The sky was stained with the faintest traces of twilight, as though the day itself had given its final breath and left behind only a fragile warmth. I stood at the edge of what remained—splintered buildings now softened by time and dust, roads long cracked open like old wounds. The world had not ended in fire or ice, as so many had once feared, but in quiet unraveling. Little by little, it had hollowed out, until all that was left were shadows and fragments.

  And yet, I walked on.

  I don’t remember when I first found you. It may have been when the rivers were still clear and the air held some memory of green. Or perhaps I had always known you. You were sitting by the water, tracing circles on its surface with a fingertip that trembled ever so slightly. I almost turned away then, thinking you were no different from the other echoes I passed each day. But something kept me there. Some thread I could not see or sever.

  You didn’t look at me when I sat down beside you. The water between us rippled softly, and I watched your reflection blur and reassemble itself again and again. It was a kind of magic I did not understand, and I think you knew that.

  We didn’t speak. There was no need. In silence, I reached out and touched your hand. It was cold, but not with the chill of the dead. There was life still, buried under the frost. And when you flinched at my touch, I understood what you were. Cursed. Bound. Left behind by someone who thought they could change the ending.

  You smiled. A quiet, knowing thing. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “I never left,” I told you, though I wasn’t sure the words were mine.

  The days that followed were strange things. We wandered together through pces I barely recognized—bridges that led nowhere, forests where the trees grew upside down, and empty towns where voices whispered from behind walls that had long since crumbled. Sometimes we spoke, but mostly we moved in silence. I think we both feared that if we said too much, the fragile bond between us would shatter.

  I learned the nguage of your hands. How your fingers trembled whenever we crossed into pces where the air grew thin and heavy. How you hesitated before stepping over broken thresholds, as though unseen guardians still barred your way. And I noticed the way you always looked to the sky at dusk, searching for something that never appeared.

  We were both waiting, I realized. Though I didn’t yet understand what for.

  On the seventh day, we came to the valley. The nd there was pale and smooth, as though it had been carved from bone. A river ran through its center, slow and dark, and I knew without asking that this was where it ended for most. You knelt by the water’s edge again, your hands cupping its surface, and I watched as you tried to gather its weightless darkness in your palms.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  You looked at me, your eyes the color of the hour before dawn. “I’m looking for something I lost.”

  “What was it?”

  You shook your head. “A promise.”

  I almost said that promises had no weight. That they couldn’t sink or drift away. But then I remembered the warmth of your hand in mine, and the way you had trembled when I found you. Some things carry more weight than stone.

  Later, we camped by the river. There was no fire—we had long since given up such things—but you sang quietly to yourself as you traced patterns in the dirt. The song was not of this nguage or any other I knew, and yet I understood. It was a song of farewell.

  I dreamt that night of a door with no handle, and of you standing on the other side, pressing your palm against it. You were trying to tell me something, but your voice was swallowed by the silence between us.

  When I woke, you were gone.

  I found you upstream, standing knee-deep in the river. The water didn’t disturb you; it simply parted around your legs as though you weren’t there at all. You held something in your hands now—something small, pale, and flickering. Light. A single drop of it, cupped between your fingers.

  “It’s not enough,” you whispered as I approached.

  “It’s all we need,” I replied.

  You turned then, and I saw the truth written across your face. The curse had not left you. It had simply changed shape. Where before it had bound your limbs and frozen your voice, now it wound its way around your heart. I reached out, but you stepped back.

  “This isn’t your burden.”

  “I chose it,” I said.

  You ughed, though there was no joy in it. “You don’t understand. We cannot carry each other. We cannot even understand each other.”

  “I don’t need to understand.” I took another step forward, and then another. The water was cold, but I kept walking. “I only need to stay.”

  You shook your head. “Staying won’t change it.”

  “Leaving won’t either.”

  The light in your hands fred, briefly. Then dimmed.

  We stood there, silent, in the middle of the river. I think, in another life, we might have stood on a bridge instead. We might have spoken words of comfort, or hope. But here, there was only the river, the twilight, and the thin thread between us.

  The days after that blurred. We walked without purpose. We spoke without meaning. The world seemed to dissolve around us, until all that remained was the sky, the dust beneath our feet, and the pulse of the faint light you still carried. I tried to remember why I had followed you in the first pce. Whether it was your sadness, or your strength, or simply the fact that you were there. I couldn’t.

  And yet, I walked on.

  When we came to the tower, I knew it was the end. Not just for you or me, but for the road we had shared. You touched the stone walls with reverence, your fingers tracing old symbols that pulsed faintly under your skin. I stood back and watched as the doors opened without sound.

  “This is where I leave,” you said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  “I can’t bring you with me.”

  “You never could.”

  The light in your hands flickered again. You looked at it as though you had only just remembered it was there. And then you looked at me.

  “You’ll stay?” you asked.

  “I’ll stay.”

  You nodded. The doors closed behind you, and I sat down on the steps of the tower. The sky above was dark now, and the stars were strange. They blinked in unfamiliar patterns, speaking nguages no one remembered. I listened anyway.

  I don’t know how long I waited. Time had never worked the same since the world began to break. But I stayed.

  And when the doors opened again, it wasn’t you who emerged. It was only a faint wind, carrying with it the smallest drop of light. It drifted down into my palm, weightless but warm. I closed my fingers around it and held it to my chest.

  Even if everything has passed away, I thought, something remains.

  And so I walked on.