The sun dipped lower over the endless dunes of Azareth, the last rays of light stretching long shadows across the shifting sands. The carriage swayed gently with the rhythm of the road, a steady, hypnotic motion that made everything feel softer, quieter—like the world had finally stopped demanding something from us.
The silence wasn't heavy anymore.
It wasn't suffocating.
It was just there—waiting, breathing between us, like an old friend sitting at our side.
And then, slowly, we started to fill it.
"Has anyone else ever thought about how ridiculous this all is?" Lucian spoke first, his voice low, thoughtful. "How we ended up here? This path, this fight. None of us chose it the way we thought we did."
I glanced at him. His usual easygoing smirk was gone, replaced with something… tired. Not just from the fight at the Sanctuary. Not just from the weight of divine judgment hanging over us.
Something deeper.
Like he had been carrying a burden long before any of this started.
"You mean how we never really had a choice?" Gareth muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. His golden eyes, usually sharp with calculation, flickered with something far more human. "Yeah. I think about it a lot."
Callen let out a quiet chuckle, but it wasn't a happy one. "Choice," he echoed. "That's a funny thing to bring up."
I looked between them.
Their words stirred something in me—something I had buried deep.
Because I had thought it too.
No.
I had lived it.
None of us had chosen this life, not really.
The world had shaped us before we could even understand what it meant to be shaped.
Lucian leaned his head back against the carriage wall, exhaling slowly. "My family had my whole life planned before I was even born. I was supposed to be a nobleman, a strategist, a scholar—someone important."
His fingers curled against his knee.
"And you know what?" He let out a breath, shaking his head. "I hated it. Every second of it. Because none of it was mine. I wasn't Lucian Varrow, I was just another piece on their stupid board, meant to be moved wherever they needed me."
His jaw tightened.
"So I left. I threw it all away. And now? Now I'm here, halfway across the damn continent, bleeding out in forgotten ruins and fighting Rift-born horrors." His voice turned bitter. "And I still don't know if I ever really left."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
He let out a hollow chuckle, shaking his head. "I like to tell myself I made my own path, but…" He gestured vaguely around us. "I still ended up exactly where they wanted me. Using tactics, leading battles, trying to be something more than just a man with a sword." His voice quieted. "It's like no matter how hard I tried, I was always destined for this."
Silence settled over us again.
Then Gareth scoffed, shaking his head.
"Destiny," he muttered. "You sound like my father."
Lucian arched a brow. "Oh? And what pearls of wisdom did the great Lord Faelan have?"
Gareth's expression twisted, his fingers tightening slightly. "That magic is a legacy, not a gift. That power is something you owe to those before you." His gaze turned distant, like he wasn't here anymore—like he was somewhere else, lost in the shadows of his past. "He didn't teach me magic because I wanted it. He taught me because it was expected. Because my bloodline carried it. Because anything less than greatness was unacceptable."
He exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples. "And the worst part? I bought into it. Every word. I told myself I had to be perfect, had to prove myself, had to be more." His hands clenched into fists. "And now, even after everything, after all this time, I still hear his voice in my head every time I fail."
No one spoke for a moment.
Because we all knew that feeling.
The ghost of a voice that never really left you.
The weight of expectation, of legacy, of something that was meant to define you before you ever had the chance to define yourself.
Callen shifted slightly, resting his arms on his knees. "I was supposed to be a farmer," he said after a long silence.
The words were soft, but there was something in them.
Something that made me look at him differently.
He smiled, but it was the kind of smile people wore when they were remembering something they could never have again. "Yeah. A farmer. Nothing special. Just me, my brothers, my parents. A quiet life." His voice dropped lower. "And then the war came through."
Lucian stiffened.
Gareth's expression darkened.
Callen didn't elaborate.
He didn't need to.
Because we already knew.
The war left no one untouched.
His fingers flexed slightly, as if he were remembering the feel of something—something he had tried to hold onto, something that had slipped away anyway.
"I keep telling myself I'll go back one day," he said. "That I'll go home. But I know that's a lie." His voice was quiet, almost to himself now. "Because there's no home left to go back to."
I swallowed hard.
None of us spoke for a long time.
And then, Alaria—who had been silent this whole time—finally let out a soft breath.
"You're all idiots," she muttered.
I glanced at her. "Thanks for the insight."
She rolled her eyes, but there was no sharpness in it. "I mean it. You all act like you never had a choice, like you were just thrown into this." Her fingers toyed with the edge of her dagger. "Maybe that was true once. Maybe it still is. But you know what?" Her gaze flickered, and for a moment, something real passed through it.
"You're still here."
