Chapter Text
Dark
The night is solemn, still. Quiet, save for the shuffling of her small feet against the damp grass and the dirt. It's a particularly cold night in Firene, unrelenting, frost-touched grass biting at her ankles, but she shuffles on, quietly and intently.
It's not long when a long, guttural groan sounds against the night, and the creature's mismatched steps echo against the quiet walls of dead homes. Immediately she closes her eyes, senses grasping around, searching for its miasmic, unnatural origin...
...Alone in the dark no longer, she turns around behind her, draconic energy gathering in her hands— no more than a second later, hurled at the lone Corrupted— and she's panting, but not missing a step as she puts the disintegrating corpse behind her.
"That's... the last of them. The village... is safe now." The words ring hollow, she knows. The bandits that passed by not even days ago left nothing of value behind them, save for desiccated ruins and ashes that were once people. Regardless, she steels herself.
"But... it's not good enough. I have... I have to be strong. Strong, as you were. I've missed you so much... and I still remember what you said to me, all those long years ago..." A sigh, filled with as much quiet hope, quiet wondering, as there is despair. "I wonder... where are you, right now? Looking at this same sky, walking on this same earth,—" The last word quietly drowns itself out in the nighttime breeze.
"How... How can I be strong?"