Chapter Twenty-Two: Onward
Incomplete
Rainy's Journal - Day 144
"A Flicker in the Distance"
The dreams returned again that night, as they always do. Like the steady rhythm of the tides, they rise and fall in my mind, wrapping themselves around my purpose, clouding my thoughts. I struggle to find clarity—like trying to move through a dense fog, feeling for something solid but only grasping at air.
Below me stretched a vast, illuminated landscape, the darkness broken by a thousand flickering lights—each one tethered to a gathering of people, fragile and yearning. They are drawn together by the slivers of hope they still hold, clinging to the warmth of a flame that seems so fleeting. And I watched them from above, suspended between detachment and longing, unable to reach them, yet feeling their ache in the marrow of my bones.
I saw endless paths unfolding before me, each one diverging and winding away in a thousand different directions. And yet, among all these paths, there was only one I could walk. My own. The thoughts I tried to shape slipped through my fingers, drifting into the night. And in that moment, I wondered—what would it be like to follow one of those lights? To lose myself in the warmth of others? To join their glow, their lives?
But I remain apart. Bound to this body, these hands, this mortal coil. I can only touch what is close, only grasp what is near. And in this, I carry a quiet ache—to be so close, yet always apart.
The reverie shatters as I am jolted back to the now. A soul lies near me, broken, struggling. The breath within it grows faint, slipping away. The flickering lights fade as my focus sharpens on the fragility of this single moment, this single life. I fight to keep that spark alive, to share in that last hope.
In those fleeting seconds, I feel the weight of everything: the life, the death, the hope that clings like a thread in the wind. But the dawn rises, cold and relentless, and the moment slips away.
Once again, I am left with nothing but the harsh clarity of the present.
---------------------------------
Rainy chose to move on from the village.
The decision had taken its time. It had grown quietly inside her, like a tree pushing roots into soil it already knew would not hold. And though she had tried to stay—tried to love them, tried to be what they needed—she could not.
It was the story of Daychor Rigger that revealed it. That last story. The one that reached too far.
She had offered it with care, but when she finished, she saw the quiet distance in their eyes. The discomfort. The unspoken wish that she had chosen something lighter, something safer. She had gone too deep, and in doing so, reminded them of the depths they had sworn never to touch. Even their warmth could not hide it.
They didn’t want her truth. Only the parts of her that didn’t threaten their stillness.
So she packed her things and walked away.
That night, under the wheeling stars, Rainy sat alone by her fire, her small camp wrapped in the silence of open land. She missed being known. Not the way the villagers had known her, but the way a soul longs to be seen—beyond usefulness, beyond comfort. Her chest ached with it, but the ache no longer surprised her.
And as her younger self laid down beneath her thin blanket and fell into uneasy sleep, I—her older self—remember watching that moment from across the years.
I remember what came next.
She dreamed of the wind first, and of the fire dying low. She dreamed of standing and walking, as if drawn by a thread too fine to see. She didn’t yet know it, but she was walking toward the Elder Children.
The stones had stood long before her. They had watched the rise and fall of empires, the births and passings of entire generations. And yet they were called the Children.
That is how we are—forever chasing after youth, calling ancient things young simply because they outlast us.
The Elder Children are a lie we tell ourselves about time. We imagine ourselves always just arriving at life, always beginning—but in truth, we are already passing through. We draw near to them thinking we are young, only to find we are old. The very name mocks our illusions. They are not children. We are the fleeting ones.
She walked among them like a soul drawn back to a place she’d once lived but couldn’t remember. The mist clung low. The stars pressed in close. And I remember the way her hand touched the first stone—how the warmth bloomed there. The whispers. The sense of something waiting.
But what she didn’t know—not yet—was that beneath the stones there was a crypt.
And in that crypt, the end of the world.
It wasn’t a vision meant to frighten her. It was a truth that had to be faced. All things that are beautiful are finite. All things we love will pass. And yet there is something eternal in what we choose to carry forward. Something more.
She would descend into the earth before the dawn came. She would see things that could not be unseen.
But for now, she dreamed. She stood in the stillness, full of aching hope, still light enough to believe she could be carried by it. Still searching. Still reaching.
And I, watching her now through the veil of memory, wish I could whisper to her what she would learn down there in the dark:
That the end is not the end.
