I ended the call.
No shouting. No pleading.
Only the quiet hum of the crystal was fading.
I looked at the communicator once more, then stared to the single name that still mattered.
I was not leaving the Mooncrown without a farewell, just not the kind they expected.
Before taking the skybound griffin that would carry me away, I had one final place to visit. One last knot to sever, clean and without mercy. Ending a bond did not always come with kindness. Sometimes it came like a blade, cold, sharp and silent. That was the severing bond I chose.
Selene.
She was still staying inside the Healer Sanctum of the Mooncrown, said to be “recovering.” I doubted most of it. With her, pain was often exaggerated, shaped to draw pity. She had always known how to twist truth until it cried.
I walked through the stone passageway of the sanctum, the sound of my boots echoing with each step. It felt like a countdown. Every pace brought me closer to freedom. My hand tightened around what I carried, a bundle wrapped in dark cloth, the flowers inside as black as night.
Black roses.
They fit perfectly.
Flowers of parting. Of endings. Not death of flesh, but death of bonds, lies and the past I once believed in.