Epilogue
The statue stood exactly where Val-Theris’s vision had shown it would.
She rose from the ashes of the plaza, carved in marble so pale it caught every ember of the dying sun. Under his instruction, the sculptors had captured her face with aching precision, eyes gentle and steady, arms forever cradling a child that never drew breath.
Behind her, Solmiris burned.
The towers of gold and glass were blackened now, the air thick with the scent of smoke and melted stone.
The great dome of the citadel had collapsed inward, the mural of his father buried beneath its own weight.
The light that once defined the city flickered weakly against the horizon, too stubborn to die, too frail to live.
And Val-Theris watched it all without a sound.
He stood at the base of the statue, the ash swirling around his boots, his wings tattered and greyed. The crown was gone. The sword that once bore the light of dawn and defended the city lay half-buried in ash at his feet.
He had seen this moment the night before Jesenia arrived at his gates.
Back then, he had tried to change it. Back then, he had believed himself strong enough to defy fate.
Now, he only felt tired.
The city moaned under the weight of ruin, but he barely heard it.
His eyes were fixed on the statue, on the familiar curve of her mouth, the delicate line of her hands.
The sculptors had not known her the way he did, yet somehow they had captured her perfectly: that same quiet grace, that same stubborn hope.
He reached out, brushing his fingers against the marble. It was cold, as it had been in his vision. The same chill that had once burned through his palm when he’d first touched it in prophecy.
He almost laughed. The Light had given him truth after all.
“You were never meant to be a saint,” he whispered. “Only human. Only kind. Only mine.” His voice faltered, breaking on the last word.
The statue did not answer, and he hadn’t expected it to. He lowered his hand, resting it against the base where her name was carved.
Jesenia of Lunareth, and beneath it, smaller: The Mother of Mercy.
He knelt there a long while, the ash settling over his shoulders like snow. For once, there were no visions pressing behind his eyes, no threads of fate whispering in the dark. Only the stillness of a world that had already ended.
“It was supposed to be me,” he said softly. He looked toward the smoldering horizon, where the last of Solmiris’s light bled into the clouds. “If I had known…if I had seen, I never would have led you to the very thing that took you from me.” A tremor passed through him. “I am sorry, Jesenia.”
He rose, slowly. The air trembled faintly as he spread what remained of his wings. The gold had dulled to the color of ash, the feathers falling one by one into the dust at his feet. The wind caught them, scattering them through the ruins like fragments of a dying sun.
“I don’t think the Light ever meant for me to learn love,” he whispered. “Perhaps it knew I wouldn’t survive it.”
He turned his face to the sky. It was vast and empty—no visions, no divine warmth, no promise left.
And somewhere beyond the reach of light, beyond gods and prophecy, a woman’s voice whispered his name.
Val-Theris closed his eyes.
“Find me quickly,” he murmured. “Please.”
A beam of blinding light fell from the heavens, and when it faded, only a scattering of feathers and the faint scent of sunfire remained—the remnants of an angel who had not fallen to darkness, but to something worse.
He had fallen to grief.