Dawn found Ana on top of a hill, covered by a breeze that tasted of early winter. In front of her, the horizon stretched out like an unfathomable canvas: sleeping fields, ancient rooftops, a gray sky that refused to break at all.
In her hands, a small carved wooden chest. Inside, the last fragments of the life that had marked her: a frayed ribbon that belonged to her mother, a rusty pendant Zane gave her at school, a letter from Lucian that said "forgive me" without explaining anything else. And a handful of ashes...from the letters Helena had secretly left her the night before.
Ana had read them one by one. They didn't justify, they didn't ask for forgiveness. They only confessed. Pain, emptiness, jealousy, abandonment. Words she understood all too well.
The fire of the past had burned so much. But now it was she who held the ashes.
Behind her, the world she left behind: the gray city that ignored her, her old house she no longer recognized, her father buried silently under the ruins of his own decisions. Her mother, now more fragile and human, had held her hand the day before and cried for lost years. Her siblings...they barely remembered her face, but something inside them had cracked at the sight of her again.
None of them could change the past. But she could decide what to do with it.
Lucian waited at the base of the hill, beside an old, silent car. He had come alone, unescorted, without escort, without power. Only with his shadow and his regret.
He asked nothing of her. He just waited. For the first time, he let her decide.
Ana closed the chest and hugged it to her chest. Her eyes roamed the horizon, the life, the pain... and she thought of all the versions she had been: the girl who dreamed of escape, the broken teenager who learned to be silent, the woman who mistook love for need.
And now... who did she want to be?
She could run away. Go far away. Change her name. Pretend none of this existed.
Or he could stay. Face it all. Be her, scars and all.
She opened the chest, took out the pendant and hung it around her neck. Then she left it on the topmost stone, next to the ashes. A symbol. A clasp.
Then she went down the hill.
Lucian looked up as he saw her approach. Her eyes were not the same. There was something new in them: fear, perhaps. Humility. A longing he dared not name.
Ana stopped in front of him.
-I don't know what will become of us," she said. But I'm not running away anymore.
Lucian nodded slowly.
-Then let's walk. Even if it's among the ruins.
And without holding hands, they walked together towards the car, towards the uncertain end... or perhaps, towards a new beginning.