Velin straightened, just slightly. Bunny’s smirk twitched at the corner, almost feral. Both of them understood: She wasn’t going back. And whatever came next would be built from that certainty. They watched her walk out, the scroll in her hand like a weapon.
When she returned, the smoke still clung to her hair. Not from the fire itself, but from walking through its ghost—through the place where the lies had finally burned down to their frames.
The seven drawers were empty now, not because they had been cleared, but because there was nothing left to hold. The maps were gone, the ink was gone, the choice was gone. Everything was gone except for what she held in her own hands, she left nothing behind for others to salvage, only ash.
The far end of the Aftermath Bridge was not an arrival. It was a threshold.
The Queen stood with ash still in the seams of her fingers, the Bridge’s heat at her back. Beyond her: the land where nothing has yet been rebuilt, where even the ghosts seem unsure if they’re welcome.
Velin was already there, silent, holding the pen—not offering it yet, but turning it once in his fingers as if testing its weight. Bunny circled, cloak flaring, muttering commentary about how long they’ve been “loitering in this emotional limbo” and “whether she intends to plant roots or just glare at the dirt.”
Velin stood to the side of the bridge beyond the wreckage of soot and ash that remained behind. The old kingdom has burned to the ground, and she had lit the match, watching without emotion as it fell.