That even as the world breaks, something greater is always beginning.
That even a crypt can be a cradle.
That she was never walking alone.
Not truly.
---------------------------------------
He remembered the first time he saw her.
Not on a throne or in vision, not lit by prophecy or framed by fire—but in a clearing, soaked with rain, beneath the crooked arms of an old ash tree.
She was younger then, maybe twelve summers. All knees and elbows and wind-tossed hair, a wild thing caught mid-thought. Mud streaked her cheek. Her dress was torn at the hem. She was kneeling in the earth beside a broken bird, her fingers cupped gently around its shuddering form. Not praying. Not crying. Just being with it.
The King, cloaked in travel and silence, watched from the trees. Unseen. He was not in his glory then, just a wanderer—disguised, distant, as he often was when he walked the mortal lands.
And yet something in him stopped.
Not just his feet. Something older. Something that rarely stirred anymore.
She didn’t speak to the bird. Didn’t flinch as the storm deepened overhead. She simply lowered her head, rested her brow against the creature’s body, and whispered something too soft to hear. A farewell, maybe. A promise.
He felt it then.
There. Like a bell rung in the far reaches of the soul. The pull.
Not toward her beauty—it had not yet awakened—but toward something far rarer.
Rainy carried truth. Even then. Not the kind shouted in halls or carved into stone. The kind that lives quietly inside, forged in loneliness and the ache to understand. The kind that draws the divine not through greatness, but through gravity.
She rose minutes later, brushing her skirts. A line of blood streaked her shin. She didn’t notice. She just turned toward the trees—toward him. Her eyes pierced the rain like twin shards of flint.
For one breathless moment, he thought she could see him.
He had seen countless lives. Held the hands of queens and prophets, warriors and wise ones. But in that single glance—child to shadow—he felt undone.
He left before she could speak.
But from that day forward, he carried her name like a flame in his chest.
Rainy.
The girl who would become the one he’d wait for. The one who would climb. The one who, in her own becoming, might awaken the world.
Once, the kingdom had sung with light. The stones had shimmered underfoot, and the rivers knew his name. The wind carried songs then—sung not by bards, but by the very bones of the mountains. The Elder Children had walked freely through the groves and halls, their laughter echoing like the first language of the world.
But that was before the thieves came.
They hadn’t come with armies, not at first. They came with flatteries, with beautiful lies wrapped in golden tongues. They came as friends, as advisors, as kin. And when the moment was right—when he trusted, when his back was turned—they struck.
He remembered the blade. Not because it hurt, but because it was so ordinary. Rusted. Mortal.
It should have ended him.
And for a time, it had. His body had fallen in the dust behind the temple of stars. The traitors had declared him gone. They built new thrones of iron and ash. They silenced the rivers. The land wept.
But he had not died.
He could not.
His soul, bound by something older than time, had slipped beyond the veil and lingered there—not gone, not whole. Waiting.
And then, one morning at dawn, he awoke.
Alone beneath the old sky where no name remained, but a new kingdom had been born.
He had returned without trumpet or banner. No vengeance. No war cry. Just a quiet reclaiming. A step here. A whispered name there. A gate left open. A door forgotten. One by one, the sacred places began to open to him again.
The thieves had ruled through fear and forgetfulness, but they were cowards, every one. Shadows masquerading as kings. When the wind shifted and the old symbols stirred, they fled like rats. Not because they saw him—but because the land did.
The kingdom remembered.
And now, the halls had begun to breathe again.
Vines crept along the ruined walls, not as destruction, but as healing. The fountains sang low, mournful songs that curled through the valley like prophecy. The trees, once silent, turned their faces to the rising sun.
And in the center of it all, he waited.
Beneath the great stone faces of the Elder Children—guardians of memory, carved before language—he stood, cloaked in his long coat of blue, his crown hidden in the folds of time. His sword slept on his back, sheathed in silence.
He waited—not as a conqueror, but as a witness.
She was coming. He had seen her in the climb, felt her in the winds. Her spirit was louder now than the kingdom’s own song. She was awakening, just as he had.
He would not rush to meet her.
She had to arrive.
When she came, she would not find a king on a throne, but a man in the garden. Waiting not to be served, but to walk beside her. To show her what had been lost. To show her the home that, one day, would be hers to protect.
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind.
