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The air is sticky with humidity and the feverish joy of victory as they stumble through the streets of Sumeru City.

There are lanterns and banners at every turn, the whole city drunk on the defeat of tyranny. Children run by with imported fireworks in hand, leaving a trail of smoke and sparks behind them. There’s the clamor of music and festivities that Al-Haitham would usually loathe. Tonight, though, there are more important things to dwell on than the grating sounds of plucked strings and joyful shouting.

Kaveh’s clinging to Al-Haitham’s arm, face flushed and teeth flashing in an elated smile, glowing as he basks in their success. “We did it!” He crows, tugging at Al-Haitham, who staggers at the weight. Kaveh’s always like this when drunk, touchy and open as his endless anxiety abates for once and loosens his inhibitions, and his favorite person to drape himself over like some overgrown cat is always Al-Haitham.

Their little group makes their way up the stone walkways that wrap around the Divine Tree, watching the sights of Sumeru City grow smaller and smaller below them until they reach a platform with a balustrade enveloped in creeping vines. Al-Haitham’s barely taken the final step when Kaveh impatiently pulls him over to the edge, planting his hands on the railing and leaning over it so heavily Al-Haitham worries he might tip over.

Tighnari laughs alongside them, and Al-Haitham sees Cyno smile faintly, the buzz of alcohol lightening all their moods. Even Al-Haitham can feel his lips quirk upwards.

It’s been a decade of traveling, stopping to help everyone they could and vanquishing every demon they could find until they reached the Tsaritsa, and they’ve done what the world could only dream of. The Tsaritsa and Fatui have fallen. Kaveh’s party has won and lived to tell the tale. The dead have been avenged. Teyvat is free. Kaveh’s name will go down in history as the hero who led them to victory. It is everything they could have wanted and more.

“Oh,” Kaveh says, tone breathy and stunned. His eyes are wide, and the scarlet nearly glows in the warm lamplight, molten glass fresh from the heat of a furnace. “You’re smiling.” He reaches up to poke at Al-Haitham’s face, but Al-Haitham pulls away so the clumsy fingers only brush against his cheek, feather-light.

“And you’re drunk,” he huffs without any harshness. His cheek almost itches where Kaveh touched him. Maybe he’s drunk, too.

“Yeah,” Kaveh sighs, expression unreadable. Al-Haitham would ask about it, maybe, but something catches his eye before he does.

He points out into the distance, and Kaveh’s gaze blearily follows the line of his finger to the horizon as lights streak across the sky. “The Era Meteors,” Al-Haitham says, “A semi-centennial meteor shower known for its great beauty.”

“I’ve only read about them,” Tighnari says faintly. “They’re gorgeous.”

Cyno steps up beside him, and Al-Haitham distantly notes how he slips a hand into Tighnari’s and Tighnari’s tail curls around Cyno’s waist. “I’m sure they must be even more stunning in the desert,” Cyno notes.

Al-Haitham hums in consideration. “You’re right. I know a better place to watch them from than the capital, deep in the darkness of the Great Red Sands. The light pollution here ruins the view.” Kaveh scoffs at the last bit, but Al-Haitham continues, eyes fixed on the meteor shower. “I’ll take you all there, when I return.”

“When you return?” Kaveh parrots, sounding puzzled as he cranes his neck to look back at Al-Haitham.

Al-Haitham blinks down at Kaveh rather owlishly — he hadn’t shared his plans with the others, he realizes. “I’m setting off for Inazuma as soon as I can get everything in order. I have some supplies I have to replenish before that, and my clothes and staff could use some work. After that, I’ll set sail for Inazuma to study its magics now that the borders have opened, and I’ll continue on my travels from there.”

Al-Haitham likes stability, and he has always been a child of Sumeru above all else, but the pursuit of knowledge knows no borders. Inazuma had isolated itself for centuries against Fatui encroachment and the onslaught of demons, and while Al-Haitham could probably bypass the great storm and its barriers with enough effort, he has never been particularly fond of straining himself anyways. Now that the borders are open, though, it’s a far easier matter to take a boat there and travel the archipelago, taking the five decades between this meteor shower and the next to learn about all the ways Inazuma had developed during its isolation.

“For… for fifty years?” Kaveh breathes, blankly watching Al-Haitham’s nod. Al-Haitham isn’t sure why it’s so surprising. He isn’t a human limited to a few decades of life to spend selectively — elves dedicate themselves to things wholeheartedly, for as long as they take.

“About a hundred, actually. I’ll just come back for the meteor shower.”

There’s a look on Kaveh’s face that Al-Haitham can’t decipher as he watches the apple of Kaveh’s throat bob in a swallow. It makes something unpleasant twist in Al-Haitham’s stomach, and he tears his gaze away and fixes it back on the horizon.

“Alone?” Kaveh adds. He sounds small.

“Who would I travel with?”

For a moment, no one responds, and Al-Haitham is struck by the feeling that he’s missing something painfully obvious.

“Why don’t you take on an apprentice?” Tighnari suggests, breaking the silence. His gaze flits back and forth across Al-Haitham’s face, as if looking for something.

Al-Haitham scoffs. “There’d be no point to it. They would die long before I’d finish teaching them.”

“It isn’t about that,” Cyno interjects, brow furrowed. “It’s about companionship. Traveling is better with friends.”

“I prefer my own company.”

Kaveh snorts before Cyno can respond, but his exasperation melts into a wistful sigh. “At least this was wonderful while it lasted. Even you can’t say otherwise.”

“It was,” Al-Haitham admits. “It’s a shame it was so short.”

“Short?” Kaveh says, disbelieving. “That was an entire decade!”

Al-Haitham rolls his eyes. “You forget that I’ve lived for centuries, Kaveh. I’m an elf. Ten years is a tenth of a tenth of the time I have lived, much like one year out of a human’s hundred, and it could yet be a hundredth of the time I continue living. A decade means little.” He can’t expect Kaveh to understand what it’s like, to look back upon his life and reflect on an entire millennium and beyond that. Kaveh, who puts so much importance in all of the little things and burns himself out for anything, would never understand how small things look after so much time and how little they ultimately matter. When one has lived a thousand years, people enter and leave one’s life as quickly as they come, a single page in a tome of a thousand still being written to this day.

“A year is a long time, still,” Kaveh says softly. “I would still be glad to have spent a single year with you. We all would have.” Al-Haitham can’t tell if it’s Kaveh’s unceasingly generous earnestness or the alcohol talking. It doesn’t matter much, either way. He hums noncommittally, eyes tracing the trail of a particularly bright meteor along its course across the sky.

“While you’re gone,” Kaveh continues, “I’ll return to the Akademiya, to Kshahrewar, and be an architect like my mother was. I’m going to build a palace, Al-Haitham. I’m going to make Sumeru beautiful. And you’ll come see it when you’re back. I’ll take you there, and you’ll see it,” he tells Al-Haitham boldly, as if it’s fact. Kaveh glows with confidence, raising his chin and setting back his shoulders as best he can from where he is sprawled over the railing. Al-Haitham only hums.

“We’ll meet again in fifty years, then,” Cyno muses. “I’ll look forward to it.” Tighnari makes a noise that sounds halfway between agreement and objection — perhaps both at the same time — with a flick of his ears.

Amongst it all, Kaveh laughs. It’s bright and unrestrained and bordering on hysteria as he shuts his eyes and throws his head back. He won’t be able to watch the meteors, laughing like that, Al-Haitham thinks. “What’s so funny?” he asks warily. “Have you finally lost it?”

Kaveh wipes his eyes. “You wouldn’t get it, Al-Haitham. You’re still as dense as always.” Al-Haitham opens his mouth to object, but Kaveh presses his hand over it. “None of that. Hush now and watch the pretty lights.” Al-Haitham blinks in surprise. Something warm curls in his chest.

Kaveh lowers his hand and they watch the meteor shower in silence before Kaveh speaks again. “I’ll look forward to it. Watching the next meteor shower. Make sure it really is a pretty place. Not that I think you’re capable of recognizing beauty even if it slapped you in the face.”

art by @kanoyachi on tumblr

Fifty years isn’t all that much time for Al-Haitham.

Upon his return to Sumeru, though, he is once again reminded of how great a span of time it is for humans.

Port Ormos has changed greatly since he last left it. He knew that intuitively, of course, having heard the news of its restoration and refurbishing by word of mouth and in the Fontanian newspapers that had begun circulating in Inazuma. The Steambird had become quite popular in the archipelago.

It has always been one thing to read about something, however, and an entirely different matter to see it with one’s own eyes.

The first change is the lighthouse. When Al-Haitham had departed from Sumeru half a century ago on a boat headed out from Port Ormos, Pharos Lighthouse had been caving under the weight of its age and on its last legs. The tiles on the roof were half gone and the walls were worn and stained, suffering from the scarcity brought by a war waged longer than any mortal could remember.

What Al-Haitham sees on the horizon now is not the lighthouse of then.

Pharos Lighthouse shines in the midday sun, roof tiles a brilliant turquoise and stone exterior clean and pale and bright. When they get closer, Al-Haitham can make out elegant stone carvings and intricate mosaics. Past the lighthouse, the rest of Port Ormos can be seen in all its new glory — an arching bridge of twisting wood, a large elevator, docks made of wood that is no longer rotting. There are dozens upon dozens of carts and small shops on streets filled with vendors and customers alike.

The city itself seems to have come to life in a way it hadn’t before, and everywhere Al-Haitham looks, he can see his touch.

Al-Haitham had read about his work in the Steambird, the same way he read about Cyno’s promotion to General Mahamatra and Tighnari’s position as Chief Officer of the Forest Rangers. Still, he doesn’t need any written confirmation to see it — it is Kaveh in every nook and cranny, in every spire and window. It is Kaveh in the teal of the clay, the floral details and intricate workmanship, the consideration for the surrounding area and the way every change seems like a love letter to Port Ormos and its people. Kaveh had not lied, then, that night at Razan Garden, when he swore to become a great architect.

Al-Haitham feels himself smile.

He had written of his return in advance, if only to make the process of meeting up easier. The letter had been addressed to Kaveh, who in turn should have notified Tighnari and Cyno to make plans.

The process of docking and unboarding is irritatingly loud, and Al-Haitham is admittedly relieved once it’s over. His eyes rake over the crowd, looking for a familiar head of blond hair, a trademark teal feather, crimson eyes that glitter in the sunlight. Kaveh has always been tall, and he’s always had a magnetic presence.

“Al-Haitham!”

The voice is raspier than Al-Haitham is used to, strained at the high volume, but it is unmistakable. Al-Haitham turns his head to look and freezes. Blinks. Processes, just for a moment, the faults in his expectations.

Port Ormos is not the only thing to have changed in the half-century since Al-Haitham was in Sumeru. It should not surprise Al-Haitham to see that Kaveh has changed as well — humans are like that, ephemeral and ever-changing over the span of mere weeks and months and years. Decades are thus quite significant to them. And yet.

“Kaveh,” Al-Haitham says, making his way through the crowd with as little physical contact and shoving as possible, which is unfortunately a rather large amount of it. He narrowly avoids knocking his staff into a few someones’ heads several times.

“Al-Haitham,” Kaveh repeats, both voice and body smaller with age. He has a cane now, and he leans on it heavily with a curve to his back reminiscent of the way he would curl up to pore over maps and plans and his own sketches, poor posture made permanent over the years. His hair is no longer gold and instead fully white, and his skin has become wrinkled and spotted. Mehrak still hovers at his side, displaying a lime-green smile as she beeps in greeting. Her casing is slightly scuffed, but nowhere near as worn as Al-Haitham remembers it being at the end of their quest. Kaveh must have replaced it.

“You really do still look the same,” Kaveh says in an indecipherable tone.

“I am an elf — that’s simply our nature. Or have you already forgotten?”

Kaveh waves him off. “Old people are forgetful, and I’m old now, Al-Haitham, if you haven’t noticed. And I thought my eyesight was going. Anyways, Cyno and Tighnari will wait for us in Sumeru City. They were caught up with some matters in Gandharva Ville. We’ll be meeting them at the Puspa Café for brunch two days from now in the late morning. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten how you’re allergic to waking up early.” He turns and begins hobbling towards the market, and Al-Haitham moves to catch up. It isn’t very hard.

“Where are we going?”

“To get lunch,” Kaveh answers. “I’ve arranged for a cart to take us west to Caravan Ribat.”

Al-Haitham glances at Kaveh in surprise. “A cart?” Kaveh had never been fond of traveling by vehicle. It was faster, sure, but Kaveh preferred traveling by foot so he could more easily help those he met along the way.

They stopped frequently in nearly every village to see what needed doing. They cleared up monster problems, fixed roofs, and accepted pittances in exchange — a handful of coins, packages of dried and salted meats, a worn grimoire presented to Al-Haitham with a shaky smile.