Her voice was soft, but there was weight behind it.
"You could've run. Could've left. Could've said, 'Screw this, I'm not playing your game anymore.' But you didn't." She tapped her dagger against her thigh. "So maybe we didn't choose the start of this. But we can still choose how it ends."
The words settled over me, curling somewhere deep in my chest.
Because she was right.
No matter what had come before.
No matter what paths had been forced upon us.
We were here.
And every day we kept fighting—every day we chose to keep moving forward—we were making a choice.
Even me.
Even if I was fighting Veylara.
Even if I wasn't sure how this would end.
I had chosen this.
And I would keep choosing it.
The silence that followed wasn't heavy anymore.
It wasn't filled with ghosts or burdens or chains of expectation.
It was lighter.
Because for the first time in a long time—
I wasn't alone in it.
The golden dunes of Azareth stretched endlessly outside the carriage windows, but no one looked at them anymore. The vast, shifting sands weren't important. The past was.
And for the first time, we weren't running from it.
We were facing it.
One by one, we had spoken. Lucian, Gareth, Callen, me. We had laid out the pieces of our lives, the shards of who we had been before the Rift, before the war, before destiny twisted its fingers through our fates and pulled us toward something greater—something heavier.
And then—
Elaris spoke.
Her voice was soft, almost hesitant, but it filled the space between us like something delicate and untouchable.
"I wasn't supposed to leave the High Elven city," she admitted, her lavender eyes fixed on the floor of the carriage. "I was supposed to stay. To heal. To serve." She exhaled, her fingers brushing against the intricate embroidery of her sleeves. "Clerics don't leave their sanctuaries. We're meant to be bound to them, to live and die beneath those walls."
I frowned, watching her carefully.
She had never spoken much about her past. About where she came from. About what she had left behind.
Elaris let out a hollow breath. "But I never wanted that," she continued, shaking her head. "Not because I hated it. Not because I didn't believe in what we did. But because…" She hesitated, her expression flickering with something uncertain—something pained.
I leaned forward slightly. "Because what?"
Her hands clenched in her lap. "Because I was afraid that if I stayed, I'd become nothing."
Silence.
She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. "I know how that sounds. I know it sounds selfish. I had purpose, Noctis. I had a place. But it wasn't enough." She met my gaze, her eyes searching mine for something I wasn't sure I could give. "I didn't want to live a life where I was just a healer, where I was only called upon when something was broken." Her voice wavered. "I wanted to be more."
I understood that.
More than I cared to admit.
She looked away, her voice quieter now. "And when I left… when I walked away from everything I knew, from the people who raised me, the people who loved me…" She swallowed. "I think I hurt them more than I ever intended."
I watched her carefully.
She had never spoken about what she left behind. Not like this.
And I could see it in her now—the weight she carried.
She had left, not because she didn't love them, but because she couldn't stay.
Because she was afraid of losing herself.
I reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. She squeezed back.
Alaria, who had been unusually quiet, let out a slow exhale, rubbing the back of her neck. "Well, damn. Now I feel like I have to say something equally profound."
Lucian snorted. "That's assuming you even have anything profound to say."
Alaria kicked him in the shin.
Then, after a beat, she leaned back against the carriage wall, tilting her head toward the ceiling. "You all talk about not having choices," she murmured. "About being forced into things. But for me? It was the opposite."
I frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"
Alaria exhaled. "I had too many choices."
We all looked at her.
She gave a small, bitter smile. "My parents were mercenaries. Travelers. Fighters. People with no real home. And they wanted me to have more than that. They wanted me to choose my own path, to be whatever the hell I wanted to be."
She twirled one of her daggers between her fingers.
"And you know what? It was suffocating."
I blinked. "Suffocating?"
She let out a dry chuckle. "Yeah. Because when you have too many choices, when you have too many roads ahead of you, it starts to feel like you'll never pick the right one." Her green eyes flickered. "So I never picked at all. I just… went. I ran from one thing to the next, never settling, never committing. Because if I chose wrong, if I failed—then it was my fault."
A strange silence settled between us.
Because none of us had ever thought about it that way.
She huffed, looking away. "And now? Now I'm here, in the middle of a damn war, and I still don't know if I'm where I'm supposed to be."
Lucian nudged her foot with his own. "You're here."
Alaria blinked.
Lucian shrugged. "That's gotta mean something."
She was silent for a long moment.
Then, finally—
"…Yeah."
Her voice was quieter.
And maybe, just maybe, she believed it.
The carriage rocked gently, the desert wind whispering around us, carrying away the weight of everything we had just laid bare.
We had all lost something.
We had all run from something.
