I was discharged from the infirmary after a single night's stay, once the physician confirmed that the fever had fully abated, leaving no trace of danger.

Stepping out the door, my body still bore the remnants of weariness, each step so light it seemed afraid to touch the ground. The morning sun draped a tender gold upon my back — a warmth I had never thought to be so grateful for, not until after the delirium of fever.

The weather in Berlinard was most often bathed in sunlight, yet at times, sudden showers would fall, as though intent on drowning the entire city. Rare though they were, they struck all the fiercer — abrupt, cold, and brimming with nostalgia. As if the heavens themselves could no longer hold what they carried, and so spilled it all at once, just as I... had done that afternoon.

In my hand I still held the handkerchief he had left behind, now dry, neatly folded. It was the only thing I carried away from this place — a testament that I had once been saved. Not only in body, but in some fragile corner of the soul as well.

On the road away from the infirmary, I lifted my gaze toward the high, unending sky. I did not know where I was bound next, or how I would fill the hollow within my heart. But I knew this much: at the very least, I was still alive.

And Caelum was gone.

The house where we had once lived — where laughter had lingered, where dinners were shared beneath the dim lamp, where silence once accompanied the rain beyond the window — was now nothing but an echoing void. Everything remained as it had been: the porcelain cup he favored for tea, the book I had forgotten upon the chair, the tablecloth we once quarreled over — beige or cream? Everything remained... except him.

No footsteps crossed that threshold anymore. No familiar hand turned the latch at dusk, no ash-grey eyes followed me quietly from the corner of the room.

That house was no longer a home. It was but an empty shell, heavy with silence, swollen with memories, laden with a nameless grief.

Perhaps... it was time for me to leave.

To go somewhere farther — a place where his steps had never reached, where the wind no longer carried whispers of yesterday. I did not know where that place might be; I only knew that if I remained, I would shatter.

I looked again at the handkerchief folded so carefully in my palm. The royal rose embroidered along its hem was still intact, only faintly wrinkled from yesterday's rain.

It rested quietly in my hand — small, silent, yet bearing the trace of an act that had pulled me back from the frail boundary between survival and collapse.

Reason told me I should simply offer thanks, put it away, and continue along the path I had chosen.

And yet... a thought rose within me — bolder, straying beyond the cautious shell I had worn ever since leaving the capital.

I wished to know the name of that soldier.

Not to repay him with formality. Not because his presence had felt strangely familiar. But simply because... I wished to know.

Who was he — the one who carried me through the fever, who never asked my name, who expected nothing in return, and yet quietly did what was right?

In all the days following Caelum's loss, I never thought myself capable of caring for anything beyond my own grief. Yet that name — a name I had never thought to ask — now tapped gently upon the closed door of my memory, like a breath of wind stirring where everything had lain sealed.

Perhaps it was nothing more than passing curiosity.

Or perhaps... the beginning of something I could not yet name.

Whatever it might be — whether I stepped once more toward that soldier, whether I returned the handkerchief, whether I allowed myself to remember the serenity in his gaze — all of it would be mine to decide.

No longer for Caelum.

No longer for a life already ended, nor for a heart already broken.

I still had the right to choose.

The right to move forward, even if each step felt heavy, as though carrying an autumn already lost.

And this time... if I chose to turn back, or to walk ahead, it would be for no reason other than that I myself willed it so.

No one could decide it for me anymore.

Whether love, or grief, or even a simple unspoken gratitude — all of it would be my decision.

Farewell, Caelum.

Farewell, ash-grey eyes that once held my entire world.

Farewell, the blazing summers we shared, the midnight hours with you reading and me steeping tea, the moments that had seemed as though peace might last forever.

Farewell, to the man I once loved more than myself — and who left me behind in silence.

I will not curse you, nor reproach you, nor cling to the illusion that you might one day return.

For if love, once true, has found no place to remain, then it must be laid to rest with the gentleness of every last fragment I have left to give.

Farewell, Caelum.