Kaveh laughs, and although his voice has changed greatly, his laugh barely has. It’s a bright sound, fond and hopeful despite the tinge of good-natured self-deprecation. “I’d rather save what’s left of my knees for our trek out into the desert. What do you want for lunch? How do you feel about samosas? Or do you prefer Inazuman cuisine now?”

“Samosas are fine. They’ve started selling them in Inazuma, but they’re not the same.” When Al-Haitham first traveled to Inazuma, the food stalls only sold local foods. He’s never been one to care for what he’s eating beyond practical concerns, but he was still pleased when trade and relations expanded between Inazuma and other nations. It wasn’t long before foreign food became commonplace in cities and commercial hubs, even if it never tasted quite as Al-Haitham remembered it.

“I can’t imagine they are. But don’t worry, I know where to get the best ones here in Port Ormos.”

“You do seem at home here.” Al-Haitham hears it in the confidence of Kaveh’s tone, sees it in the way he navigates the crowded maze-like market with familiarity. Multiple people wave at him — vendors and customers alike — and he is the center of attention wherever they go. They call him Hero Kaveh, mostly, despite the half-century since Kaveh’s party saved Teyvat. Perhaps, though, saving a people is not always about vanquishing their enemy. “You designed the renovations.”

“You noticed?” Kaveh peers at him curiously before turning to wave off a woman’s offer of free fruit with a kind word.

“I read about it,” Al-Haitham admits. He had not usually sought out news of Kaveh, but he had often listened or read anything that mentioned his name. “But I would have known anyways when I saw the city myself.”

“You still remember my work, then?” Kaveh seems surprised, for some reason.

Al-Haitham scoffs. “How could I not? It was all you’d get up to whenever we stopped to rest, to the point that you weren’t doing any resting.” Kaveh has always been prone to sleeplessness. “You listened to me.”

“You sound surprised — you thought I wouldn’t? Or that I couldn’t?”

“I thought that you would forget. Humans tend to do that. But I didn’t doubt that you were capable of it.” It had just been an off-handed comment that started it, when Al-Haitham had glanced at Kaveh’s sketch of the ruins of Pharos Lighthouse and spoken of the Sumeru of old. He hadn’t expected Kaveh to take it to heart, combining his own tastes and modern styles with nearly forgotten hints of the past. It’s only right that it would be Kaveh to remember such things and bring them to life in his architecture.

Kaveh stares at him wordlessly before waving him over to a stall. The vendor is a middle-aged woman with a warm smile who addresses Kaveh by name and springs into action, preparing their food all while interrogating Kaveh about his headaches, and whether his knees are feeling any better, and who this handsome young man is and why is he so sullen. Kaveh laughs with her, fending off her questioning with kind comments and good-natured teasing.

For a moment, it feels like things are the way they were before — Kaveh leaning over a stall or walking down the street, making pleasant conversation with city folk or townspeople or travelers alike, a smile on his face wide enough to reach his eyes.

At least there are always some things that stay the same.

They meet Cyno and Tighnari in Caravan Ribat, under the steadfast guard of the Wall of Samiel. The air is humid in its great shadow, heavy with moisture and sticky on Al-Haitham’s skin. Once they cross the wall, though, they’ll be at the mercy of the blistering sunlight and dry heat.

At his side, Kaveh has adjusted his clothing accordingly. He’s forgone his characteristic extravagance for something light in both weight and color. The plain robes seem odd on him.

“I never thought I’d see you choose practicality over aesthetics,” Al-Haitham comments.

Kaveh doesn’t take the bait. He seems to have matured in the years they’ve spent apart, the hair-trigger temper he always had around Al-Haitham mellowing to self-assured playfulness. “It’s just part of being old.” Kaveh shrugs. “Now put those young eyes of yours to good use and help me look for Cyno and Tighnari.”

“I’m significantly older than you are,” Al-Haitham says with a raise of one eyebrow. Kaveh remains unimpressed.

Finding Cyno and Tighnari doesn’t prove too difficult. After a few minutes of looking around, Al-Haitham hears someone call his name, then Kaveh’s. They both turn to see Tighnari waving at them with Cyno at his side.

“Tighnari!” Kaveh shouts, and they both hurry to pull each other into a tight hug. It’s weird to see Tighnari be the larger of the two, given how much taller Kaveh had always been. The years have been kinder to Tighnari, than they have been to Kaveh, it seems. Cyno himself stands taller than the both of them. He’s certainly aged, but the strength with which he carries himself displays the preternatural powers of Hermanubis running through his veins.

“Al-Haitham,” Cyno greets with a nod. Tighnari pulls away from Kaveh to peer up at him.

“By the Greater Lord,” Tighnari comments, “you really do look exactly the same. You haven’t even aged a day!”

“I wish I could say the same,” Al-Haitham returns drily. Tighnari laughs even as Kaveh clicks his tongue in reprimand.

They turn to Al-Hairham. “So where are you taking us?” Tighnari questions, his ears tilting to one side as he cocks his head.

Al-Haitham clears his throat. “The Upper Setekh, overlooking the Valley of Dahri. The sky is clear there. The view will be unobstructed.”

“And what of the ruin guardian?” It’s Kaveh who asks, unexpectedly. He would have expected the question from Cyno, maybe, given his heritage and time as the General Mahamatra, which must have sent him after many criminals who fled into the desert. He didn’t expect it from Kaveh, and though he had read of Kaveh’s work in Aaru Village, knowing the dangers of somewhere as isolated as the Valley of Dahri was a different story.

“I didn’t know you were so familiar with the depths of the Great Red Sands,” Al-Haitham comments.

Kaveh laughs. “A lot has happened in fifty years. I’m full of surprises.” Al-Haitham watches Cyno and Tighnari share a glance.

“How will we be traveling?” Cyno asks.

Al-Haitham raises an eyebrow. “By foot, of course. What else did you have in mind?”

Despite the other’s initial amused and indignant protests (including Kaveh’s proclamation of ‘elder abuse’), the trip goes on rather uneventfully, even if Al-Haitham ends up carrying most of their supplies. The travel is slow, but there are no sandstorms to stall their progress or block the sight of the sky.

They fill the desert’s silence with chatter. Tighnari talks about whatever trouble is going on in the forest now and tells ridiculous stories of the featherbrained nitwits that start trouble in it. Kaveh speaks of projects he’s had, ranging from pleasant to infuriatingly ludicrous, and of the people he’s met along the way. He speaks of shopkeepers and dancers and artists and fishmongers and mercenaries in a list as endless as his altruism. Even Cyno chimes in with an anecdote or two about his life as General Mahamatra, with an added good deal of extraneous information about Genius Invocation TCG.

Every so often, they turn to Al-Haitham expectantly, and he finds himself speaking of his own travels. Some of the stories are from before they all met, but most of them are of Al-Haitham’s travels in Inazuma. He tells them of the culture — the food, the clothing, the architecture. He tells them of Inazuma’s own magics and the way they developed separately from Teyvat’s mainland.

It’s like it used to be, almost, except Al-Haitham is probably the only one of them without some sort of arthritis in his joints.

The ruin guardian is as colossal as ever, filling the entire width of the valley with its hulking metal torso, its single golden eye trained on the barren valley before it. They stop some meters from the cliff’s edge to take in the sight.

“It really is massive,” Kaveh marvels. “Can you believe that they made this so long ago? Something so grand? And yet so terrible that it still attacks anything in the valley to this day? A war machine on such a great scale?” He purses his lips and sighs. “I can’t imagine being this dedicated to killing other people.”

Tighnari and Cyno hum agreement. Al-Haitham doesn’t take his eyes off the machine.

“Not people,” he murmurs. “They were for fighting the monsters and demons. Like the field tillers were. The people of Khaenri’ah rarely fought other humans.”

“The field tillers?” Tighnari questions. Al-Haitham turns to see the others all staring at him.

“You call them ruin guards,” he clarifies. “The Khaenri’ans called them field tillers. They weren’t always indiscriminately violent.” There’s little more to say. What words can you use to describe an entire lost civilization? Al-Haitham is old enough that the books written in the times he witnessed have fallen apart. Not even written records always survive this long. What could he say now that would not be forgotten in a few decades?

Kaveh looks back at the guardian. “And what were these called, then?”

“Wardens. Mechanical wardens.”

“Will you tell me — us — about them?” Kaveh says, shuffling closer to him. “We’ve got lots of time to kill anyways. It won’t be evening for hours.”

The rest of the day goes on that way, even though Al-Haitham initially objects. He tells them of the wardens, of the field tillers, of the drakes. He tells them of the people of Khaenri’ah with stars in their eyes and technology so advanced it was practically its own form of magic — not unlike the people of Ay-Khanoum, he notes, gesturing towards Mehrak and her odd combination of technology and magic.

Eventually it’s evening and the sky goes dark. They fall silent in anticipation, sprawled over a cloth they spread out on the sand.

“The stars really are so much brighter here,” Kaveh says breathlessly. Al-Haitham can only see the shape of him now that the only source of light is the moon and the stars.

No one speaks during the meteor shower. It’s different watching it this second time together than the first, somehow. It isn’t just the clearer skies and darker background. It’s true that the colors are so much more vibrant this way, that the streaks are more visible, that the light show is all the more intense, but that isn’t the biggest difference. There’s a sense of finality of it, of conclusion — the weight of expectation lifting and a sort of calm acceptance bearing down.

It is the last time they will watch the Era Meteors together. It is the last time the others will see the Era Meteors at all. When Al-Haitham watches them again in fifty years, they will not be there to watch them with him.

When the last of the shooting stars falls, Kaveh heaves himself onto his side with a groan to face Al-Haitham.

“They really are more beautiful here,” he says with a grin as brilliant as the ones he gave at the heights of his youth. “Thank you.”

The Palace of Alcazarzaray is magnificent, towering over the jungle in brilliant whites and grays and teals. The gardens are extensive, expertly designed and rigorously cared for. Al-Haitham can see Tighnari’s touch and influence all throughout. He can imagine Kaveh and Tighnari leaning over sketchbooks and blueprints, plotting it all out, Kaveh’s favorite blue quill scratching the paper. The arches and spires are elegant and graceful without ostentation. It is the distillation of Kaveh’s tastes and dreams and ideals in stone and wood and clay, his dreams given solid shape and form.

It is beautiful.

It would have been wonderful, once, to have Kaveh guide him through its expanse — courtyards and balconies and long hallways and wide chambers and all.

“How heartless! Not even shedding a tear for his companion at the man’s funeral!”

Tighnari tenses beside Cyno at the whispers, and Cyno raises his hands to Tighnari and Al-Haitham’s shoulders on either side of him. Cyno’s grip is weaker now, and Al-Haitham can see the protrusions of his knucklebones against his skin.

Al-Haitham feels his staff shake in his hands with the strength of his grip. When he glances down, his knuckles are pale with strain. His own hands still look the same as they did five decades ago, when Kaveh was young and still alive, when Kaveh also had the same smooth skin and slender fingers.

He can’t see Kaveh’s hands under the funeral shroud, but he remembers what they were like — gnarled knuckles and bony fingers that came to life when Kaveh spoke. Kaveh always talked with his hands, even when he was old and it ached for him to move them. He had always felt too much for words to ever be enough and it bled into his gestures — broad, sweeping movements of his arms when he was caught up in an idea; frantic, jerking motions of his curling fingers in his anger; the clenching of his fists and full-body tremors of his frustration, of his grief, of his self-loathing. Kaveh had always been the brightest presence in whatever room he was in.

“I think,” Al-Haitham starts, feeling his throat close. He rarely chokes up — it has gone hoarse with strain, or raspy from illness, but he is scarcely truly overcome by emotion. Cyno and Tighnari stare at him with wide, concerned eyes. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

“Al-Haitham,” Tighnari says softly. Cyno glances at him, and they communicate silently in that way they have since they were young, since Kaveh was with them.

“Ten years, and then fifty, and I never bothered to know him.” Al-Haitham takes a sharp breath. He hasn’t cried in decades, and yet his eyes burn with unshed tears. “I should have. I knew he would die eventually. I wasted all that time anyways. And to think I called him the fool.”

Tighnari steps behind him and Cyno to stand at Al-Haitham’s other side. Blankly, Al-Haitham hears him murmur soothing words he barely hears over the clamor of his own mind.

Al-Haitham barely notices when the funeral ends. It feels like an eternity. It goes by in a flash. He is scarcely aware of the burial. He clutches his staff and stands silently, moving only when Tighnari or even Cyno gently grasp his elbow to guide him.

It’s only when Al-Haitham’s back in his inn room that he can breathe again.

He places his staff on the bed and sits down beside it, fingers curling into fists over his knees.

