Kaelen walked through light.
It was everywhere, pressing against him, flowing through him, filling the spaces that had been empty for five years. He could feel it in his chest, in his marks, in the broken piece of his soul that had been eating him alive since Valkara tore it free.
The light did not heal. It did not restore. It simply... showed.
He saw Lyra, standing in the temple of Valtherion, her face young, her eyes bright, her hand in his. She was wearing the white dress she had worn on the day they were married, and there were flowers in her hair, and she was laughing at something he had said.
"You're going to be the death of me, Kaelen," she said. "You and your wars and your gods and your oaths. You're going to break my heart, and you won't even know you've done it until it's too late."
He tried to reach for her, but his hand passed through her like smoke.
"I'm already dead," she said. "You know that. You've always known. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
The light shifted, and he was standing in their home, the one they had shared before the war, before the betrayal, before everything. Elara was there, his daughter, running through the halls, her laughter echoing off the walls. She was six years old, the same age she had been when they killed her, and she was chasing a ball of yarn that Lyra had thrown for her.
"Father!" she called, and her voice was the same, high and clear and full of joy. "Father, catch me!"
He tried to move, tried to run, tried to catch her the way he had never been able to catch her when it mattered. But his feet were rooted to the ground, and she was running away, running toward something he could not see, something that was waiting for her in the darkness.
"You let them take me," she said, and her voice was not a child's voice anymore. It was something older, something that had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. "You let them take me, and you didn't fight. You just stood there, with your sword in your hand and your god in your heart, and you let them burn me alive."
"I didn't know," he said, and his voice was broken, the voice of a man who had been screaming for five years. "I didn't know they were coming. I didn't know—"
"You knew. You always knew. You just didn't want to see. Because if you saw, you would have to do something. And doing something would mean giving up the only thing that mattered to you."
The light shifted again, and he was standing in the throne room of Aeris, the floating city of the Skylords. Valkara was there, her face hidden behind her mask of bronze, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes fixed on him with something that might have been pity.
"You came back," she said. "I knew you would."
"I came to kill you."
"I know. And you will. Eventually. But first, you need to understand. You need to see what I saw. What I've always seen."
She reached out, and her hand was not bronze, not flesh, but something else. Something that shimmered and shifted and changed.
"The world is dying, Kaelen. It has been dying for a thousand years, and the only thing holding it together is us. The Skylords. The pacts. The chains that bind the Aethyr to something that can control it. Take us away, and the world ends. All of it. Everything you've ever loved. Everything you've ever fought for. Everything you've ever sacrificed."
"Then find another way."
"There is no other way. There has never been another way. The only choice is who holds the chains. Who decides what lives and what dies. Who pays the price for keeping the darkness at bay."
She stepped closer, and he could see her face now, beneath the mask. She was old, older than anything he had ever known, her skin like parchment, her eyes like stars, her mouth a thin line of sorrow.
"I chose you because you were strong. Because you were willing to do what needed to be done. Because you understood that some things are more important than one life, one family, one city. You understood that the world needs people who can make the hard choices. The impossible choices."
"You made me into a monster."
"I made you into what you needed to be. What the world needed you to be. And I will make you into it again, if I have to. Because the world is still dying, Kaelen. And the only one who can save it is the one who is willing to let it burn."
The light faded, and Kaelen was standing in darkness, alone, with the weight of everything he had done pressing down on him.
And then, from somewhere far away, he heard a voice.
His son's voice.
"Father. Come back. Please. Come back."