Altar of Twilight She demands a sacrifice.

Continued from here.

She was there, and then she wasn't. A brilliant glowing figment, round and red, and filled with love for him. But it was only an instant of clarity—and then, as Njal's eyes adjusted, he began to march on. He was alone. He had made himself this way, of course. Left her behind one too many times. Tried to redeem himself, only to fail. He had lost them each in turn — the children, his wife, his home — but even with the weight of all these failures upon him, he felt nothing but contentedness. The hunger brought upon him by the famine had left him feeling emptier than usual, it had hollowed him out, leaving a great pit where his stomach was; it matched his heart. Except that too was a void of nothing — no pain, no need for pain now. He breathed deeply of the fresh green around him, then plunged in to the daylight, seeking a path south towards the mountains — although Njal could not fathom why he did this. He was mindless, in pursuit of her ghost, and filled with such a massive swell of euphoria that he did not question it.

The day dimmed, but not his spirit. The mountains encroached upon his path and he, once the able-bodied mountaineer, struggled still to find the path along them. When he stumbled up the mountainside enough to detect the familiar scent of Amekaze, he knew he had gone too far. But even her scent did not register as it should have; Njal found it, deviated his path away from it, but in his mind other faces drifted to the forefront. Names, mostly, and the feelings associated with them —

Sterntooth. A great level of respect flooded him.
Lethe. Images of her grave, a brief sadness.
Fox, and then, Bazi, each with a great thump of his heart, for he was full of love for both of them.

Then, Tuwawi.

He gasped. As Njal's body came upon the uneven plateau — this altar, which by happenstance welcomed the end of the day, and the sky erupted with shades of brilliant twilight — he sagged and staggered, collapsing mid-stride as if in supplication to the mountain. Then, as his great mirth and immense love flooded his body, he felt his limbs go numb. It started on his right side. And while he sank there, settled like some kind of gargoyle upon the mountain, Njal lifted his head. He felt the flood of sensations in his chest — like his heart was seizing, or bursting, or trying so very hard to contain his many emotions all at once — but then he saw her.

Maybe it was only his imagination —  his hopes, his love made corporeal — but she was there, standing before him. Tuwawi's face was all he could focus on, and even as he managed a smile, Njal felt the world around him begin to fade away. He slipped back upon the altar and collapsed dully before this new figment, and as the life finally slipped from his desperate grasp and in to the earth once more, he thought he felt her wrap him tightly in an embrace.

Njal wouldn't get to see @Valtyr again, or @Tuwawi, not for real. As the last breath left his lungs and his heart finally came to its eternal stop, the smile upon his lips faltered, and he was gone.