They’ll probably read Kaveh’s will soon. Tomorrow, most likely.

Al-Haitham thinks about staying for it — thinks about hearing Kaveh’s last words. He takes a deep, hissing breath through his teeth.

He leaves that night.

“Hey,” a small voice huffs from behind Al-Haitham. “Are you lost?”

He turns to see a child on the path, figure small and slight enough that she likely isn’t older than seven or eight. Her hair is a mess of green curls and her violet eyes are narrowed slightly in apprehension as she purses her lips. Al-Haitham can see bandages peeking out from under her long sleeves, wrapping around her arms down to her hands as she holds a basket full of herbs.

“Yes,” he admits, because he’s not all that prideful even if Kaveh used to insist he was, and the Avidya Forest has always left him turned around. Here, where the earth and even air are thick with magic, the forest keeps its secrets from all save for those it takes a liking to.

Tighnari, for example, blessed by the Greater Lord, has always been at home in the twisted vines and lush foliage of Avidya. On the other hand, bearing Al-Ahmar’s gift is little help to Cyno once the desert’s sand gives way to verdure. He somehow always became lost in the forest’s depths until Tighnari’s affinity finally rubbed off on him and Avidya acknowledged him as its own. And Avidya has certainly never been fond of Al-Haitham, even all these years later, always adding an extra twist or turn to his paths.

This girl must be like Tighnari, then, touched by the Greater Lord’s gift. Al-Haitham can feel the way the forest’s magic curls around her like fresh, thick mist. “Do you know where I can find the Forest Watcher Tighnari?”

The girl’s expression shutters in an instant. “What do you want with him?” she asks tersely, fingers curling tightly into fists by her side. The sight is amusing.

“I’m his friend. I’ve come to visit,” Al-Haitham answers flatly, schooling his expression into blankness.  

Her brow furrows and she kicks at the ground with her shoe. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? What if you’re lying?”

Al-Haitham hums, tilting his head in consideration. “I suppose you have little proof other than my word,” he confirms. “My name is Al-Haitham — has the Forest Watcher never mentioned me?” The girl’s eyes widen in surprise as they take in his silver hair, his robes, and the twisted metal of his mage’s staff. He can see the gears turning in her head as recognition dawns on her, though her expression is still tainted by mistrust. “If you’d like more proof, I have a letter from him here.” He slips a piece of worn paper out of his bag, unfolding it and holding it out to the girl. “You can see my name at the top, and his signature at the bottom.”

The girl snatches it out of his hands, smoothing out the creases with a deep frown on her face. Al-Haitham watches as her gaze skims over the paper without focusing, lingering the longest on his name at the top and Tighnari’s signature at the bottom. She thumbs at the latter before handing it back seemingly without reading it at all. Al-Haitham carefully sets this observation aside to ask Tighnari about later. “How do I know you didn’t steal this?”

“I suppose you can’t,” Al-Haitham shrugs, “you’ll just have to take my word for it and see if the Forest Watcher recognizes me. It’s not as if he can’t fend for himself.” Al-Haitham has seen Tighnari’s fury first-hand too many times to believe otherwise.

The girl scoffs, lifting her chin until she’s looking down — or up, given her stature — her nose at Al-Haitham. “Fine, I’ll take you there. But if you’re lying, or planning something, or anything, I’ll kill you!” Her steely tone shows her earnestness, and although Al-Haitham doubts her ability to hurt him in any lasting way, he’s sure she would certainly try.

He nods, and they settle into an awkward silence as the girl leads the way. She glances back at him often, suspicious and wary of his presence. Al-Haitham doesn’t hold it against her — he wouldn’t trust himself either, really.

He can feel the way her eyes linger on his mage’s staff especially, eyeing the curves of pale steel and the curling inlays of green resin that sparkle in the dappled sunlight. These looks are less violently distrustful and more innocent in a show of what Al-Haitham assumes is curiosity about magehood and magic.

Kaveh had also looked at Al-Haitham’s staff that way, once. He had cooed over the craftsmanship when they had recently met, delicately running his fingers over the bit that he could reach before Al-Haitham wrenched the staff out of reach. Later, after a battle they barely survived that left Kaveh drowning in self-hatred, Al-Haitham had let Kaveh look the staff over as a desperate attempt to stop the man’s crying. Kaveh had chuckled through his tears, then, red-rimmed eyes wide with wonder as he fawned over the staff, and it had been worth it.

“I could have gotten us all killed, falling for that trap,” Kaveh had muttered, his enunciation stunted by the rather unpleasant stuffiness of his nose. He had been curled up at the roots of a tree when Al-Haitham found him, making himself as small as possible, as if he could tuck himself under its raised, twisting roots if he tried hard enough. It had been odd, to watch a man of above-average height and even greater presence look so small. “It would have been my fault. It was my fault. Your blood would have been on my hands, because I was so stupid. Because I was such a fool.”

“But it wasn’t,” Al-Haitham had said simply, surprising even himself. Kaveh stared up at him disbelievingly. It wasn’t that the words were untrue — they had all escaped relatively unharmed, save for a nasty wound that ran through Cyno’s abdomen. But even that had missed any organs, and Cyno was well on his way to healing with his own superhuman abilities and Tighnari’s aid. It was his job as their vanguard anyways to take the heaviest blows until the rest of the party could finish the enemy off. It was the complete, whole, utter truth that there was no blood on Kaveh’s hands, not in the sense of lives lost or ruined.

No. What surprised Al-Haitham was that he said them at all as opposed to agreeing with Kaveh that he was a fool. The idea was tempting, still, but something about seeing Kaveh so wretched made the words turn to bitter dust in his mouth. “No one died today,” Al-Haitham continues. “And so there’s no blood for your hands to be stained with.”

Kaveh hummed, something hoarse and broken, and it left Al-Haitham unbalanced. He had looked down at his feet, hands fisted around his staff as he listened to Kaveh’s raspy breathing. It only took him a minute to decide, fluidly sweeping the front end of his staff down and stopping just before it struck Kaveh. “You wanted to look at it,” Al-Haitham said haltingly, “before.”

Kaveh had reached for it gingerly, running his fingers down its length before Al-Haitham jostled it a little, towards Kaveh. “Take it,” he said stiffly, and Kaveh had finally wrapped his fingers around it and held it himself.

“It’s beautiful,” Kaveh breathed, and a weight Al-Haitham hadn’t even realized was there lifted from his shoulders.

“Master Tighnari,” the girl calls as they reach a secluded hut hidden within the depths of the forest. “There’s a weird lost guy asking for you!” Charming.

Al-Haitham stills as the door opens and Tighnari steps out, skin deeply wrinkled now and hair nearly completely gray. Even his ears are tinged with silver. There is little left of the casual strength he used to have — the toned muscle of his archers’ arms, his limber athleticism. His gaze is as sharp as ever, though, with piercing, pale eyes that always seem to see right through anything he looks at.

“Al-Haitham,” Tighnari greets, voice hoarser than it used to be. The girl sucks in a breath at the confirmation of Al-Haitham’s identity, head whipping around to stare at him.

“Tighnari,” Al-Haitham returns, “you look old.”

Tighnari laughs at that, sharp canines bared as he grins. “You never change, do you? You haven’t aged a day since we traveled together, much less since I last saw you, and you’re just as blunt a buffoon.” He sighs, then, with an exhale that lets out half his strength and most of his presence. “Come in, come in.”

Al-Haitham dips his head and follows Tighnari inside, the girl scurrying at his heels.

The hut is well-kept and organized, filled with the pungent scent of dried herbs and a sense of warmth despite its cleanliness. A glint of gold catches Al-Haitham’s eye, and he spots a staff made of gnarled, knotted wood with a chunk of amber at the end so large and bright it practically glows. A mage’s staff, Al-Haitham notes curiously, which is a little odd given that neither Tighnari nor Cyno are mages.

“I see you’ve met Collei,” Tighnari says warmly, gesturing towards the girl. “She’s my ward. A little rough around the edges,” he teases with a ruffle of Collei’s hair that she scrunches her nose at, “but very sweet. And hard-working, at that.”

“Is that so?” Al-Haitham says amusedly with a raise of his eyebrows and a coy glance at Collei. “It’s nice to meet you, Collei.” Her cheeks are slightly flushed with embarrassment as she clutches at Tighnari’s robe.

“Collei, mind your manners,” Tighnari chides as he sets to making tea. “I’ve told you about Al-Haitham before.”

Collei mumbles a greeting.

“How old is she?” Al-Haitham asks. “Where did she come from?”

“Nine. Cyno found her,” Tighnari answers over the hiss of boiling water. Al-Haitham frowns. “Why are you here?” he returns, tone just bordering on cutting.

Al-Haitham sighs deeply as Tighnari turns to look at him. “I owe you greatly,” he confesses, “and I wanted to see what I could do for you before you died.” He had already made that mistake once, letting Kaveh waste away without even a visit.

“As straightforward as ever,” Tighnari sighs.

“Where’s Cyno?” It hasn’t been that long since Al-Haitham last saw the both of them — only some years. There’s no way that Cyno’s—

“Traveling. You know how he is. He’s taken an apprentice while away,” Tighnari muses, taking the teapot off the heat. “Collei, could you grab the tea set, please?” He leads Al-Haitham over to sit at a table as Collei hurries over with cups. They all watch silently as Tighnari pours the tea, and Al-Haitham can see Collei fidgeting with a loose string on her cushion.

“Collei,” Tighnari begins as they sip their tea, “once you’re done, why don’t you take your staff and go practice for a while? I have some matters to discuss with Al-Haitham.” Collei nods rapidly, and most of her awkwardness fades as she valiantly attempts to drink her tea at a quick but polite rate.

“She’s a mage?” Al-Haitham asks, addressing Tighnari rather than Collei. He hadn’t noticed her mana at all, past her natural affinity with the forest’s magic. Interesting. In the corner of his eye, he sees Collei bristle in both indignation and anxiety.

“Yes, she’s been learning to use magic for some time,” Tighnari explains with a touch of pride, “and I think she’s gotten quite good at it.” Collei flushes at the praise, putting down her cup, now fully drained of tea.

She gets to her feet so quickly that she wobbles, regaining her balance before Al-Haitham has to reach out a hand to right her. “I— I’ll go practice now,” she stammers before grabbing the staff and hurrying out the door. It’s too large for her, but she seems familiar enough with it.

“Al-Haitham,” Tighnari starts, tugging down an ear to scratch at it the way he always has, “I do have a favor to ask of you.” Al-Haitham frowns. He has an idea of what Tighnari is going to ask him, and he doesn’t want to have to deny Tighnari’s first request.

“Cyno and I are getting old now,” Tighnari says, stating what’s painfully obvious in the deep-set wrinkles etched in his face, in the splashes of silver on his hair and ears, in the stiffness of his body as his joints protest every move. “We won’t be able to care for Collei forever, and she’ll need someone to watch over her once we’re gone.”

“No,” Al-Haitham says immediately.

“I haven’t even asked you,” Tighnari snaps.

“No, I will not take her on as an apprentice,” Al-Haitham repeats. “Ask me for something else.”

“Why not?” Tighnari asks, raising his fingers to rub at his temple in exasperation.

Al-Haitham sighs, lowering his tea. “Most mages’ apprentices die in their first couple of years on the field. With her illness, she’ll be even more susceptible to the dangers of traveling.”

Al-Haitham is not undiscerning — he knows what those bandages around her arms mean. He’s seen many an Eleazar patient in his centuries of existence. “I do not have the desire nor the patience to be worrying about such things.”

“Collei is more resilient than you think,” Tighnari argues, ears pinned. “She lost her parents to demons—”

“And that makes it my responsibility to care for her?” Al-Haitham retorts as he crosses his arms. “Do I look like Kaveh to you?” He tries to say Kaveh’s name the way he used to, with extra stress on the first syllable and added disdain on the second, but it rings hollow.

Tighnari sighs, then, deflating. He looks at Al-Haitham with something that feels unpleasantly like pity. “You’ve always been such a fool, Al-Haitham. Kaveh was always the best of us.” He lowers his gaze to his teacup thoughtfully. “The kindest.”

“Kindness would not change the fact that she would be a burden. The life of a mage is dangerous, even for the highly skilled, not to mention a child. I am powerful, Tighnari, but I am not omnipotent. I am no doctor either, if her illness were to flare up on the road far from anyone else to help. I will not lead your ward to her death.” Al-Haitham will not be responsible for the loss of the girl who is Tighnari and Cyno’s legacy.

Al-Haitham is intimately acquainted with death. He has seen it time and time again. His town, his parents, his grandmother, his master — Al-Haitham watched them all die before him. He has traveled for over a millennium and seen innocents and soldiers become victims of demons and greed and illness. He would rather spare Collei the same fate. He may often be called unfeeling, but he takes no pleasure in watching children die — certainly not his friends’.

