They returned to the places they'd passed through. Jude met with old friends who didn't remember him. He forged new alliances. He trained scouts not for war, but for understanding, people who would search for signs of the Hollowed, not to fight them, but to learn how they formed. Nyra took up her blade again, not as a weapon, but as a symbol of protection. She taught others how to feel the subtle pull of forgotten magic and how to listen to the silence between memories.
Years passed. Jude never took a title. He refused the throne offered to him in three different cities. Instead, he walked. He listened. He helped when asked, and stayed quiet when not. The Tear, once brilliant and violent, remained dim and quiet now, nestled in a pouch beside the Sorrowsteel. Some nights, he would pull them out and stare at them. Symbols of a past only he and Nyra truly remembered.
