---- known pain all my life......it was something deeper, primal The bond.


    The matebond.


    Tt was really her.


    A thousand thoughts swirled in my mind, her brown eyes flickered in my sight.


    She was good, she was perfect except for a disced knee.


    I had left her well.


    How....


    How could she be dead? No! This is a mistake! It must be...


    The excruciating pain in my chest only worsens and I w my chest hearing my Cret growling in my mind.The steady, defiant connection that had tied her to meher life to minewas shattering.


    ? Zariy....an.


    Her name fell from my lips, more of a snarl, choked ---- with anguish.


    My ws dug into the cracked earth beneath me, tearing at the groun.


    I struggled to pull myself up, but the pain only smacked me back down.


    The bond wasnt just weakening; it was fading Dying.


    And the worst thing was that I could do nothing to stop it.


    And then through this storm of pain, something caught my eye.


    A flicker in the dark sky.


    Faint but undeniable.


    A ray of light in this never ending darkness.


    My head snapped up and my bloodshot eyes narrow on the impossible sight.


    Antern.


    High above, glowing faintly, like a cruel beacon in the suffocating darkness.


    My breath caught, my chest tightening further as recognition mmed into me.


    ---- Fucking No! I growled, the denial wing its way out of my throat.My blurred vision stayed fixed on the little light swaying gently in the void, its glow steady and unrelenting Td seen that glow before.


    Memories surge forward and crash into my mind like tidal waves, eroding rocks at a shore.


    Td seen her holding it....


    Smiling while staring at it.


    The entire country was lit with them on my Princesses birthday.


    She was chasing back then Giggling, shining brighter than those lights.


    It was a celebration back then...


    But this...


    this didn''t felt like it In our world,nterns were only lit on two days....


    the day to mark the arrival of life or the day to mourn its departure.


    ---- eee = Birth or death.


    And this solentern in this never ending darkness...


    it wasn''t about life.


    T somehow knew it.


    NOI The roar tore from me, rage and fearced into a single sound that echoed through the emptiness that only mocked me in return.


    My fists mmed into the ground as I forced myself upright, holding the tree bark, my body shaking, but I push it forward.


    If she is here....


    I need to find her.


    Thisntern is my only chance.


    Because ofck of winds in thisnd of darkness, thentern will only rises higher from its ce of origin.


    It will only go up and then at one time..., it will vanish.


    I need to reach her before it vanishes.