“For what it’s worth,” Al-Haitham starts tentatively, “I wish I could grant your request.” It’s as close to an apology as Tighnari will get — Al-Haitham has said and done no wrong. He takes a deep breath. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Tighnari sighs again, leaning back and stretching his neck with a hum. Then he tips back forward, hanging his head, and the sad smile he makes is uncharacteristically resigned. Tighnari has always been a lively presence, loud and brash even during their travels. It was always Tighnari keeping Kaveh’s foolishness in check when the latter refused to listen to Al-Haitham’s reasoning. Tighnari kept all of them in check, really, making sure that they watched their health and didn’t do anything too reckless. Seeing him like this is wrong.

“I’ve come across a text, in my travels, that Cyno and I find ourselves incapable of decoding,” Tighnari explains. Al-Haitham raises an eyebrow, well aware of Cyno’s own skill at interpreting texts. His confusion must show on his face, because Tighnari elaborates. “It’s a grimoire by Pir Kavikavus.”

“I’m familiar with Pir Kavikavus’s work, but what about it could possibly be worth all of your effort?”

“It’s about immortality, Al-Haitham, and I’m just as scared of death as any other mortal man,” Tighnari confesses, and Al-Haitham’s eyes widen. He hadn’t expected that — Tighnari has never been a fool, or the kind to chase false hopes. “My health is failing,” he adds with a bite of his lip, “and I don’t want to leave Cyno and Collei alone. Not yet.”

“You know there’s no magic that can defy death, Tighnari. I never thought you of all people would believe such nonsense.” Tighnari has always been a pillar of rationality surrounded by people caught up in pride — he was the grounded calm to Kaveh’s whirlwind of euphoria and anxiety, the voice of reason to Cyno’s stoicism and unflinching codes of honor. Al-Haitham was never as close to Tighnari as Cyno and Kaveh were, but he had come to value the archer’s presence as well, beyond his skill with a bow and his talent with the Greater Lord’s gifts.

“Do not accuse me of being delusional, Al-Haitham, not when you will never understand what it is to crawl towards your death every day of your life. Not when you’ll outlive us all by centuries,” Tighnari hisses. Al-Haitham could correct him — no one’s life is guaranteed, and while Al-Haitham is immortal in one sense of the word, he is not immune to illness or poisons or blades — but he can tell that it would only anger Tighnari further. Tighnari is right, in a way. Death has always been preventable for Al-Haitham, tangible threats that he can stave off as opposed to the inevitability of mortality. He will never grow old and succumb to age.

“I will do this for you,” Al-Haitham promises solemnly, “in honor of our friendship.”

“Thank you, Al-Haitham,” Tighnari says slowly, seriously, before yawning. “I should get to making dinner.”

Al-Haitham has to hand it to Tighnari — the grimoire is quite a find. The pages are yellowed and brittle with age, and the texts are sufficiently encoded to give even Al-Haitham some difficulty. That, at least, bodes well for the tome’s contents. Mages are vain creatures and prone to hiding even the mildest of secrets, but no one puts this much effort into safeguarding anything frivolous. Al-Haitham can detect at least two layers of enchantment and the use of at least one dead language. It’s no wonder that Cyno and Tighnari couldn’t crack it themselves. With Al-Haitham’s talents, however, it shouldn’t take him more than a few years.

Al-Haitham yawns, stretching his arms over his head as he stands, having looked over the grimoire and documented his preliminary observations on it. He still doesn’t think it has any real insight towards immortality, but — whatever Tighnari wills shall be done.

He makes his way out of the small hut Tighnari had hidden the grimoire in, a tiny but uncluttered workspace with plenty of fresh air and natural light. It’s tucked a little ways off from Tighnari’s hut, close enough for Al-Haitham to find his way but still far enough for him to doubt whether he’s headed in the right direction.

He’s about to head back to Tighnari’s when he hears a cry of frustration in the distance. Al-Haitham isn’t a very nosy person, but he is intrigued, given that it sounded like Collei. He picks his way through the undergrowth carefully, following the sound of rushing water and the traces of an untrained mage’s mana until he reaches a deep, wide gorge. He’s a little surprised at how difficult it is to track her down — even knowing to look for it, her mana was nigh undetectable. If Al-Haitham was a lesser man, he would find it unnerving.

He leans against a tree from which he can see Collei’s slight figure standing at the edge, mage’s staff in hand and aimed at a rock on the other side of the gorge. She takes a deep breath, tensing as energy gathers at the end of her staff and shoots across the gorge. It would have been a good shot for a mage half a decade older than her, arcing halfway over the gorge before dissipating in a shower of sparks. It’s a show of great skill and dedication — such control and power takes time to develop, and Collei is still young, without a master to teach her.

Collei lets out a sharp huff, spinning to stare down Al-Haitham without a hint of surprise on her face. “How long are you just going to watch?” she snaps.

Al-Haitham raises his eyebrows, unfazed. “You knew I was here,” he notes — a question, not a statement.

“It was obvious. I can see your— your—” she gestures wildly at him with her hand.

“Aura?” Al-Haitham supplies.

“That’s what it’s called? It’s so bright!”

“It’s a reflection of the amount of mana something has at its disposal,” he explains. “I’ve been a mage for many years. It’s only natural that you be able to notice mine from a distance. Mana detection is an important skill for mages to have.”

Collei blinks rapidly, face brightening with pride as she realizes her accomplishment, before scrunching her nose. “Why don’t you hide it? Anyone can find you like that!”

“Hide it like you do? You’re hard to find,” Al-Haitham returns.

“Master Tighnari says I’m like a ghost. He says it’s a miracle the General Mahamatra was even able to find me in the first place,” Collei says. Her hidden aura isn’t the only ghostlike thing about her. She carries herself as if to tuck herself away in plain sight, making herself seem smaller. Smaller than she already is, at least — Al-Haitham had been surprised to hear that she was nine given her slight frame, but he supposes that years of illness and hardships will do that. Years in which she had learned how to make herself the smallest possible target.

He nods. “It’s a difficult thing to escape Cyno. Many have tried and failed. However,” he continues, tilting his head to one side in consideration, “hiding your aura becomes a harder task the stronger a mage you become.”

Collei falters at that. “Hard doesn’t mean impossible! I’ll show you.”

“Indeed it doesn’t,” Al-Haitham confirms, feeling his lips curl into a smile for just a moment. “Show me what you were doing before.”

Collei scowls at him, pulling her staff to her chest doubtfully. When Al-Haitham doesn’t show any signs of relenting, she bites her lip and turns back to face the rock on the other side of the gorge. “Master Tighnari says that he’ll believe I can handle myself once I can hit that rock over there.”

“Tighnari is right — this is historically a common task for mages in training. Your success will be a tangible sign of your growth.” Al-Haitham steps over to stand next to her. He remembers doing this himself centuries ago under his master’s tutelage. Practicing attacking with the most bare-bones of attack spells helps grow one’s capacity for it while building control, power, and range. It’s a method that went out of fashion over time as people forgot the importance of drilling the basics and favored flashier methods and spells. “Explain to me the challenge you are facing at present.”

Collei turns to face him, jaw dropped. She stares at him consideringly before she seems to settle on something and turns back to the rock. “When I try to hit something far away, my mana fades before I can reach it. But if I try putting more energy into it…” she trails off.

“It falls apart before you can even fire it,” Al-Haitham finishes. “Tell me. How do you feel about magic?”

She blinks at him in surprise. “It’s… okay, I guess.”

Al-Haitham raises his eyebrows. “Then we are in agreement. Now listen. There are three components to long-range magic.”

“Collei told me you helped her with her training yesterday,” Tighnari says lightly in the middle of preparing breakfast, in that measured tone he uses when he’s trying to lead someone to a point like a dog on a leash.

“I did,” Al-Haitham admits flatly, frowning minutely while he’s busy chopping green chilies for coconut chutney.

Tighnari had woken Al-Haitham up and forcibly recruited him into helping with breakfast, much to Al-Haitham’s chagrin. Freeloaders don’t get to eat in Gandharva Ville, even if they’re lazy elves! Collei, meanwhile, was allowed to sleep in on account of exerting herself yesterday and being a very useful helping hand in the kitchen practically any other day.

“She said you were very helpful,” Tighnari continues, “which is no surprise given your abundance of experience.” Al-Haitham slowly switches to chopping ginger into small cubes.

“What are you getting at?”

Tighnari sighs, setting down the jar of peanuts he had taken out of the cupboard and turning to face Al-Haitham directly. “Why?”

Al-Haitham fixes his gaze on the cutting board and resolutely does not look up at Tighnari. “Must there be a reason beyond simply acting out of kindness?”

Tighnari barks a laugh, leaning on the countertop. “Do you think me a fool, Al-Haitham? You of all people have never acted out of kindness. Now tell me the real reason you took the time out of your day to help Collei as opposed to scampering back to bury your nose in a book or hurry to bed as you usually do?”

“I don’t scamper,” Al-Haitham mutters, but he gives in and glances up at an unimpressed Tighnari. “She’s quite skilled. It surprised me.”

Tighnari hums thoughtfully. “It’s what Kaveh would have done,” he muses, and the words are heavy even as his voice is gentle. Al-Haitham feels the weight of them settle over his shoulders. He had been all too aware of that, when he spoke to Collei.

“He always had a soft spot for children,” Al-Haitham says.

“He did.”

Kaveh’s altruism had always been indiscriminate, but he was rarely as caring and giving as when children were involved. If he met them on the street, he often gave them any sweets or snacks he had on him. If he didn’t have any, or he thought they weren’t enough, or the children weren’t just playful and innocent but clearly hungry and in need, he would empty his purse in a fit of unthinking kindness. Kaveh would tell them stories or buy them meals or teach them lessons, a perfect combination of kind and gentle and silly that endeared him to practically any child.

Al-Haitham had complained, once, that this constant generosity would leave them penniless themselves. Children are our future, Al-Haitham, Kaveh had huffed, and what good is defeating the Tsaritsa if we leave them to suffer in the process?

No, Kaveh would have never left a child in need, even if it was just sparing some hours to help train them.

“Al-Haitham,” Tighnari starts, “will you consider continuing to teach Collei? Just while you’re here. It’s not like you have to take care of her.”

Al-Haitham scoffs at the shameless request before sighing. “It would be a shame to let such talent go to waste without instruction,” he relents. “And she’s quite clever and attentive.”

“She really is very good, isn’t she? I told you,” Tighnari says with a grin, overflowing with pride. “Now, let’s finish that chutney already.”

Cyno returns after two weeks of settling into this new routine of helping Tighnari, deciphering the grimoire, and teaching Collei.

Al-Haitham and Collei are on their way back from the day’s training in time for dinner. They had been working on magic circles and inscriptions, tracing runes and scripts into the soil with the tips of their staffs. They worked on common kind, mainly, and then Sumeru’s, although Al-Haitham briefly etched characters for Liyuen talismans and then Inazuman ofuda on the ground at Collei’s behest, just to satiate her curiosity.

Collei had been nervous when they started, confirming Al-Haitham’s suspicions that she couldn’t read well from that very first meeting when her eyes had glossed over the contents of Tighnari’s letter. She had been on edge, defensive until Al-Haitham explained that written magic relied on a different system, independent of normal writing. Her illiteracy will, however, be an obstacle in reading and learning from grimoires, so Al-Haitham resolves to set aside time to work on reading and writing with her.

They walk back quietly, the ends of their staffs stained with dirt as Collei takes the lead to spare them the extra minutes it would take for Al-Haitham to find their way to Tighnari’s hut. Even after two weeks in Avidya, it still seems to be harboring a grudge.

Collei slips inside the hut first and Al-Haitham bumps into her when she freezes as he’s ducking inside behind her. The huts in Gandharva Ville rarely have tall entryways, and neither Cyno or Tighnari have ever been tall enough for it to matter much to them. Al-Haitham, on the other hand, has to hunch over every time he enters or leaves.

“General Mahamatra?”

Collei’s voice is soft with surprise as she steps forward, finally letting Al-Haitham inside. He’s greeted by the sight of Cyno at the table across from Tighnari. It’s Al-Haitham’s first time seeing him since the funeral. Cyno’s hair is as long and messy as ever, the same shade of snow white. He smiles more easily now, though, and he does so now with a raise of his eyebrows.

“Al-Haitham,” Cyno greets with a dip of his head.

“Cyno.” Al-Haitham returns the motion.

Cyno sweeps his arm towards the empty cushions at the table. “Come sit. You too, Collei.”