Rainy, he thought, keep moving.
Rainy's Journal - Day 144
"A Flicker in the Distance"
The dreams returned again that night, as they always do. Like the steady rhythm of the tides, they rise and fall in my mind, wrapping themselves around my purpose, clouding my thoughts. I struggle to find clarity—like trying to move through a dense fog, feeling for something solid but only grasping at air.
Below me stretched a vast, illuminated landscape, the darkness broken by a thousand flickering lights—each one tethered to a gathering of people, fragile and yearning. They are drawn together by the slivers of hope they still hold, clinging to the warmth of a flame that seems so fleeting. And I watched them from above, suspended between detachment and longing, unable to reach them, yet feeling their ache in the marrow of my bones.
I saw endless paths unfolding before me, each one diverging and winding away in a thousand different directions. And yet, among all these paths, there was only one I could walk. My own. The thoughts I tried to shape slipped through my fingers, drifting into the night. And in that moment, I wondered—what would it be like to follow one of those lights? To lose myself in the warmth of others? To join their glow, their lives?
But I remain apart. Bound to this body, these hands, this mortal coil. I can only touch what is close, only grasp what is near. And in this, I carry a quiet ache—to be so close, yet always apart.
The reverie shatters as I am jolted back to the now. A soul lies near me, broken, struggling. The breath within it grows faint, slipping away. The flickering lights fade as my focus sharpens on the fragility of this single moment, this single life. I fight to keep that spark alive, to share in that last hope.
In those fleeting seconds, I feel the weight of everything: the life, the death, the hope that clings like a thread in the wind. But the dawn rises, cold and relentless, and the moment slips away.
Once again, I am left with nothing but the harsh clarity of the present.
---------------------------------
Rainy chose to move on from the village.
The decision had taken its time. It had grown quietly inside her, like a tree pushing roots into soil it already knew would not hold. And though she had tried to stay—tried to love them, tried to be what they needed—she could not.
It was the story of Daychor Rigger that revealed it. That last story. The one that reached too far.
She had offered it with care, but when she finished, she saw the quiet distance in their eyes. The discomfort. The unspoken wish that she had chosen something lighter, something safer. She had gone too deep, and in doing so, reminded them of the depths they had sworn never to touch. Even their warmth could not hide it.
They didn’t want her truth. Only the parts of her that didn’t threaten their stillness.
So she packed her things and walked away.
That night, under the wheeling stars, Rainy sat alone by her fire, her small camp wrapped in the silence of open land. She missed being known. Not the way the villagers had known her, but the way a soul longs to be seen—beyond usefulness, beyond comfort. Her chest ached with it, but the ache no longer surprised her.
And as her younger self laid down beneath her thin blanket and fell into uneasy sleep, I—her older self—remember watching that moment from across the years.
I remember what came next.
She dreamed of the wind first, and of the fire dying low. She dreamed of standing and walking, as if drawn by a thread too fine to see. She didn’t yet know it, but she was walking toward the Elder Children.
The stones had stood long before her. They had watched the rise and fall of empires, the births and passings of entire generations. And yet they were called the Children.
That is how we are—forever chasing after youth, calling ancient things young simply because they outlast us.
The Elder Children are a lie we tell ourselves about time. We imagine ourselves always just arriving at life, always beginning—but in truth, we are already passing through. We draw near to them thinking we are young, only to find we are old. The very name mocks our illusions. They are not children. We are the fleeting ones.
She walked among them like a soul drawn back to a place she’d once lived but couldn’t remember. The mist clung low. The stars pressed in close. And I remember the way her hand touched the first stone—how the warmth bloomed there. The whispers. The sense of something waiting.
But what she didn’t know—not yet—was that beneath the stones there was a crypt.
And in that crypt, the end of the world.
It wasn’t a vision meant to frighten her. It was a truth that had to be faced. All things that are beautiful are finite. All things we love will pass. And yet there is something eternal in what we choose to carry forward. Something more.
She would descend into the earth before the dawn came. She would see things that could not be unseen.
But for now, she dreamed. She stood in the stillness, full of aching hope, still light enough to believe she could be carried by it. Still searching. Still reaching.
And I, watching her now through the veil of memory, wish I could whisper to her what she would learn down there in the dark:
That the end is not the end.
That even as the world breaks, something greater is always beginning.