We had all been shaped by forces beyond our control.
But right now, none of that mattered.
Right now, the past was just the past.
And for the first time in a long, long time—
We weren't carrying it alone.
The carriage rattled softly over the uneven road, the golden dunes of Azareth stretching endlessly into the horizon. The sky was shifting now, deepening from molten gold to something darker, something richer—the quiet embrace of night creeping in.
We had all spoken.
We had all laid bare the pieces of our past, the fractures that had shaped us into the people we were now.
And yet, one voice remained absent.
Rowan.
He sat in the corner of the carriage, his presence like a shadow, quiet and distant, yet undeniably there. He hadn't said a word, hadn't moved, hadn't reacted.
Until now.
"…You all think too much," he muttered.
His voice was low, barely more than a breath, but it cut through the lingering quiet like a blade.
Alaria blinked. "Excuse me?"
Rowan exhaled, shifting slightly, his piercing, dark eyes flickering toward us beneath the hood that always seemed to shadow his face. "You sit here and talk about choices," he murmured. "About fate, about regret, about whether or not you deserve the life you have."
He leaned back against the carriage wall, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
"But that's a luxury."
Silence.
Rowan's gaze flickered toward the window, his jaw tightening slightly. "I never had the time to think about choices," he said, his voice lacking any of the anger or bitterness one might expect. It was just stating a fact. "I never thought about the future, or the past, or whether or not I was in control of it. I just… existed."
Something in the way he said that made my stomach twist.
Elaris watched him carefully, her brows furrowing slightly. "Rowan…"
He didn't acknowledge her, didn't look at any of us. He just continued.
"I grew up in a city where people didn't live past thirty." His voice was still calm, still even. "Where survival wasn't about making the right choice, or following some path, or finding meaning. It was about making it through the night. It was about not being the weakest link."
Lucian frowned slightly. "What city?"
Rowan's fingers drummed once against his knee. "Drak'thul."
A sharp silence followed.
Even Gareth tensed at that.
Because Drak'thul was no ordinary city.
It was a place carved from shadows and desperation, a land of mist-choked valleys and labyrinthine streets, where those who had been cast out from the world gathered. A place where crime and survival were the same thing.
A place where hope went to die.
Rowan sighed. "There were no grand legacies. No expectations. No family names or noble bloodlines dictating what you would be." His voice remained eerily calm. "You were either useful, or you were dead."
No one spoke.
Because we knew.
Drak'thul was a place of assassins, thieves, mercenaries, and ghosts—people who had nowhere else to go, who had already been abandoned by the world.
Rowan had survived there.
That alone spoke volumes.
"Every day," he continued, "I woke up knowing that someone would try to kill me. Maybe it would be a rival. Maybe it would be the people I worked for. Maybe it would be someone who just didn't like the way I breathed." His fingers flexed slightly. "You learn not to think about anything other than the present. Not about what you want. Not about what you could be. Just about what will keep you alive."
He exhaled.
"And for the longest time, I thought that was all there was to life."
His words hung in the air, wrapping around us, pressing into the very space between us.
Elaris was the first to speak.
"But you left."
It wasn't a question.
Rowan's eyes flickered toward her, something unreadable passing through his expression.
Then, finally—
"Yeah," he murmured.
Alaria tilted her head. "Why?"
Another silence.
Rowan's jaw tensed slightly.
Then, his voice dropped lower.
"Because I realized I was already dead."
The words sent a shiver down my spine.
He didn't elaborate.
He didn't need to.
Because I understood what he meant.
There were worse things than death.
There was living without meaning.
There was becoming nothing but a weapon.
There was forgetting what it meant to be human at all.
Rowan had walked that line.
And somehow, he had chosen to leave it behind.
Lucian exhaled, shaking his head. "Damn," he muttered. "And here I thought I had a shitty childhood."
Rowan smirked slightly, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "It wasn't all bad," he admitted. "I learned how to survive. I learned how to fight. I learned how to move unseen. And I learned…" His gaze flickered toward me.
And then—he smiled.
Just a little.
"…That there are worse people to stand beside than you lot."
A slow breath escaped me.
The others exchanged glances.
Then, Alaria smirked, nudging his leg with her foot. "Damn, that almost sounded like a compliment."
Rowan rolled his eyes. "Don't get used to it."
Lucian chuckled. "Too late."
And just like that—
The weight in the carriage wasn't as heavy.
We had all spoken.
We had all laid ourselves bare.
And somehow, through all our separate pasts—our burdens, our struggles, our regrets—one thing had become clear.
We were here.
We were together.
And for once, the past wasn't a chain.
It was just a story.
One we carried together.