Collei hurries over and settles down between Cyno and Tighnari without bothering to put her staff in its nook. She holds it on her lap, fidgeting with it as she stares at Cyno with an unsuccessful attempt at subtlety. Al-Haitham takes his place at the remaining cushion.

“I didn’t know you had returned,” Al-Haitham begins. There’s a pot of tea on the table, and Tighnari reaches to serve the newcomers.

Cyno scoffs. “That’s my line. I didn’t expect I would be coming home to you living under my roof, not when none of us have seen you since the funeral.” There’s an edge to his words even though Cyno mostly seemed amused.

If Al-Haitham were a different man, he might have apologized. But Al-Haitham is only and will ever only be himself, and so he deflects instead. “I am not living under your roof. I have been sleeping in a separate hut.” He can feel the weight of Cyno and Tighnari’s gazes, equally judgemental and irritatingly full of pity.

“Tighnari has told me that you have returned to do us a favor — that you are deciphering a grimoire for him, and instructing Collei in the ways of magic,” Cyno says, not even dignifying Al-Haitham’s comment with a response.

Al-Haitham nods. “She’s a diligent student.” It’s true. Collei has been nothing short of attentive and dedicated, attending her training every day as long as her health allows her to, and no one could fault her for resting when her illness flares.

“High praise coming from one as reticent as he is,” Cyno tells Collei with a fond glance. Al-Haitham can see the clear pride in it — Cyno has become far more open with his affection over the decades, the years mellowing his own hardened stoicism. Collei’s cheeks darken and she forces out a thank you.

Cyno turns back to Al-Haitham with a sigh. “It’s good to see you. I didn’t know if I would again.” The words lacked the bite they might have had if Cyno was speaking to anyone else. To Al-Haitham, they were simply the truth.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“We’re glad to have you back, Al-Haitham,” Tighnari says warmly. “Anyways, it’s time for dinner.”

Life in Gandharva Ville is not unpleasant.

For the most part, Al-Haitham spends his time working on the grimoire and teaching Collei.

In the mornings, while Collei does her chores, Al-Haitham sits in his hut with the grimoire and his notes stacked on every surface. It’s the kind of disorganization Kaveh always hated and ranted about as he picked up after Al-Haitham in their inn rooms — at some point, there had been an unspoken agreement that Al-Haitham and Kaveh would share one room and Cyno and Tighnari would share another whenever they stayed at inns. Rooming in pairs was cheaper than renting out four rooms but more pleasant than all four being crowded into one room.

The progress on the grimoire is slow but sure. Al-Haitham’s estimates were correct. He’s perfectly capable of decoding it, and at his current pace, it will take him a few years — perhaps four or five at most.

Collei has been improving by leaps and bounds in both academics and her mage training. After a few months, her standoffishness gave way to more polite respect. She’s still snarkier with Al-Haitham than she is with Tighnari or Cyno, but now she calls him Master Al-Haitham when she is. Al-Haitham has no interest in titles or formalities, but he can appreciate his promotion from weird lost guy to a teacher alongside Cyno and Tighnari, although he can’t compare to her fathers.

Al-Haitham has expanded her lessons to include more than just reading, taking over Tighnari’s instruction in the social and natural sciences save for biology, for which he deferred to Tighnari’s expertise. They’ve formulated her curriculum together — it’s just that Al-Haitham will be doing most of the one-on-one teaching, since he’s the less busy of the two.

The lessons were frustrating at first. Collei is acutely aware of her disadvantages. So much of her life having been spent as a sick orphan with nothing but clothes and bandages to her name meant that she had very little in the way of an education up until Tighnari took her in. But what Collei lacks in experience and natural predisposition, she has always made up for in tenacity, which already puts her leagues above most scholars Al-Haitham’s ever known, anyways.

And as for magic, well — Al-Haitham has never been interested in taking on an apprentice, but he knows that any mage who is would love to get their hands on Collei. It’s truly a shame that there aren’t many mages left actually worth having as a master. He’s mentioned to Collei that her skills — particularly her incredibly sensitive mana detection —  are rather remarkable for her age and in general, but he’s not sure she truly believes him.

The years pass that way. Collei grows taller and stronger. Tighnari gets older. His health deteriorates over time, and eventually Cyno stops visiting intermittently to move back in. There’s no sign of the apprentice he had spoken of — he says she’s training in the desert. It’s none of Al-Haitham’s business. All he has to do is focus on the grimoire.

“I’ve not much left.”

Tighnari doesn’t explain what it is that’s running out. He doesn’t have to.

“I’ll be done in time.” Al-Haitham turns another page in the grimoire, forcing his hand to scratch down notes even as his wrist and fingers cramp. “Don’t waste your energy on worries. It’s awfully nonsensical of you.”

Tighnari laughs in a way that Al-Haitham knows must hurt his throat even as he doesn’t turn to watch. “Worry?” Tighnari wheezes. “I’ve never seen you—” he coughs, “—fail to translate a grimoire. It’d— it’d do you well to have more confidence in your own abilities. There’s no need to rush. You could bear to spend less time on it, even.”

Al-Haitham scoffs. “I have never met a sick man so eager to die. About the grimoire’s contents—”

“Has Collei had her lessons today?”

“No. We thought it was more prudent to focus on the grimoire for you today. There will always be more time for Collei to learn, and she’s quite capable of practicing by herself.” And there is far too little time for you to live, Al-Haitham doesn’t say. They both know anyways.

Tighnari shakes his head. “You look like Kaveh, bent over that desk for so long like that.” Al-Haitham stiffens. He flips the page he’s writing on. “How has she grown?”

“She’s improved far more quickly than the typical mage. In four years she’s made about ten years’ worth of progress. She’s very dedicated.” He would be a fool to consider her skill a result of his own abilities as a teacher. It’s true that he’s more knowledgeable than the average mage, but teaching had always been Kaveh’s specialty, not his. “She’s too dedicated, even. Reminds me of someone we both knew.”

Tighnari hums, and Al-Haitham can hear the smile in it without turning to look.

“Still, she’s a long ways away from handling herself,” Al-Haitham remarks, “and I’ll be done deciphering the grimoire soon.”

“I’m very proud of her. She’s come such a long way. Don’t neglect her lessons, Al-Haitham, not on my account. You’ve done enough decoding for today!” Tighnari urges him, waving his hand at the wrist and motioning for him to leave.

“But—”

“No buts, Al-Haitham, I never thought I’d see the day when you of all people sought out more work. Out with you.” He waves his hand more quickly, eyebrows raised in expectant impatience.

Al-Haitham sighs, closing the grimoire and organizing the array of papers into somewhat neater stacks. “I’ll be back later, then,” he concedes with a dip of his head. He picks up his staff from where he had left it leaning against the wall and ducks out of the hut.

Carefully, so as to not be caught in Avidya’s attempts to lead him astray, Al-Haitham makes his way through the forest to Collei’s training spot. He finds her there as he usually does, her staff trained on the boulder across the ravine and smoldering from the heat of her latest blast.

“I’m almost there,” she says in lieu of a greeting without turning to look at him, mana detection as keen as always. Her staff is no longer comically large for her, its weight balanced in her solid grip. She’s grown in more ways than one since he first found her here, aiming at the same boulder.

“You are,” Al-Haitham agrees, stepping up beside her. “Tighnari is unwell. Do you not wish to see him?”

“I haven’t hit the rock yet.” She adjusts her stance, takes a breath, and fires again. The shot bursts less than a meter short of the boulder, even closer than Al-Haitham had seen her reach before.

“You’ll reach it eventually. Go to Tighnari.”

Collei’s brow furrows — Al-Haitham isn’t sure if it’s frustration or determination or both. “It can’t be eventually,” she says firmly. “Eventually, Master Tighnari — and even Master Cyno — will die, and they’ll die without knowing that I could do it.”

“Is a rock more important to you than being by Tighnari’s bedside?” Al-Haitham presses with a frown. He has seen regret plague those who have lost loved ones before. Collei is young yet, and so incredibly fond of her caretakers. He wouldn’t like to see the same happen to her.

Collei shakes her head. “It isn’t about the rock. Master Cyno saved me, back when I was younger. I had lost my parents to demons that cursed me, too, and no one really wanted to help me on account of my curse — not to mention the fact that I was already sick.” She subconsciously picks at the bandages under her sleeves, the ones wrapped over the sores and scars caused by her Eleazar. “Master Cyno found me, and suppressed the curse, and brought me to Master Tighnari to raise me as if I was their own.”

She takes a shuddering breath, gripping her mage’s staff tightly. “They both saved me. I don’t know what I would have done. I was little but I knew what it meant to not have a place and I knew what it meant to die. But they found me and they took me in and they’ve only ever wanted me to survive. So I will. Fighting with my fists or with weapons would be very difficult, with my mobility.” She raises a hand in front of them, curling and uncurling her fingers in slow, stiff motions. “But being a mage doesn’t take so much physical strength — it’s a way to defend myself, to protect myself, to survive, just like they want me to.”

“I’m going to show them that I can. And then Master Tighnari won’t have to worry about leaving me behind, because he’ll know that I can take care of myself.” She shifts her foot back and takes her stance again resolutely.

“I see.”

The next shot goes the furthest Al-Haitham has ever seen her manage, falling just short of her target. She’s almost there, and when Al-Haitham sees the look in her eyes, he knows she knows it too.

“You lied to me.”

“You finished, then.”

There’s no sign of regret on Tighnari’s face, pallid as it is with age and illness. He seems small as he pushes against his bed to sit up a bit, swimming in brightly-colored blankets bought and made especially for him by Cyno and Collei.

“I spent years on this.” Al-Haitham doesn’t sound or feel as angry as he probably should be. His fingers curl into fists as he stands at Tighnari’s bedside. “I spent years on this for you, and you lied.”

“I did.”

“You played me for a fool.”

“I did,” Tighnari agrees with a weak grin.

“You’re a bastard,” Al-Haitham returns.

“I am.”

“How long did you know that the grimoire was a lie? That there was nothing in it about immortality?” Al-Haitham presses.

Tighnari huffs out a laugh that sounds like it scrapes his throat. “The whole time. Cyno was the one to find it, years ago. Probably well over a decade ago, at this point. He was able to figure out most of it. You aren’t the only one with experience with the ancient and divine. And, to be frank, if Pir Kavikavus really had found the key to immortality, would he not have used it himself?”

“You’re awful,” Al-Haitham adds without heat. Then, as an afterthought: “Was my work for nothing, then? I spent years on that transcription.”

“No, Cyno wasn’t able to translate it as completely and accurately as you did. He certainly didn’t have the time, even if he did have the ability.” It is Al-Haitham who has dedicated a millennium to learning the magics and tongues of the world throughout history, after all.

“Four years, I have spent in your village, in your forest, sleeping under your roof, to save your life, and you are telling me it was for nothing but a book neither of us cares about?”

“Was it? A waste, I mean. Was it really all for nothing?” Tighnari’s gaze sharpens and he lifts his chin as much as he can in a challenge, and it is as fierce as it has always been. “Was it really so horrible to stay?”

Al-Haitham stops. The room is quiet, save for Tighnari’s raspy breathing and the weight of the question between them. Al-Haitham has stayed before. He has spent years in one place as if they were only days or weeks. Tighnari knows this. It is not about the staying. It is about the staying for, and the memory of when Al-Haitham didn’t is deafening in the silence.

“Has Collei grown enough?” Tighnari says instead. There’s an odd smile on his face, the kind he’s always worn when he knows something someone else doesn’t.

“What?”

“You said, when you first met her, that she was too weak to take on as an apprentice. Too ill. Too young. Too inexperienced. Is she still the same?” Tighari’s ears tilt forward expectantly.

It clicks, and Al-Haitham scowls more petulantly than he’d admit. “You conniving snake.”

“Fox, actually.”

“You’ve been married to Cyno for too long,” Al-Haitham snaps.

Tighnari laughs again, and this time the sound is lighter. “And yet not long enough,” he says, and Al-Haitham tenses minutely. “Can you take Collei with you or not?”

“Collei has improved by leaps and bounds since I arrived in Gandharva Ville and began teaching her.”

“Your conclusion?”

“She is acceptable as a proper mage’s apprentice,” Al-Haitham confesses, because it’s true. As much as it pains him to admit that he was wrong and outwitted, Collei has progressed much faster than Al-Haitham ever expected. The easily frustrated, ill-mannered child who had at first chafed under Al-Haitham’s instruction has become a polite, confident young woman with an unyielding dedication to magic before Al-Haitham’s eyes. “She still has much to work on, but she’s certainly at the level of your average competent adult mage.”

“I’m glad, then,” Tighnari breathes. “Take her with you, and take care of her for us, Al-Haitham.”

Al-Haitham stares at Tighnari, at the gnarled knuckles and bony fingers of his hands, at the crags of his face, at the silver of his ears, at the gentleness of his smile. “I will.”