That even a crypt can be a cradle.
That she was never walking alone.
Not truly.
---------------------------------------
He remembered the first time he saw her.
Not on a throne or in vision, not lit by prophecy or framed by fire—but in a clearing, soaked with rain, beneath the crooked arms of an old ash tree.
She was younger then, maybe twelve summers. All knees and elbows and wind-tossed hair, a wild thing caught mid-thought. Mud streaked her cheek. Her dress was torn at the hem. She was kneeling in the earth beside a broken bird, her fingers cupped gently around its shuddering form. Not praying. Not crying. Just being with it.
The King, cloaked in travel and silence, watched from the trees. Unseen. He was not in his glory then, just a wanderer—disguised, distant, as he often was when he walked the mortal lands.
And yet something in him stopped.
Not just his feet. Something older. Something that rarely stirred anymore.
She didn’t speak to the bird. Didn’t flinch as the storm deepened overhead. She simply lowered her head, rested her brow against the creature’s body, and whispered something too soft to hear. A farewell, maybe. A promise.
He felt it then.
There. Like a bell rung in the far reaches of the soul. The pull.
Not toward her beauty—it had not yet awakened—but toward something far rarer.
Rainy carried truth. Even then. Not the kind shouted in halls or carved into stone. The kind that lives quietly inside, forged in loneliness and the ache to understand. The kind that draws the divine not through greatness, but through gravity.
She rose minutes later, brushing her skirts. A line of blood streaked her shin. She didn’t notice. She just turned toward the trees—toward him. Her eyes pierced the rain like twin shards of flint.
For one breathless moment, he thought she could see him.
He had seen countless lives. Held the hands of queens and prophets, warriors and wise ones. But in that single glance—child to shadow—he felt undone.
He left before she could speak.
But from that day forward, he carried her name like a flame in his chest.
Rainy.
The girl who would become the one he’d wait for. The one who would climb. The one who, in her own becoming, might awaken the world.
Once, the kingdom had sung with light. The stones had shimmered underfoot, and the rivers knew his name. The wind carried songs then—sung not by bards, but by the very bones of the mountains. The Elder Children had walked freely through the groves and halls, their laughter echoing like the first language of the world.
But that was before the thieves came.
They hadn’t come with armies, not at first. They came with flatteries, with beautiful lies wrapped in golden tongues. They came as friends, as advisors, as kin. And when the moment was right—when he trusted, when his back was turned—they struck.
He remembered the blade. Not because it hurt, but because it was so ordinary. Rusted. Mortal.
It should have ended him.
And for a time, it had. His body had fallen in the dust behind the temple of stars. The traitors had declared him gone. They built new thrones of iron and ash. They silenced the rivers. The land wept.
But he had not died.
He could not.
His soul, bound by something older than time, had slipped beyond the veil and lingered there—not gone, not whole. Waiting.
And then, one morning at dawn, he awoke.
Alone beneath the old sky where no name remained, but a new kingdom had been born.
He had returned without trumpet or banner. No vengeance. No war cry. Just a quiet reclaiming. A step here. A whispered name there. A gate left open. A door forgotten. One by one, the sacred places began to open to him again.
The thieves had ruled through fear and forgetfulness, but they were cowards, every one. Shadows masquerading as kings. When the wind shifted and the old symbols stirred, they fled like rats. Not because they saw him—but because the land did.
The kingdom remembered.
And now, the halls had begun to breathe again.
Vines crept along the ruined walls, not as destruction, but as healing. The fountains sang low, mournful songs that curled through the valley like prophecy. The trees, once silent, turned their faces to the rising sun.
And in the center of it all, he waited.
Beneath the great stone faces of the Elder Children—guardians of memory, carved before language—he stood, cloaked in his long coat of blue, his crown hidden in the folds of time. His sword slept on his back, sheathed in silence.
He waited—not as a conqueror, but as a witness.
She was coming. He had seen her in the climb, felt her in the winds. Her spirit was louder now than the kingdom’s own song. She was awakening, just as he had.
He would not rush to meet her.
She had to arrive.
When she came, she would not find a king on a throne, but a man in the garden. Waiting not to be served, but to walk beside her. To show her what had been lost. To show her the home that, one day, would be hers to protect.
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind.
Rainy, he thought, keep moving.