**Chapter X: Of Moss and Moonlight**
The world had changed.
Not in fire. Not in cataclysm. But in quiet things—like the way wind touched skin, or how sunlight fell without distortion. Elias—or Lioren, as he was now called—lived in a home nestled in the arms of wide meadows that swayed like seafoam under an open sky. The grass whispered, and the clouds above wandered without rush, like dreamers with nowhere to be.
Days had passed—soft, strange days where everything tasted of newness and memory.
The cottage was simple. Wood creaked with the voices of time. Herbs hung from the rafters, their scent mingling with firewood and something always gently simmering in the kitchen. There was magic here—low and old and humming beneath the floorboards, drawn into the protective glyphs etched along the walls. Elias could feel it, like the warm presence of someone watching over him.
He was a child. That truth returned to him in every reflection—in the small hands that struggled to tie his sandals, in the laughter that escaped his lips before his mind could catch it. Yet within him pulsed the remnants of someone else: the weight of trials, of questions, of a name whispered by gods and unmade by mirrors.
Still, it was peace.
His new mother—Aelira—was a woman made of light and steadiness. Her smile folded softly like bread dough, her voice carried warmth like a hearth fire. Elias watched her craft tinctures from sun-dried leaves and glowing mushrooms. Her potions smelled of bark and honey, of crushed petals and salt. Sometimes, he caught her whispering to the vials before corking them, her lips brushing language into magic.
He remembered how her hands felt the first time she brushed the leaves from his hair.
*Like I was something delicate. Like I was allowed to be held.*
His father—when he appeared, tall and cloaked in the colors of stormlight—carried the air of cities unseen. He spoke less, but when he did, his voice shimmered with layered echoes, and his robes trailed sparks that fizzled in the doorway. There were emblems stitched in gold on his sleeves. Elias once traced them with a finger and felt stars move beneath his skin.
An Imperial Mage, his mother had whispered.
Elias didn't know what that meant yet. But it sounded like someone important. Someone who spoke to fire and asked it to dance.
One morning, while running barefoot through the dewy grass, Elias froze.
"Bird," he murmured. "No, wait—sparrow."
He stared up, blinking. He could understand the language here.
Not just the people—but the world. The way the wind sighed over the hilltops. The way the stream babbled secrets between reeds.
*How do I know this?* he thought.
Was it part of the rebirth? A gift sewn into his bones? Or had he always known, and simply forgotten how to listen?
"I don't want to run from things anymore," he said aloud to the sky.
The words came out raw. Real.
In the distance, Aelira's voice called, "Lioren! Come help me with the rosemary!"
He turned. Grass clung to his feet. His chest rose and fell, light with breath.
And for a moment—a single, aching moment—he didn't feel lost.
---
In the evenings, Elias would sit on the fence post near the garden, watching the sky blush into mauve and indigo. The stars here didn't hum with code or machinery. They were just stars. Scattered, radiant, and unbothered by the weight of questions.
Sometimes, melodies drifted in his mind—fragments of another world.
*"I feel like I'm just floating, without a place to go."*
They'd come unbidden—half-remembered lyrics from a song without a name.
*"Paint my heart in different shades, but it all fades into blue."*
He didn't understand why they hurt so much. But they made the quiet deeper. More honest.
The meadow cradled him in its arms. He learned the names of flowers. He pressed clover between book pages. He learned to whistle with grass and how to climb the low-limbed plum tree behind the house.
He wasn't ready to call it home.
But he stopped asking when he would wake up.
And in that silence—in that blooming, aching silence—Elias began to become someone new.
---
*You are not forgotten,* the wind seemed to whisper.
*You are not alone.*