Al-Haitham calls Cyno in and leaves them to their quiet murmuring.

For once, Avidya doesn’t twist his path. He finds Collei at the ravine, facing the boulder with her staff dropped on the floor beside her. The air smells like smoke, and her teeth flash in a wide grin.

“You did it,” Al-Haitham remarks as they both stare at the gaping hole in the stone.

“I’m— I’m—” Collei stammers, barely breathing, “I’m going to go tell Master Tighnari!” She barely remembers to grab her staff before racing back into the forest. Al-Haitham can almost see Avidya clear her way.

They visit Tighnari’s grave before they leave.

“Thank you.” Collei’s voice is soft, her eyes downcast and fixed on the Nilotpala lotus blossoms she had brought and arranged carefully on the ground. Her staff is clutched closely to her chest. “I couldn’t have repaid him without you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Al-Haitham scoffs with a click of his tongue. “He was the one to trick me. It seems that foxes truly are as wily as they claim.” The joke pains him to say, not in the sense that it’s bad — although it is — but in the way it makes his chest ache. Tighnari is not the first friend he’s seen buried. He has stood at his Master’s grave, at Kaveh’s grave, and at many more in between. Somehow, the sting never goes away.

As far as deaths go, this was a good one — Al-Haitham has borne witness to enough loss to know this. Tighnari passed in his sleep and spent the final stretch of his life in the company of his friends and family. He watched Collei grow from a troubled young girl to a strong, independent teenager. He had the comfort of his husband’s time and attention. He even had the dubious privilege of one of his oldest friends’ company for several years in the form of Al-Haitham. It was, all in all, as good as dying tends to get, and Al-Haitham is glad for it.

Beside him, Collei gags. “That was terrible. Even worse than Master Cyno’s jokes,” she complains, but she smiles partway through. It’s bittersweet and trembles at the corners. Al-Haitham can see the tears in her eyes.

“I don’t appreciate the implication.”

“Master Cyno!” Collei rubs her eyes as she turns to face Cyno. She’s lived with him long enough now that she no longer fears punishment over the smallest possible slight, not the way Tighnari said she used to when she first joined their household.

“Cyno,” Al-Haitham greets with a dip of his head. Cyno nods back.

“I have to show you something — two somethings, actually — before you leave. Come.” The group falls into silence as Cyno leads them back towards the huts. Collei is too busy collecting herself to make small talk as she wipes her face with her sleeve, and neither Al-Haitham nor Cyno have ever been the type for idle chatter — especially not with each other. There’s no need to interrogate Cyno. They won’t be leaving until tomorrow anyways, and even if they didn’t have time to spare, he doubts that Cyno would truly waste their time.

They stop at the hut Cyno and Tighnari had shared once Collei moved into her own.

“We read Kaveh’s will the day after the funeral,” Cyno tells them as he leads them inside. “He left something to each of us.”

Al-Haitham stiffens. “I wasn’t told that anything was left for me.”

Cyno stops in front of a trunk of Tighnari’s things. “What could we say to someone who couldn’t be found?” he says as he kneels to undo the latches. “We tried to find you before the reading. You had already left.” His voice is soft, but the words cut deep. Adding insult to injury, he continues: “You could not even stay to hear his will.” Al-Haitham hears Collei gasp.

“I had no need for money or trinkets. Whatever he left me could be put to better use given to someone else. There was no reason to stay,” Al-Haitham says. “If there was something for me, Tighnari could have told me when I first arrived here in Gandharva Ville.”

Cyno pauses his digging through the trunk. “You do Kaveh a great disservice if you think he knew you so poorly that he would leave you money or trinkets,” he accuses.

Al-Haitham’s fingers curl into tight fists, palms stinging as his nails dig into the flesh. “Did you bring me here solely to throw my faults in my face?” he asks tersely. “If so, I assure you that I’m perfectly capable of doing so on my own.”

“No,” Cyno answers as he reaches into the trunk and pulls out a box wrapped in cloth. “I brought you here to give you this.” Collei scrambles to help him as he stands with a strained huff. “Tighnari kept her once we realized you weren’t coming back. He told me to give her to you when you set off for your next quest, if he wasn’t there to do it himself.”

Al-Haitham takes the package from Cyno’s outstretched hands, pulling off the cloth around it. He freezes.

“Mehrak.”

The machine’s display is blank, dark at the center of her casing. She looks just as she did when Kaveh brought her with him into the desert to watch the meteors. Al-Haitham hadn’t thought about what would happen to her after Kaveh died. She was just another part of him that was gone, along with his red hairpins and those ridiculous shirts with their plunging necklines and his damning, wide smile.

“He left her to you,” Cyno tells him. Al-Haitham runs his hand over the cool metal casing. Her battery is dead. They must not have charged her over these years. She might have even been in the trunk the whole time. “He didn’t want you to be alone in your travels. You might not have wanted an apprentice or friends, but not all companionship needs to be human. And he thought that you would be able to care for her best.”

Al-Haitham feels Collei gingerly step up behind him. “What is it?” she finally asks, her curiosity getting the best of her. She had been watching quietly beforehand, lest she intrude on their private conversation.

Al-Haitham turns slightly, lowering his arms to let her see Mehrak better. She peers at the device with wonder. “This is Mehrak,” he explains. “She is a relic from the civilization of Ay-Khanoum. Kaveh found her in his youth and restored her over the course of our travels. He was the one to give her her name.”

He remembers the first time he saw Mehrak. They had stopped in a town early on in their travels, commissioned to do some menial task the next morning. Kaveh had pulled out an array of tools that looked worse for wear, setting them out on his and Al-Haitham’s shared inn room table in a display of organized chaos. Then, he had reached into his bag for a shoddily wrapped package that he opened to reveal a mess of parts and the destroyed shell of a machine.

“That’s desert technology,” Al-Haitham had commented from his place sprawled over one of the beds, book in hand.

“Yes,” Kaveh confirmed, turning to Al-Haitham with a bright smile, because that was back before Kaveh had come to understand the extent of Al-Haitham’s self-centeredness. “Isn’t it fascinating?”

“What’s so interesting about junk?” Al-Haitham had returned with blunt disinterest. “I’ve seen ruin machines before. Working ones, even.”

Kaveh’s smile hadn’t faltered. “It might be junk now,” he said, “but I’m going to fix it.” The look in his eyes told Al-Haitham that he believed it.

Al-Haitham had thought it foolish. The most educated members of the Akademiya could rarely decipher ruin machinery as is, and Kaveh was but an orphan raised in the outskirts of the Sumeru City. A clever one, sure, but there’s only so much one can do with resourcefulness. But Kaveh, Al-Haitham had been starting to understand, was a man addicted to biting off more than he could chew, throwing himself at impossibilities with relentless optimism. It wasn’t surprising, given the fact that they were on a quest to end centuries of bloodshed and oppression where others had failed — an idea ludicrous enough to be a fool’s errand.

Clearly, though, Al-Haitham was not immune to folly. If he was, he would never have joined Kaveh’s party in the first place. And so he had gotten out of bed and drifted over to the table to watch Kaveh work.

Kaveh was skilled — far more skilled than Al-Haitham had anticipated. He still had plenty to learn and much to gain in terms of experience, but made up for it in dedication, working methodologically. He was ingenuitive, making the best of the meager resources he had on hand as he tried and tried again and noted the differences and nuances of his failures.

Al-Haitham found himself leaning over Kaveh’s shoulder and offering his own input. He didn’t know all that much about desert technology, and of course it wasn’t as fun if he gave Kaveh all the answers even if he did, but he nudged Kaveh in the right direction when appropriate (and the wrong direction when it was amusing).

It took months to finish the machine, even with Kaveh tinkering with it whenever he possibly could, but eventually Kaveh had put enough of it together haphazardly to have a slapdash version of a ruin machine. But still, it wouldn’t run.

Al-Haitham had huffed — a hint of a laugh — and reached for it.

“Magic,” he said. “The people of Ay-Khanoum powered their machines with magic.” The machines were meant to be capable of powering themselves with their enchanted mechanical cores, but those were difficult to craft even a thousand years ago and practically impossible to find in this century. It could, Al-Haitham admitted, make a good challenge, however.

Al-Haitham had held the machine in his hands, then, and let his mana flow from his hands through the machine to its damaged core and bring it to life. The display lit up green with a beep and then Kaveh was grasping the machine in his hands with an ear-to-ear grin.

“Oh my gods,” Kaveh had gasped, and it had seemed like he was about to pull Al-Haitham into a hug, but by that point Kaveh had learned the hard way that Al-Haitham didn’t like to be touched. “We did it!”

“You did it,” Al-Haitham had said, because it was Kaveh’s hands that did all the work and his dedication that followed through on all the effort, while all Al-Haitham had done was offer tidbits of advice. “This was your project.”

Kaveh drew back a bit at that, but then he had looked back down at the machine and its light-up display with pixelated eyes. “Mehrak,” he had declared. “Her name will be Mehrak.”

“What does it mean?” Collei asks, voice closer than Al-Haitham expects and startling him out of his musings.

“‘Little light,’” Al-Haitham parrots absently, the shadow of Kaveh in his voice, pressing his palm to Mehrak’s display and feeding her a steady stream of energy. It makes sense for Kaveh to have left her to him — without Kaveh, Al-Haitham is the person who knows Mehrak best, and the most skilled at using the magic she needs to function.

“Oh, that’s so pretty!”

“Beauty was always Kaveh’s specialty,” he says as Mehrak lights up with a signature beep. Carefully, he holds her away from his body and lets her go. She drops for a moment but bounces back up, letting out a series of ringing beeps as a greeting as she bobs in the air and turns this way and that.

“Hello, Mehrak,” Al-Haitham greets, and Mehrak chirrups in return. She may be a machine, but she’s a magical one, and anything given enough magic and love ends up growing a heart of its own. Kaveh had called him a sap when Al-Haitham first told him so. Al-Haitham had argued that there was nothing excessively sentimental about discussing reality, and that any strong emotion could have the same effect. It was simply that Kaveh had showered Mehrak with affection above all else. Kaveh had laughed and laughed at that one.

Mehrak swivels to face Collei. “This is Collei. Collei, this is Mehrak.” Collei hesitantly waves a hand. Mehrak’s display shows an angular smile before she turns to face Cyno, who dips his head in a nod.

Al-Haitham clenches his jaw for a moment before speaking. “Thank you for delivering her when I was not there to receive her,” he says to Cyno. He doesn’t apologize for his behavior after the funeral. He probably never will. He thinks that Cyno understands.

“I hope that she’ll watch over you both on your travels,” Cyno says warmly. Mehrak trills her assent.  “There’s one last thing I have to show you.”

“But I thought Master Al-Haitham had said there were no real grimoires by Lesser Lord Kusanali,” Collei comments as they make their way through the Lokapala Jungle, now that they’ve gotten through the rush of packing and preparing for travel.

Al-Haitham’s carrying both his and Cyno’s things, because Collei had offered to carry Cyno’s pack on account of his advanced age and Cyno had objected given Collei’s illness and so Al-Haitham had ended up taking the burden on himself. Collei’s things, in turn, are safely tucked away in Mehrak’s storage space. She had been astounded by Al-Haitham’s explanation that Mehrak is essentially bigger on the inside.

“You remember correctly.” Al-Haitham nods approvingly. “There is no record of Lesser Lord Kusanali ever writing any grimoires nor any surviving works by her. Except, apparently, the one Cyno claims to have found.”

Cyno appears unfazed by Al-Haitham’s snideness. “It took Tighnari and I years and a good deal of effort to track it down.”

“You did all that while traipsing around the country? Tighnari had told me that you took an apprentice. Was that a front or something?” Al-Haitham replies, amused.

Cyno laughs. “No, Layla’s quite real. But I prefer to keep myself busy.” Cyno has always been that way, fueled by a dogged sense of duty too selfless for Al-Haitham to understand. It had driven Cyno to join Kaveh’s party in his youth, to right wrongs wherever he perceived injustice on their travels, to become the General Mahamatra after their quest.

“Why go to all this trouble for me, though?” Cyno is certainly a loyal friend, but Al-Haitham would expect him to go to such lengths for Kaveh, or Collei, or Tighnari. Not for Al-Haitham, who had left them without a second glance not once but twice.

“Because you were pathetic.”

Al-Haitham blinks, startled. Cyno doesn’t look at him. “How blunt. What do you mean, ‘pathetic’?”

“I mean that I felt sorry for you — at the funeral, on the night you ran away. Your regrets were pitiful. I felt sorry for Kaveh. Tighnari and I agreed that, if there was a way for you and Kaveh to meet again, we’d find it.”

