Chapter 2246: A Kiss Goodbye

“Stay, live, love, grow… this is the greatest gift you can give me as a father,” his father had said, and Andar had stayed. Had obeyed. Had spent countless years wondering if that had been the right choice.

He was doing great work in the Black Tower, and yet he wondered if it was ever enough.

“I know.”

She did not light the fireplace. The memory of the fire was warm enough.

“I have to go.”

Mira laughed, a wet, broken sound. “You always were a romantic.”

And somewhere, farther still, a father and son fought side by side against the end of all things.

“I know.” She pulled away from him, turning toward the window. The nameless lights outside had begun to dim, as if the Eternal Tower in the distance was swallowing them.

“When I return, we will plant another tree. A silver willow, just like the first one. And we will watch it grow.”

“Do you remember our first child? Her name was Liriel. She had your eyes, and my stubbornness, and she lived for three hundred years before the sickness took her. You named her after an Angel.”

“Only with you.”
𝚏𝑟𝘦𝗲𝘸𝔢𝘣𝖓ℴ𝒗ⅇ𝑙.𝘤𝖔𝗆

“Then don’t go.”

Mira stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the warm light of the house. In her hand, she held a small wooden bird. Their youngest son’s carving, weathered and gray.
𝒻𝖗𝒆ⅇ𝘸𝚎𝚋𝘯𝓸𝓿𝐞𝒍.𝔠𝔬𝓂

He looked at her. Really looked at her, the way he had when they first met, when she had been just a girl with too much power and not enough sense, and he had been just a boy trying to prove he deserved to exist.

“They will die.”

They stood like that for a long time, wrapped in each other, as the house creaked and the lights outside faded one by one. Andar could feel the Eternal Tower now, pressing against the boundaries of existence, testing for weaknesses. He could feel his father, too, somewhere out in the endless dark, fighting a war that had no end.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“Don’t.” Mira’s voice was sharp, cutting through his spiral. “Don’t you dare. We have had trillions of years together, Andar. We have loved, and lost, and loved again. We have watched civilizations rise and fall. We have held our children as they died, and their children, and theirs. And through all of it, through every single moment, you have been there. That is not nothing. That is everything.”

Andar did not know if the words were real or just his own desperate hope given voice. It didn’t matter.

“I’m afraid,” he said. It was not an easy admission. He had not made it in countless eons.

“I know.”

“But not like this.” He took her face in his hands, gently, the way he had done the first time he kissed her, on a battlefield covered in demon blood. “Not like this, Mira. If that creature wins—if it breaks through—there will be nothing left. No house. No memories. No Existence. Everything we have ever loved, everything we have ever been, will be unmade as if it never existed at all.”

And yet, he tucked it into his robe, over his heart.

And then he stepped out, into the dark, and the door closed behind him.

“I have to go,” he said again, but softer this time.

“I remember.”

“He was fighting before I was born. Before my mother was born. Before this, Existence was born.” Andar shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s all there is. Just endless war. Just endless…”

“We held her. Both of us. We held her while she died, and we buried her under that willow tree, the one that grew silver leaves. And then we stood there, in the rain, and we didn’t speak for three days. Do you remember?”

The door to the house opened onto nothing. No threshold, no path, just the howling dark beyond existence. Andar squared his shoulders, called his power to him, the power of a being who had mastered magic so completely that spells were no longer needed, only will, and took a step forward.

“If you return.”

“I know.” Mira pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Then go. But you come back to me, Andar Erikson. You hear me? You come back, or I will follow you into whatever afterlife exists and drag you home myself.”

Andar looked down at the bird. It was absurd. A trinket. A memory of a memory. And yet…

“Come back to me,” she thought, sending the words out into the void, hoping they would reach him. “Come back to me, you impossible man.”

He turned.

Mira stood at the window for a long time after he left, watching the lights fade one by one. The house was quiet now, emptier than it had been in millennia. She picked up his chair, ran her hand over the worn wood, and sat down.

“Her death nearly destroyed us. But it didn’t. Because we had each other. And we had—we had hope. The hope that there would be more children. More love. More life.” She turned back to face him, her tears falling freely now. “And there was. There was so much more. Even after Liriel, there was so much more.”

“Wait.”

“If I go out there, if I leave this house, if I step beyond existence, I may not come back. Not this time. The final hurdle is too great. My father, ” He stopped, swallowed. “Even he cannot hold it forever.”

“Everyone dies, Andar. Everyone. We have learned that lesson so many times it has worn grooves into our souls.”

“You’d better be.”

“If I don’t—”

“Don’t—” He stared at her.

“Take this,” she said, pressing it into his palm. “For luck.”

“And there will be again.” Andar crossed to her, pulled her into his arms. She was so small, so impossibly small for someone who held so much of his heart. “After I return…”

Mira’s expression was calm. Resigned. The look of someone who had made peace with every possible outcome a very long time ago. “Don’t go,” she repeated. “Stay here. With me. Let someone else fight this war. We have done enough. We have given enough. Let the Primordials fight. Let the Archai fight. Let—”

Andar’s chest ached. “I remember.”

“He’s still fighting,” Mira said, as if reading his thoughts. “Your father. I would know if he had fallen. We all would.”

He kissed her. Once, the way he had kissed her a thousand thousand times, on a million worlds, in a million different lives. And then he stepped back.

Somewhere, in the distance, the Eternal Tower screamed, or perhaps it was the voice of the Old One.

“Not much longer,” his father’s voice whispered in his mind, faint as a star’s last light. “I can hold it. Go. Finish it.”

Mira closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet. “I know, but I have lost you once before.”

Mira closed her eyes and waited.