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:: You're wandering through the palace on your way home :: :: and thinking about whether to stop for tea, when your :: :: eyes are drawn to a slight flutter. Turning to your :: :: left, you notice a small journal resting on a bench. :: :: It lays open, pages rustling in a slight breeze. :: :: Curious, you wander over and begin to read... I never saw her go. No message, no goodbye - just absence. She vanished like the dusk: without hurry or sound, with only the quiet afterward to mark where she'd been. One day she was there, and then she wasn't. And though I told myself she'd return as she always had before, I think some part of me already knew. The stillness around her place felt too deliberate. Like something had been folded shut. Like one of her notes. But then, that silence was always part of her. Her letter came seven days later. Folded once, slipped into a cloth pouch of dried root tea I'd given her weeks before, saying she ought to try stillness in a cup, even if it did taste like dirt and ghosts. She'd smirked, pocketed it, and said nothing. That was her way - humor at the edges, silence at the core. Now the pouch held only evidence of her absence. No seal, no embellishment. The parchment smelled faintly of smoke and old ink. Her name wasn't signed, but it was hers. I'd know her hand anywhere. I read it on the floor, knees aching, bowl still warm beside me. The fog hadn't yet cleared from my last reading, but maybe it didn't need to. Kier, It's done. The work I began all those years ago is finished. The last thread has been pulled, and the net came together exactly as planned. Every strand pulled, every name exposed, every mask peeled back. I left him with nothing. No coin, no reputation, no friends brave enough to stand beside him. He is ruined. The ones he leaned on have turned their backs, the ones he loved are dust, and the threads he pulled to bind others unraveled when I cut the right ones. I didn't kill him. Death would be a mercy. I wanted him to feel the weight of everything I took. The hollow echo of silence where influence used to be, the doorways closed to him forever, the eyes that once sought his approval now filled with disgust - or worse, contempt. I won't return. There's nothing here worth returning to. That part of my life is ash. The name, the purpose, the drive - it held me long enough to finish the work, and now it doesn't fit anymore. I'm not sure what comes next, and I don't need to be. I just know it won't happen here. You once said that letting go doesn't have to mean losing. I never listened well, but I heard you. That will have to be enough. I've given your name to my associates so that if any favors are owed to me, they'll be yours instead. As for me, I'll be where no one knows my name. That's the only peace I'll allow myself. The ink was dry and even. No smudges and no hesitation in the strokes. I could see she'd written it without pause. I don't need visions to know she did exactly what she said. Ashalia was never one to leave a loose thread. Every piece of this had been measured, weighed, and laid out long before the final collapse. I know her. If there's blood on her hands, it's dry now. If there's regret, she buried it beneath stone. I sat with the note for a long time, knees pressed to the cool floor, with the scent of water and scorched herbs curling upward from the bowl beside me. I didn't cry. There's a kind of grief that settles too deep for that. I just watched the fog thin and knew it wouldn't speak her name again. I don't know what she's building now, or who she'll be when it's done. But I know this: Ashalia Saevryn doesn't return to ruins. She leaves them. Some people chase peace, Ashalia simply left the war. | |