Moonstone Quarry dragonspine

solharr walked as a man half-mended—each footstep carved from habit, not ease. he moved beside her in that silence where grief went unsaid but still lived, where the dead walked in the hollow spaces between breaths.

he said nothing at first.

only watched as aneira’s eyes traced the world, soft as the wind that stirred around them. the pale light caught her fur, made her seem a thing carved from the dawn. not fragile. but luminous.

his ear twitched at her words. the quarry remembers us. maybe it did. he had not walked here with another since callyope. not like this.

but aneira’s voice did not ache like memory. it carried something else.

hope, perhaps.

then let it remember, he rumbled at last, voice a low warmth in the cold. and let it know we walked without fear.

his eye met hers only briefly, a glint of that old strength still buried beneath scar and stone. he followed. not because she asked—but because he already had been.

and in that half-pace she took ahead, solharr allowed himself to breathe.
not as a chieftain.
not as a widower.

but as a man who still had something left to offer.