The forest had begun to bloom again.
Slowly.
Delicately.
Like it, too, was learning how to breathe after surviving fire.
Where the Flame Crucible once stood, now only a hollow remained — filled with obsidian lilies, moongrass, and a strange warmth that no longer burned.
Caelina stood at its edge.
No crown on her head.
No blade at her side.
Just her hand resting over her heart, and her eyes reflecting the sky — clear now, for the first time in generations.
The Hollow had rebuilt.
Not a kingdom, but a haven.
A place for broken wolves, rootless packs, wandering dreamers.
They called it N'toka, an ancient word meaning "what is stitched will hold."
Elara served as the shieldmistress — more scar than skin now, but still laughing louder than thunder when the pups asked about "the goddess of fire who tried to eat the sky."
Zela survived. Barely.
But her leg never healed.
So she turned her flame into books — founding the first academy for spirit-bound combat in living memory.
And Tavian?
There was no grave.
But there was a stone.
Black. Simple.
Etched in silver:
"He held what burned so others could live."
Beneath it, a single salt-lily bloomed every new moon.
No one planted it.
No one watered it.
Yet it never failed to rise.
That night, under the soft curve of a kind moon, Caelina sat with the young ones.
They pressed around her legs, wide-eyed, tails wagging, some barely out of shift.
"Tell us the story," one whispered.
"Yes," another said. "Tell us how the fire was broken!"
Caelina smiled, brushing a curl from her brow.
"You want the story of the Crucible?"
"Yes!" they shouted in chorus.
She leaned forward.
Eyes gleaming.
Voice soft.
"Then let me tell you about a girl who carried both fire and moon in her chest.
Who was born not to rule — but to remember.
Who walked into death not to win... but to end the forgetting."
They were silent, even the rowdy ones.
"Did she kill the fire goddess?" a pup whispered.
Caelina looked to the stars.
Then back at them.
"She forgave her."
In the distance, Elara watched, arms crossed.
"She's going soft."
Zela, limping past with a scroll under arm, snorted.
"No. She's going whole."
Later that night, when the campfire had thinned and the pups had fallen asleep mid-howl, Caelina walked to the hill alone.
The same hill where she had first seen the twin moons align.
Now, only one moon was full.
But it was enough.
She knelt. Whispered something no one heard.
And from her belt, she untied the last fragment of her ancestral blade — the one that had ended Miren's reign.
She placed it in the soil.
"No more thrones," she said.
"Just roots."
And walked away.
Behind her, the wind stirred.
And the blade sank softly into the ground, dissolving into salt.