Al-Haitham scoffs. If he had anything less than a thousand years of practice schooling his expression into blankness, his face would be flushed. “And you think this is it? Did we not already prove that there is no way to defy death?” He doesn’t comment on Cyno’s confessed pity — not out of guilt or wounded dignity, really, but because there are better things to dwell on than Al-Haitham’s mistakes. “You of all people should know that, as host to the spirit Hermanubis.”

“It is precisely because I have seen the wonders of the world through Hermanubis that I understand the possibility of impossibilities. You proved Pir Kavikavus’s work unrelated. You have not proven anything about the Lesser Lord’s.” Cyno seems cool and unoffended. “We will arrive in Mawtiyima soon,” he continues.

It’s true. Al-Haitham can already feel the shift as the air becomes cooler, milder than the jungle’s sweltering heat. Mawtiyima beckons their little group — it has always been fonder of him than Avidya was, perhaps out of care for his late master. The human world may have forgotten his teacher as she truly was, but Al-Haitham and the land have not.

Kaveh had found it tragic, once upon a time. They had been discussing one of Lesser Lord Kusanali’s many barriers — translucent, flimsy-looking things as ornate as they were powerful. They were nearly unnoticeable until touched, at which point green light blossomed from the point of contact in ornate, flowering patterns. When completely visible, they made palaces. Kaveh had said that he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. Tighnari had said that it was truly the stuff of legend.

“She really is simply a legend now, isn’t she? I doubt anyone remembers her face.” Al-Haitham had said without much thought. It wasn’t meant to be sad. It wasn’t meant to be anything at all. Kaveh turned to look at him quizzically.

“Did— did you know her?” Kaveh had asked before shaking his head. “Nevermind. I can’t imagine you’re old enough to hav—”

“She was my teacher.”

The others had stared, dumbfounded. It must be nearly incomprehensible to them. They were raised on the stories of Lesser Lord Kusanali, the ones where she danced with the Aranara and brought the wonders of magic to the humans of Sumeru, the ones where she blessed the Divine Tree and fought off legions of demons. They knew her as someone faceless under her fabled snow white hair, nameless beyond her title as Lesser Lord. The idea that she really, truly was a person once, and that Al-Haitham had known her personally, must be baffling.

“You do,” Kaveh had said. “You remember her face. And I’m sure she’d be glad that you’re around to do that a thousand years later.” He had smiled, then, because he was always so empathetic. “And when I’m gone, you can remember my name and face, too, even if everyone else forgets. But I’ll make sure to leave enough statues behind to help you out.”

The world has not forgotten Kaveh. It seems like it never will, but Al-Haitham knows better. Everything crumbles in the face of time eventually. Al-Haitham will one day succumb to it. Even Maytiyima will succumb to it. But that day will likely be long after the others are dead.

Collei gasps as they step foot in the valley. Mawtiyima Forest is awash in cerulean light, fluorescent fungi towering above them like trees. Everything here is ancient, older than even Avidya. It’s overflowing with magic — in the damp air and its hint of sweetness, in the ground under his feet where the mycelium intertwines in centuries-old connections, in the forest’s haunting blue glow.

“This is Mawtiyima Forest,” Al-Haitham tells her. “Did Tighnari ever speak of it to you?”

Tighnari had always been fascinated by fungi, even if he was wary of them after far more experience with their adverse reactions than any reasonable person should have. He had marveled at the idea of Mawtiyima and clung to every word Al-Haitham said about it.

Collei nods. “He said that it’s a forest made of giant mushrooms, not trees, and that they’re all part of the same colony.”

Al-Haitham hums. “Close, but not quite. These aren’t separate mushrooms making up a colony. They’re all the same specimen — all parts of the same being.” Collei’s eyes widen. It’s understandable. Even Al-Haitham was awed the first time his master brought him here, and the forest had not yet been as tall. “This is Mawtiyima — ancient and massive in its ancience. It is a place of deep-rooted magic. It is both high above us and deep beneath our feet. It is a sacred place, if you believe in such things.”

“That’s incredible,” she says before pausing. “And we’re looking for a book? In all of this?” She looks around, pursing her lips the way she does when she’s suppressing a scowl. “Won’t it take us ages?”

“Perhaps Cyno has a plan, given that this is all his idea,” Al-Haitham prompts, turning towards him.

Cyno shakes his head. “Tighnari and I were only able to narrow down the grimoire’s location to the forest, but we weren’t able to find out where the grimoire actually is. Our only option is to look for it ourselves, however long that takes,” he says with a grimace.

Al-Haitham shrugs. “Then it’s good that I have all the time in the world.”

Collei tenses next to him, far too aware of his tendency to spend weeks or months caught up on the same idea. She takes a deep breath, bringing her hands up to rub at her face.

“But,” Al-Haitham adds, taking pity on her, “I know Collei wouldn’t appreciate such a long and drawn-out stay here, and I admit that I would find such a thing boring as well. Collei will lead us to the grimoire.”

“Me?” Collei exclaims incredulously. “I have no idea where the grimoire is. Or— or how to find it!”

“You mean to say that you knew where it was all along?” Cyno prompts, eyebrows raised halfway to his hairline.

“It’s hardly my fault that you spent your time on this without my knowledge,” Al-Haitham says half-seriously in case Cyno is actually frustrated. Instead, Cyno huffs a laugh, raising a hand to his temple.

“Just tell us where the book is,” he says, shaking his head. “Put poor Collei out of her misery.”

Al-Haitham turns to her. “Collei, recall what I told you about age and sentiment and both.”

Collei’s panic melts away and she straightens as she registers the question, as dutiful a student as ever. “You said that anything old enough develops its own sense of self. And you said that anything with enough emotion in it gains its own feeling. And you said that things with both are the most powerful of all.” She glances at him expectantly, bandaged hands fidgeting with her robes as she waits for his approval.

“Examples?”

“Avidya, for the first. And—” she stops for a moment, thinking before glancing over Al-Haitham’s shoulder. “Mehrak, for the other, right?”

“Correct,” Al-Haitham says approvingly. He sees Cyno smile in pride. “Although— Avidya sits on an overlap, similarly to Mawtiyima. All land is powerful because all land is old. You hear of Mare Jivari. Of Dragonspine. Each has its own power. But Mawtiyima and Avidya are forests full of life and thus full of feeling. Their power does not come from hostility or emptiness, but from vitality. It draws from the flora, from the fauna, from everything that has lived in it and died in it. The forest remembers, and memories are their own form of magic.”

“It’s just that Mawtiyima is older than Avidya and the magic here is powerful and more abundant, so it draws more magic towards itself, and so the cycle repeats and repeats. It is not unlike gravity,” he compares, drawing on Collei’s physics lessons, “where objects with greater mass have stronger gravitational force, while those with less mass have weaker gravitational force. And in Mawtiyima’s case, its memories are so vast and rich that they solidified into a heart. And the heart grew roots and threads and the threads became a network and they bore fruit in the form of fungi that grew taller than the trees. Up here, we see Mawtiyima’s forest, but below us, in a cavern, lies Mawtiyima’s heart.”

Collei’s brow knits in concentration. When she did that in front of Tighnari, he’d always poke fun at her or pinch her cheeks if it was a good day and she could bear the touch. “I think I get it. But what does that have to do with the book?”

“I concur — I’d like it if you would get to the point,” Cyno interjects.

“A thousand years ago, my master brought me to Mawtiyima, back when the forest was smaller and the heart was still young. She left a grimoire under its protection — to find it, all you have to do is find the heart. I told you that Mawtiyima draws on magic. You should be able to feel its pull now.” A different mage might miss it, but Collei’s sensitivity to magic remains outstanding.

Collei closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I feel it, I think. It’s like— a weird tugging in my chest. And I think I can sense the— the heart, too.”

“Good job.” Collei smiles. “That’s where we need to go. All that’s left is for you to lead the way.”

Collei falters, self-doubt striking again, and truly, Al-Haitham cannot wait for her to meet other mages and realize just how incompetent they are on average. It would do wonders for her self-assurance and Al-Haitham’s amusement. There are few things as entertaining as watching overly confident mages flounder in the face of true dedication and ability.

“Why me?” she questions. “Can’t you do it?”

“I hardly need the practice,” he returns drily.

Her face flushes a bit in embarrassment, but then she steels herself, pushing her shoulders back and straightening her posture. “Okay,” she tells herself. “Okay,” she says more loudly to them. “L— let’s go.”

Cyno and Al-Haitham fall into step behind Collei as she takes the lead, leading them through an indistinct path that only becomes discernible once they look back on it, but never forward. It forms almost at Collei’s feet — magic is beloved by Mawtiyima, and Collei particularly loved by the forest. Al-Haitham doesn’t doubt that he would have a more difficult time traversing it, and that Cyno would find it nearly impossible.

They travel in silence, stopping every so often to rest out of respect for Cyno and Collei’s limits. Collei is busy concentrating to talk and there’s little to say anyways — Mawtiyima is not really a place for speaking. It is a place of quiet but never silence. It is too alive for silence.

They walk until nighttime, until the sky is dark and the only source of light is the forest’s haunting blue glow. They make camp under one of the vast mushroom caps, and Collei shows Cyno one of her flame spells when she starts a campfire for them to have dinner. She falls asleep first, and Al-Haitham and Cyno speak softly over the fire until they too go to bed.

They set out again come morning light, Collei guiding them until it’s nearly sundown.

“Stop,” Al-Haitham tells her, and she freezes.

“Did I mess up?” She turns to look at him, biting her lip. “I swear it’s— it feels like it’s this way!”

Al-Haitham shakes his head. “You’re right. That isn’t the issue. The heart is in a cave. We need to travel away from it now, and find the entrance.”

“Do you know where it is?” Cyno asks.

“I remember well enough.” Al-Haitham turns to Collei. “Good job leading us until now.”

She glows with the praise, glancing at Cyno with delight when she sees that he is also brimming with pride.

The path to the cave entrance is completely different from the one Al-Haitham’s master led him on all those centuries ago even as Al-Haitham retraces his steps. He remembers it even now — padding along behind her as she spoke and spoke even as he rarely replied. Kaveh was a lot like her that way, filling in the silences with enough talking for the both of them, as distant as Al-Haitham could be.

The cave entrance is visually unassuming, but Al-Haitham can tell that Collei can feel Mawtiyima’s power from within it. “Tell me what you sense,” he demands.

“It’s… so strong!” Collei begins, taken aback. “But it’s not the same as sensing your magic. It’s more like Master Tighnari’s was, but that’s not right either.”

“It’s strong because Mawtiyima is incredibly powerful. In an ancient language, Mawtiyima means human death, a warning for the unprepared. The forest holds its dangers — the waters under the heart are filled with spinocrocodiles, and its monsters love the taste of magic.” Al-Haitham steps into the cave, feeling the damp darkness wash over him.

“As we’ve discussed before, magic comes from mana and belief. Mages have their own form of theory regarding magic. It is a far more scientific approach than those taken by priests or devotees, like Tighnari. Their magic is fueled by natural predisposition and their belief in higher powers and deities, and is thus different in nature. Because Tighnari’s faith was in Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, Lord of Forests, his magic is more similar to the forest’s itself. Inversely, you and Tighnari have a natural affinity for dendro energy — colloquially referred to as being blessed by the Greater Lord. Still, Mawtiyima’s magic is ultimately its own kind. It is deeper and less restrained, and therein lies its danger.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in gods,” Cyno says.

Al-Haitham shrugs. “I don’t. I believe in spirits and monsters and more, obviously, but I have no faith in higher powers. But the phenomenon is real enough, and this is how people have chosen to explain it. Maybe there are no God-Kings and there are no blessings, and it’s just a way of explaining the random tendencies people are born with or acquire. Maybe there are deities out there, and I’m a fool with little faith. Personally, I don’t think it makes much of a difference, in the end.”

Al-Haitham thinks of the last time the both of them spoke of deities — in front of a Liyuen shrine, back when it was the four of them and not just two.

Kaveh had bowed, much to Al-Haitham’s surprise. “Since when were you so pious?” Al-Haitham had asked him. “I didn’t know you worshiped any god, much less the Goddess of Dust.” Why would he? Kaveh was a child of Sumeru through and through, born and raised in the shadow of the Divine Tree and told the tales of the God-Kings. What reason would he have to worship the Goddess of Liyue? “It’s not like the people of Liyue believe in the Eternal Oasis.” 

“You’re right that I’m not a devout believer,” Kaveh had said with a laugh. “But I think there’s something to be said about praying. About believing. We’re so small, you know? Our time alive is so short and so painful, sometimes. All we can do is hope that something better will come. Isn’t that what faith is, sometimes? Our hope?” He had straightened and turned to Al-Haitham, raising his hand to his chest. “It can’t hurt for me to hold onto that hope for them.”

