Not all wounds healed with time. In the shadows of the eastern mountains, where Umbrael's dark armies had scorched entire woodlands, silence reigned. Animals had fled, the wind carried only echoes. Lucky traveled there alone, she walked barefoot over ash. She whispered apologies to the trees, and in the center of the devastation, she knelt and buried her hands into the ruined soil. waited, for hours, and nothing. Then, a tremor, a spark, a blade of green pushing its way through blackened earth.
It was a promise, and Lucky stayed there, tending that first sprout, until it had grown tall enough to hold its own against the wind. The river spirits had vanished during the war, retreating to hidden wells and forgotten springs. Without them, water became unpredictable, floods where there should be droughts, silence where there had been songs. Lucky followed ancient riverstones to the base of Moonthread Falls, singing a song her mother once taught her, a lullaby made of mist and memory. One by one, the spirits returned. Ethereal forms of liquid silver and blue, eyes like raindrops, voices like bells. They did not speak at first, and they danced.
A spiral of joy and sorrow, grief and gratitude, and Lucky danced with them, barefoot in the river, as the waters remembered how to sing again. Though reborn, Auralis was not free from guilt. He chose to leave the heart of the forest and walk the world on foot. No wings, no magic, just a staff and his memory. He visited the places he had once darkened, the abandoned villages, the ruined towers, the empty groves. At each, he sat and listened. To the wind, to the people, to the silence.
When people asked who he was, he replied simply, "A gardener." Some welcomed him, some spat at his feet. But in each place, he planted a seed, and in time, they grew. The first anniversary of the war's end came quietly. No grand parades., no forced celebrations. Instead, each community lit a lantern at dusk and told a story of something they'd almost forgotten. A memory nearly lost to war. Some stories were happy, weddings, laughter, dances.
Others were painful, goodbyes, loneliness, fear. Lucky walked through each village with a tiny journal, collecting these stories like fallen petals. At the end of the night, she climbed a hill, lit her own lantern, and whispered: "I was afraid I wouldn't be enough. But I learned… I never had to be alone." Her lantern rose slowly into the sky, and a thousand others joined it. One morning, deep in a valley where moss blanketed the world like a lullaby, Lucky found a creature unlike any she'd ever seen: a small child made of living stone. He couldn't speak, only hummed, cracks laced his body like scars.
But his eyes were bright with wonder. He had been born during the war, when magic had frayed and life had become… strange. Lucky took him by the hand, and she brought him to the Grovekeepers, who studied and cared for him. They named him Echo, and though he never spoke, his laughter, the first time he laughed, sounded like mountains singing and it echoed through the whole grove. The other fairies stopped what they were doing and listened to the laughter and some joined in. Others sang to it and through the grove the songs sounded like a symphony in the ears of all, and the others that weren't singing or laughing, were dancing to the music.