Quiet, and much too long corridors welcomed me back. The darkness of our looming shadows trailed behind our figures and danced upon the walls via a held candlelight from the man in front of me. It was unbearingly long. But all I could do in the silence was watch with unblinking and dry eyes with the click and clack of our soles upon clean marble as a buzzing white noise. Before long, the man with unblemished and unwrinkled robes with a gold embroidered sash stopped at a door. A tall door, uncomfortably big at the end of this hallway. While holding the candle in one hand, he pushed the door open with another carefully. A light creak resounded in the silence as candlelight poured through the doorway.

“Here we are now,” he uttered quietly. “This will be your bedroom and where you will be resting from now on”

The pale moonlight poured in through the windows, clashing with the orange glow of the flickering hand held flame. The room was neat and clean, of ample size but still much too empty. There were a few cushions of chairs around a small table to the right, but at the center against the opposite wall was a bed with two nightstands caging either side. My shadow loomed in the doorway upon the marble floor, each step heavy and slow as I stood in the center of the room.

“If Your Holiness has any questions or requests, you are free to confide in me at any time.”

The chilling yet comforting silence of the room consumed me.

“... I would like to be alone. Please.”

It was quiet and without movement. After a moment, the candlelight swayed from behind me slowly.

“As Your Holiness wishes.”

Carefully, the candlelight, too, is consumed by the darkness of the shadows as the doors close behind me. The echoing of the pope’s footsteps begin to fade down the hallway. For minutes longer, I stand in the middle of the room, listless.

Eventually, I drag my feet upon the unusual softness of the carpet towards the bedside. As I lower myself to sit upon it, I reach out a hand and press into the neatly folded comforter.

“... It’s so soft.” My murmuring comes out cracked and dry. The tips of my fingers dip into a fold, curling as I grab a fist of the fluffed blanket ruining the clean and perfect untouched image. My jaw clenches as I grit my teeth.

It was just last night when the five of us were under the endless stars, our backs against the cold and hard forest ground. With a thin and worn cloth as an uncomfortable blanket, it still felt more comfortable than this eerie luxury. It was just last night when we quietly chatted our leftover energy away. Three of us at least, before Kaspar yelled at us and told us to sleep. We laughed and Shivani gently held my hand in silent agreement through their gloves, knowing our final battle could be our last. But the five of us wished and hoped anyway. I wished, and I hoped. 

It was just last night.

“No, I suppose that was… a thousand years ago.”

Numb. It didn’t feel real, yet the nightly sights while in the carriage to the temple looked so different from the capital city I knew.

“It is true.”

The pope’s words from less than an hour ago echo in my mind.

“As the old records had written, your holiness had died in that final battle.”

I loosen my fingers and withdrew them as I stood up from the bedside.

“And yet, just as it ended, the Sundrop Knight appeared to that lake in the palace’s grounds holding your limp body in their arms.”

I approach the moonlight, cruelly familiar pouring through the large window.

“They told the Pope and King at the time that the Divine Surya placed you under a slumber instead to heal your fatal wounds, and that someday you would return to this land, basked in the sun.”

My fingertips press against the cold glass, as I peer up at the full moon. The stars are barely noticeable, their brilliance blotted out by the lights from the capital city. How bright they looked back then, with you.

“Oh… I’m sorry. There are no records of what happened to your comrades after that battle. There was just a single line, ‘The Sundrop Knight then vanished without a trace’.”

I rest my forehead against the glass panes, the ends of my bangs barely tickling the bridge of my nose.

“What was I expecting? It’s not like…”

It was a mere four years, nearly five. Not even half of my life, and yet that time spent with everyone—with you, was everything to me. It was hard, and we were always getting injured and hurt at first. How could we not? We were children. You were hard to get along with, confusing, never speaking nor opening up to either me or Kaspar. Likewise, I think I was just as despondent. Our small trio grew to four, then five. And at the same time, what I felt—what we felt for each other grew just the same.

“It’s not like… it changes anything.”

The fact that you—the fact that everyone but me…

“... are long dead.”

It was that night under Viaios Pass that we passionately embraced after being separated from the others. While sitting bare with nothing but my cloak draped on me, you took my hand and spoke into it softly, carving words with your calloused fingertips.

[After everything is over—]

Though still half shielded by that helmet, your jaw clenched and lips uncharacteristically pressed together in nervous hesitance.

[—will you come with me, and live with me and my family?]

I gazed into your hand that fondly grasped mine, then into your golden eyes beyond the helmet before being overwhelmed by relief and joy. You leaned close and kissed my tears away, before meeting my lips once more. That night that was a mere months ago, was now a thousand years away. My Sun. My Sundrop Knight. My Shivani. I was content dying in your place. If the alternative was living a future without you, I would have died there a thousand times more.

But here I am, alive. And you have long perished.

Burning engulfs my eyes as stinging tears cloud over my blurred vision. Heat rises to my face, spreading throughout my body as the cold reality falls onto me.

“I…”

My voice chokes in my throat, hiccupping gasps of air as I collapse against the window, bathed in the mourning moonlight. I clench my fingers against the glass, glaring through my tears up at the trembling moon.

“I miss you…!”