Delnira's border shimmered faintly, like they had been spilled from a shattered mirror.
She didn't know why her chest felt heavier with each passing mile. It wasn't fear. It wasn't even sorrow. It was the knowledge that every step forward meant a door behind her was closing. Some memories were starting to stitch themselves into her skin. She felt them in her hands. In her spine.
"You alright?" Arana asked quietly from behind, wrapping a shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Ravine didn't turn. "Yeah. Just... counting stars."
"There are too many to count."
"I know. That's why I'm still here."
Arana didn't press further.
Delnira arrived not with ceremony, but with a whisper. A quiet transition. The colour of the soil shifted. The smell of the air changed—sharp, crisp, with a strange metallic sweetness. The trees grew closer together. Taller. And the roads? Narrower. As though asking travellers to tread carefully.
At the border's edge, they paused.
Ravine looked down the path. "This is it?"
Arana nodded. "Delnira. The last region."
No banners. No border stones. Only the changing of the world underfoot. A new rhythm to the wind.
And somewhere ahead—a past Ravine had not yet met.
They stepped forward.
And the trees welcomed them with silence.