Evening light slipped through the tavern’s shutters, soft and hazy, the kind that made everything look gentler than it was. Leon stepped inside Bram’s house for what he already felt would be one of his last tis as a resident. The tavern area was quiet at this hour; no clattering mugs, no drunken argunts, no stove heat rolling out from the kitchen. Just the faint sll of old ale and wood polish.
His room was small and barely furnished, but over the past week it had beco sothing close to familiar. A folded blanket, a wooden stool, a sack with his spare shirt and a few items Bram had given him in exchange for all the work he had done. Seven days wasn’t long, but it was long enough for things to settle on you without warning.
Leon lifted the sack and began sorting what little he owned. He folded his spare tunic, rolled the blanket tight, then tied it all together the way he rembered his old man doing back in his previous life. The motion felt automatic. Reassuring. A reminder that he hadn’t lost everything he used to be.
He slung the bundle over his shoulder.
Footsteps padded up behind him.
Leon didn’t turn right away. He recognized the rhythm. Light steps. Slight pause. Then another two quick ones. Only one person in this place walked like that.
Lyra.
"Are you... packing?" Her voice ca from the doorway.
Leon looked over his shoulder. She was hugging herself with her arms, brows pulled tight, hair a little ssy like she had rushed down the stairs the mont she heard movent.
"Yeah." He tightened the cloth strip around his bundle. "It’s about ti."
A flicker passed through her eyes—sothing between confusion and hurt.
"So soon?"
"It’s been a week," Leon said, trying to keep his tone even. "Your father’s been generous enough letting stay here this long. I don’t want to be an inconvenience."
"You’re not an inconvenience." She stepped into the room. "My father likes you. The custors like you. Sylveon likes you, and he doesn’t like anyone."
Leon cracked a faint smile. "Doesn’t an I should stay here forever."
She moved closer. "You found a place already?"
"A house that could pass as one," he admitted. "Cheap enough. Needs work. But it’ll do."
Her throat bobbed, like she was swallowing sothing heavy. "Why leave, then? Why right now?"
Leon hesitated. He could have told her the truth—that his awakening, Rowan’s warnings, the dangers closing in, all of it demanded action. But that would drag her into troubles she shouldn’t even know exist.
So he gave her sothing simpler.
"There’s sothing I need to do in the Kingdom of Starhallow," he said. "Sothing I can’t ignore."
Lyra stared at him for a long mont. Her eyes trembled, but her voice didn’t. Not yet.
"And you couldn’t stay here one more night? Or one more week?" she asked softly.
"Staying longer won’t make leaving easier."
The silence thickened. Leon turned to pick up his pack.
Then arms wrapped around him from behind.
Lyra pressed herself against his back, holding him with a grip that wasn’t desperate at first—just firm, steady, like she was anchoring herself to him. Her cheek rested between his shoulder blades. Her breath trembled as it touched through his shirt.
Leon froze.
Not because the hug shocked him, but because of what it stirred in him. Sothing warm. Sothing dangerous. Sothing he hadn’t expected from her... or from himself.
His mind whispered the question before he could stop it.
Was this affection? Attraction? Or was it simply the first mont since awakening where he felt like he belonged sowhere?
He wasn’t sure. And the uncertainty hit harder than he liked.
Lyra pressed closer, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. Her chest rose and fell against his back, slow at first, then shaky. A tear landed on his shoulder, warm and startling.
"Don’t go," she said—quiet, but fierce in its own way. "Not like this."
Leon let out a slow breath, staring at the bare wall ahead. Every instinct told him not to turn around. If he did, he might see sothing in her eyes he wasn’t ready to face.
"Lyra..." His voice softened without his permission. "You don’t understand."
"Then explain it to ." Another tear. Then another. Her arms tightened. "I don’t want you to walk out of here like you’re just a traveler passing through."
More warmth seeped through his back. Her tears weren’t frantic—they were steady, heavy, like sothing she’d been holding in all week finally broke loose.
He swallowed. "I never planned to stay long."
"I did."
The words cut deeper than he expected.
Slowly, as if forcing himself, Leon reached down and peeled her hands from his waist. He didn’t push her away harshly, just enough to face her.
Lyra looked up, eyes red, cheeks wet. Her lips trembled as she tried to smile through it. She looked beautiful in a way that wasn’t forced or dramatic. Just real. Raw. Human.
"I want to follow you," she said.
Leon blinked.
He had braced himself for her sadness. Maybe her frustration. But not that.
"I want to go with you to Starhallow," she continued. "I want to be there. I want to stand by you. Not just as soone who serves drinks in her father’s tavern. I don’t care what waits for you there."
Leon’s breath caught.
She took a small step closer, looking up at him like she already knew his world was bigger than hers, and she didn’t care.
"I don’t want to stay behind wondering if you’re alive, wondering if you forgot this place, wondering if you forgot ."
Her hands reached for his again, trembling but determined.
"Take with you."
He stood there, unable to form a single thought, much less a response. The world outside the window seed to hold its breath. Even the tavern downstairs was still.
Leon had survived monsters, even death, and all the nights full of suffocating mories.
But this?
This left him speechless.
The Chapter ends on that quiet, stunned mont—Leon staring into her teary eyes, caught between duty and the warmth of soone who suddenly wanted to follow him wherever he was going.
He had no answer.
Not yet.
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