Nyssarra

“But?”

“But light that refuses to bend breaks.” She looked up, her sapphire eyes catching the shimmer of Seren’s own. “Sometimes I wonder if he sees people, or only what they should be.”

Seren’s voice was gentle. “And what do you see, child of two songs?”

“I see what is,” she whispered. “And try to love it anyway.”

There was a flicker in Seren’s form—like sunlight through ice. Pride, perhaps. Or pain.

“Then,” Seren said, “tell me of the other. The fire-born. The one who makes your voice tremble when you speak of her.”

Nyssarra looked away.

“Wolfthora.”

The name lingered in the cold air like a torch-smoke ember.

“She is…” Nyssarra struggled, the words coiling and reshaping themselves in her throat. “She is wild. Glorious. Terrible. She laughs at fear and shouts down the wind. Everything I try to calm, she sets ablaze. And yet… I do not flinch from her.”

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know,” Nyssarra said. “Perhaps. Not the way she understands love. She’s a creature of passion and motion. If she stays too long in one place, she might burn the ground just to feel wind again. I can’t hold her. And she would break me if I tried.”

Seren stepped closer. “Then why do you return to her?”

“Because in the fire, I see truth,” Nyssarra said, eyes wet now. “Even if it scorches. And sometimes... she sees me—not the half-elf, not the ranger or emissary, but me. And it terrifies us both.”

The crystal goddess placed a hand on Nyssarra’s shoulder. It felt like warmth refracted through snow.

“There is space in your heart for contradictions,” Seren murmured. “That is not weakness. That is life.”

They stood for a long time in silence, until Nyssarra drew in a slow breath.

“I spent time among the druids,” she said. “They spoke of Guthix. Balance. Equilibrium. The world turning under stars, untouched.”

“And what did you hear in their words?” Seren asked.

“That I am out of balance,” Nyssarra admitted. “That I care too deeply. That my loyalty, my pain, my choices… make waves in still water.”

She turned to face Seren fully now, her voice no longer tremulous but steady.

“But isn’t that what you taught us? To feel? To not just exist in the crystal, but to let it sing with the song of the self?”

Seren’s form pulsed, and her voice deepened like the swell of distant harps. “Yes.”

“Then maybe Guthix was right, too,” Nyssarra said. “That too much light blinds. Too much stillness can stifle. That balance isn’t peace—it's tension that doesn't break.”

“You are not wrong,” Seren said, and for a moment, she looked like she might weep—if crystal could weep. “And yet the world demands certainty. Simplicity. Lines drawn in battlefields and doctrines. And those who walk between… they are often trampled.”

Nyssarra lowered her head again. “So what do I do?”

Seren reached out, and her hand touched Nyssarra’s brow—not as a god touching a mortal, but as a mother touching her child.

“You do what you have always done. Walk the in-between. Speak the words others fear to say. Love without needing to possess. Fight without needing to destroy. Heal without forgetting pain.”

A pause.

“And when the time comes, you will know which path is yours—even if no one else walks it.”

Nyssarra’s breath hitched.

“I am yours,” she whispered. “Even when I don’t know who I am.”

“You are mine,” Seren said. “Always. And I am yours. Not in command, but in kinship. You carry my light, but it shines through your own prism.”

The grove grew brighter. The tree at its heart began to hum, low and melodic.

When Nyssarra blinked, Seren was gone.

But the warmth remained.

The bow on her back felt lighter. The wind, quieter. And in her chest, amid her tangled doubts and aching loyalties, something clear began to sing.

Not certainty.

But peace.