And hadn’t that just been so Kaveh of him? To hope in times of little faith, to dream without knowing what he dreamed of. It is an optimism that Al-Haitham was never able to understand at the time and that still eludes him even now. He has always prided himself on the extent of his knowledge, acquired over the course of more than a millennium, and yet there are things that he still fails to understand.

Collei seems like she’s going to say something, but Al-Haitham beats her to it.

“We’re here.”

One final curve of the cave’s path and —

“Oh,” Collei breathes. “It’s beautiful.”

“Magnificent,” Cyno agrees.

Mawtiyima’s heart is all those things and more. Al-Haitham has never claimed to have an eye for beauty — Kaveh assured him many times over that he has none — but even he can appreciate the sight.

While Mawtiyima’s forest grows bright blue as it reaches for the sky, its heart is as green as the rest of Sumeru’s rainforests. The power it sheds is thick, weighing in the air like morning fog as it fills Al-Haitham’s nose with the smell of petrichor and touches his tongue with the bittersweet taste of verdure.

Al-Haitham is old. Mawtiyima is older.

It remembers a world before he was born. He thinks, for a silly moment, that it remembers a world long after he will die.

It is magic nearly at its most raw — memories and memories wound up in a ball, in a beating heart strong enough to fuel a whole forest. It is the terror of an ambushed rabbit, the gluttony of a feasting tiger, the grief of a fox who has lost her kits. It is the fear of a tree with fire licking at its bark, the howls of a pack of dholes and the screeching of a dusk bird. It is thousands of years of clouded mornings and sunny days and stormy evenings, the crack of lightning and the smell of smoke and the burn of the sun on leaves and skin and soil.

It is the memory of his master — braided white and green hair, emerald eyes, a smile too kind for the world around it, a smile he saw again a thousand years later in a boy with too much faith and too little fear. Mawtiyima remembers her even now — her gentle barefoot steps over slick moss and cool stone, the shape and taste of her magic — and it keeps a piece of it tucked here in its innermost depths.

“Can you feel it?” He asks Collei, startling her out of her awestruck staring. Even as she looks at him, she can’t help but glance back at the heart. It truly is striking, the first time a mage encounters something like this. He can’t blame her.

“Feel what?”

“The grimoire. It’s in here.”

Collei finally tears her gaze away from the heart, brow furrowing as she closes her eyes in focus. She stays like that for ten or so seconds before biting her lip and looking up. “I can’t feel anything other than the heart, and the forest. I’m— I’m sorry.”

Al-Haitham scoffs. “There’s no need to be sorry. I’m not sure any mage short of an experienced master could sense it. That’s what my master intended for, anyways. This is the only grimoire she wrote that I knew about, and I’m quite sure that it’s the only one in existence. Everything else she created or discovered, she shared freely with people to this day, without any need for secrets.”

Nahida had been kind, and so she had been giving, and the people of Sumeru have remembered her for it. It’s one of the only things they remember of her, really. They thank her for blessing the Divine Tree, for the barriers she left all over the nation protecting its most vulnerable towns. They thank her for bringing magic to humanity. Everything that Nahida could give, she gave to everyone she could — including passing down her knowledge to an orphaned elf with nothing to his name.

“The only knowledge she ever hid was this, and she hid it so it would never be found. It is, after all, just an enchanted book. Who would be able to discern the trifling magic of a grimoire when confronted by a sea of sheer power? It would be like finding a needle in a haystack, or a single page in an entire library — an exercise so futile most people are not even aware of it.”

But Al-Haitham has never been like most people, and his master had known that when she hid her grimoire here.

“What’s in it?” Al-Haitham had asked as Nahida carefully tucked the grimoire into place and began casting a barrier spell. They had only spent a few years together by then, and she had still been young — brown skin smooth without the wrinkles and crags it would develop in the future. In his youth, Al-Haitham had been too inexperienced with humankind to guess her age at the time, but in retrospect he places her in her late twenties.

“A gift for my favorite apprentice,” she teased as viridescent walls rose around the grimoire and its nook in the cave wall, growing pillars and leaves and arches — a palace in miniature, as verdant as the forest it was hidden in.

Al-Haitham had scoffed. “I’m your only apprentice.” He still wondered about that, sometimes — why she had chosen him of all people to be her principal disciple. He was quite skilled, and just as motivated to fight the demons of the Fatui as she was, but there must have been candidates who were generally regarded as… easier to deal with than him. Eager to learn from such a master. Reverent in their respect for her. Al-Haitham was never one to dwell on pointless hypotheticals — his master had chosen him above others and that was that — but he did always appreciate difficult questions.

His master had only laughed warmly with some knowledge beyond him. “Indeed you are.”

“Regardless, I have no need for gifts. And if there’s some knowledge you want to pass on to me, why not just tell me now instead of going to all this trouble?”

Nahida laughed again and Al-Haitham absolutely did not frown. “Oh, don’t pout at me like that,” she had said. “This gift isn’t useful for you, not yet.” The barrier closed around the book before it and everything within it faded from sight, leaving the wall looking just as it did before.

“Then when will it be?”

 “Someday, you’ll make a terrible mistake and regret that you never knew people better. I’ve left you this for when that day comes.”

Al-Haitham frowned. “Do you wish I knew you better? Are you feeling needy?” 

“Not at all,” she giggled, reaching to ruffle his hair. Al-Haitham was never one for physical contact, but certain people were different. Like his master, and— “I know we make the most of our time together. But someday you’ll regret not knowing someone else.”

“Yeah… I don’t think so.”

Nahida had hummed. “It’ll always be here for you anyways.”

He had thought her a fool. Al-Haitham has never been one for attachment or sentimentality. Elves as a whole are too long-lived for such things.

And yet here he is a thousand years later.

Slowly, he reaches out until his fingers touch cool, glassy magic. The rest of the barrier shimmers into view and the book — propped just where his master had left it — slams open, flipping to a certain page. Collei and Cyno watch with bated breath as Al-Haitham walks over to stare at the page.

“Does it say anything about speaking to the dead?” Cyno questions.

Al-Haitham lowers his hand to the page, preserved by the barrier just as his master had left it. The grimoire flares with green light the second his fingers brush paper. “It’s open to the right page,” he says absently. It’s his master’s handwriting — he hasn’t seen it in centuries.

“What does it say?” Collei asks, hesitant out of respect but clearly too curious to keep quiet.

“‘The path to Celestia lies on the northernmost tip of the continent,’” Al-Haitham reads aloud, and he can hear his master in the words, feel her in the magic baked into the book’s letters and pages. “‘There, I entered the land of gods and heroes — of myths, legends, and my own comrades long past — and I spoke to them beyond the boundaries of life.’”

“So it’s true,” Cyno breathes.

Al-Haitham draws his hand back with a huff of laughter. “Even after a thousand years, I’m still dancing in the palm of my master’s hand.”

She had always been so young, young the way all humans are when compared to him, but she was full of thoughts and ideas that Al-Haitham could never understand. Elves used to be known for their wisdom — there is a certain level of learnedness that can only be achieved through centuries upon centuries of study, a kind of dedication beyond human’s ability and comprehension. Humans, by comparison, live brief lives of ignorance.

He had been so sure of that once upon a time, but humans have always managed to surprise him.

Their lives are snuffed out so quickly but they burn so brightly all the while, leaving marks on the world that long outlive them. Nahida, immortalized in memory as Lesser Lord Kusanali. Kaveh the hero.

Before them, Al-Haitham always felt woefully ignorant, stumbling over the realization that there are times when it is elves who are unenlightened and humans who are knowledgeable, that there are types of wisdom beyond Al-Haitham’s reach.

“What will you do?” Cyno asks.

Al-Haitham hums. “Go to Celestia, of course.”

He turns to Collei. “I will be embarking on a ten year journey to the land of heroes, with the intention of speaking to Kaveh once again and learning about humanity along the way. Will you join me?”

Collei cocks her head. “Ten years? Isn’t the trip north by sea far shorter than that?”

“It took us ten years last time,” Cyno tells her, and her eyes widen.

“Oh, we’re retracing you guys’ steps!” She sounds almost delighted.

“I’m sure it will be as meaningful a journey for you as it was for me,” Cyno tells her, fondness clear on his face.

Collei smiles until it hits her and she stops and faces Cyno. “You’ll be coming with us, though, right?” She glances at Al-Haitham then, as if he can do anything about it. “Isn’t he?”

“There’s always a place for you in our party, Cyno,” Al-Haitham says honestly. “We could use a fighter of your caliber.”

Cyno shakes his head. “I’m too old for quests now. It’s best to leave such things to the young.”

Collei is stricken. “If— If I leave now, I’ll be gone for ten years and who knows how much longer. What if— what if—”

Cyno smiles and places a finger on his lips in a shushing motion. “You’ll see me either way. Either when you return, or in Celestia with Tighnari — or so I should hope!”

“But—”

“You’ve come so far, Collei. I’m proud of you. Tighnari will be so proud of you when you see him again. We never wanted to hold you back — we only wanted you to grow. So grow, Collei, and don’t worry about me.” He reaches out and pets her hair. “And anyways, Hermanubis isn’t so keen on letting his vessel go just yet.”

Collei’s eyes water, and Al-Haitham looks away before any real tears fall.

“We leave tomorrow at first light,” he says as he walks back the way they came, leaving Collei and Cyno to talk it out under Mawtiyima’s watchful, ancient eye.

Dawn is a soft thing in Mawtiyima — the pinkening of the sky is the only sign of it from within the shaded valley, but the creatures of the forest know to wake all the same. The soft warbling of birdsong graces their departure.

Collei throws herself at Cyno, clinging to him tightly in a rare show of physical affection, and he wraps his arms around her in turn.

“I’ll miss you,” she says into his tunic.

Cyno chuckles. “I didn’t know your aim was that bad.”

Collei tears away from him to glare daggers. “I can’t believe you!” she snaps before breaking into laughter.

Al-Haitham fights the urge to clear his throat — exactly the kind of thing Kaveh had scolded him for, once upon a time.

“Just let them have their moment,” Kaveh had snapped as they waited for a client they were supposed to escort to finish saying her goodbyes to the fiancée she’d be leaving behind. “Who knows when they’ll see each other again.”

“We were supposed to leave half an hour ago,” Al-Haitham huffed, rolling his eyes as the couple shared a tearful kiss. “The later we leave, the less ground we’ll cover before dark. Enough time lost could mean a whole extra night in the forest.”

“There are more important things than timetables, Al-Haitham,” Kaveh had told him, nose reddened in the brisk morning breeze but gaze as sharp as ever.“Let them have a sweet memory to remember when they’re apart. Life is fickle — you never know if it’s the last time you’ll see someone, and its brevity makes the moments we have together all the more valuable.”

“Let them have their time together. If it costs us an extra night — well, you have all the time in the world, don’t you? It’s parts of our own lives that we’ll be wasting.”

Al-Haitham’s goodbyes to Kaveh had still been pathetic. He hadn’t gone to see Kaveh before leaving for Inazuma, choosing to sleep in until his ship’s boarding time. He hadn’t gone to see Kaveh before that, either, busy with preparing for his trip. His final goodbye had been dropping a blind drunk Kaveh off at an inn room — a one person room, this time, because what need could the Hero Kaveh’s party have of sharing rooms now that they had saved the world? He had pried Kaveh off himself and pushed him into his bed, throwing the covers over him and ignoring Kaveh’s drunken calls of his name.

And then they hadn’t seen each other until the meteor showers, barely meeting before it was already time to stand vigil at Kaveh’s funeral.

But now Al-Haitham has the chance to make things right. He’ll speak to Kaveh again, tell him— tell him— something. He’ll know when he gets there, at least. He has ten years to think about what to say.

Cyno sets his hands on Collei’s shoulders.

“Go, Collei,” he says firmly. “May the God-Kings guide you. Make sure to be good— but not too good. Don't forget to give Al-Haitham plenty of trouble. He deserves it.” He glances at Al-Haitham. “Take care of her.”

Al-Haitham nods. “Collei, it’s time to go.”

Cyno drops his hands and starts to turn away, but Collei traps him in one final, fleeting hug before pulling away.

“I love you so much.” She takes a deep breath. “Take care of yourself.”

“I love you too,” Cyno returns with a gentle smile. “Now off with you — as much as Al-Haitham might have it coming, it won’t do to have you be late on your first day of traveling.”

Collei giggles, hurrying over to Al-Haitham’s side. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

“Yes, yes, let’s go! We can’t keep Master Tighnari and Hero Kaveh waiting!”

They certainly can’t.

The morning is as gentle as the dawn — the perfect setting for new beginnings, as Kaveh had always put it. Al-Haitham hadn’t understood at the time, but he thinks he might now.

“Then let’s go.”