"Not entirely. Not yet." Rohan glanced around the gathering crowd of familiar faces — Jorren’s steady presence, Bryan’s careful attention, Iri pushing through the gathering crowd with her medical satchel still slung over one shoulder, having clearly abandoned whatever task she’d been mid-way through the moment word reached her. "I came back first. Before anything else. There’s someone I promised I’d tell in person, if I ever found a way."
Maerin’s gaze followed his toward the gathered crowd, understanding settling into her expression with the particular clarity of someone who’d watched this exact story unfold from its earliest, most uncertain beginnings.
"She’s on watch rotation," Maerin said. "Eastern wall, this shift. She doesn’t know you’re here yet — word’s spread through the common chambers faster than it’s reached the outer positions."
Something almost gentle crossed her weathered features, an expression Rohan had rarely seen her wear. "Go. The rest of us have waited seven months to hear your story. We can wait a little longer for you to tell hers first."
Rohan found Liora exactly where Maerin had said she’d be, standing watch along Veyrhold’s eastern wall with her back to the settlement, scanning the ash-scoured horizon with the same careful, patient vigilance he remembered from every watch shift they’d ever shared together.
He stood at the base of the wall a long moment, simply looking at her, memorising the shape of a moment he’d carried across an entire universe in his mind — the particular way she held her shoulders, the careful economy of her movements, the small, unconscious gesture of touching the spot where her father’s charm used to rest before she’d given it away.
"Liora."
She turned at the sound of his voice, and for one suspended, breathless moment, simply stared at him as though she couldn’t quite trust what she was seeing.
"Rohan." His name came out barely above a whisper, disbelief and hope tangled together so completely that Rohan felt his own throat close with the weight of it. "You’re — you’re actually here. I thought — everyone thought —"
"I’m here," he said, climbing the wall’s access ladder to close the remaining distance between them, spear left carefully at the base rather than carried up with him, wanting nothing between them but the truth he’d crossed an entire universe to deliver. "I told you I’d come back to tell you if I found a way. I meant it."
Liora’s composure, carefully maintained through seven months of watching and waiting and refusing to fully believe the worst, finally broke entirely. She crossed the remaining distance between them and pulled him into an embrace fierce enough to steal his breath, her whole body shaking with an emotion too large to properly contain.
"You found it," she said, muffled against his shoulder, not quite a question. "You actually found the way home."
"I did." Rohan held her tightly, feeling seven months of accumulated grief and hope and stubborn, desperate determination finally, fully unwind in the safety of her arms. "I found it, Liora. And I came back first, before anything else, because I promised you I would, and because some promises matter more than any door ever could."
She pulled back just far enough to search his face, something complicated crossing her expression as the full weight of what his news actually meant began to settle in. "That means you’re leaving again. Properly, this time. For good."
"Eventually," Rohan admitted. "Not today. Not this week, even. There’s things I need to understand first, things I need to prepare for. But yes. Eventually, I’ll have to go, and when I do, I won’t be able to come back. Not ever. The crossing seals the boundary behind me."
Liora absorbed that with a visible effort, her eyes bright with tears she was fighting to hold back.
"Then I’m glad you came back first. I’m glad I get this, at least. Whatever comes after."
"So am I," Rohan said, and meant it with every fibre of everything this long, impossible search had taught him. "So am I."
They stood together at the wall’s edge, foreheads nearly touching, neither quite ready to fully let go of the other, the ash-scoured horizon stretching out silent and familiar beyond them.
"I read your message," Liora said eventually, pulling back just far enough to meet his eyes properly.
"Or — I would have, if it had ever arrived. Bryan checked the consortium relay logs every week, without fail, hoping something would finally come through. Nothing ever did."
"I’m sorry," Rohan said, guilt threading through the words. "I asked Renna to send it as soon as we finalised the crossing preparations. I don’t know what happened to it."
"Doesn’t matter now," Liora said, something fierce and immediate in her voice. "You’re here. You’re telling me yourself, which is considerably better than any relay message could have managed anyway." She studied him a long moment, taking in everything seven months apart had changed.
"You look older. Not just older — different. Like you’ve carried things I can’t fully imagine."
"I have," Rohan admitted. "Things I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to properly explain, even to the people closest to me."
"Then you’d better start explaining," Liora said, something almost teasing beneath the raw emotion still evident in her voice, "because I intend to hear every single detail before you’re allowed to leave again, however long that takes."
They stood together at the wall’s edge a long while after that, watching the violet sky deepen toward evening, saying little, simply existing in each other’s presence with the particular, aching gratitude of two people who understood exactly how easily this moment might never have happened at all.
"Tell me everything," Liora said eventually, settling beside him with her back against the wall’s cold stone. "All of it. However long it takes."
So Rohan told her — the stabiliser casing, the charge scan, the desperate scramble aboard Shuttle Three, the standoff in the Gilded Heron’s engine room, Renna’s careful trust and Ashcombe’s quiet generosity, the raiders and Corven’s mining platform, the fracture’s impossible light, Dr. Farr’s exile and redemption, the Guardian’s vast, patient presence, and finally, the choice still waiting for him at the end of it all.
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