Volume Three: Part Sixty-Six — What the Elder Remembers

　Aeron led me to a quiet overlook above Horizoncrest that evening, the town's lights spread out below us like scattered stars that had decided to stay put.

　"What I know," he began, settling onto a weathered stone with the careful patience of someone about to speak of things rarely spoken aloud, "comes from a time before even my own birth――passed down through elven memory, which holds things longer and more precisely than most races' histories manage."

Finally.

After all these years.

　"The two True Dragons who attacked you," he continued, "are known, in what records still exist, as Vahlreth and Skorne."

　"Siblings, if the old texts are accurate――though 'sibling' means something different to dragons who measure their lives in millennia rather than decades."

Vahlreth. Skorne.

Actual names, finally, instead of just 'the two dragons.'

　"Vahlreth is the elder," Aeron said. "Cold, methodical, the kind of mind that plans in centuries rather than moments. If your parents faced anyone who spoke with them before the violence began, it would have been her."

　He paused.

　"Skorne, by contrast, is younger, more volatile――quicker to violence, slower to actually think through consequences. I'd wager he was the one who killed your mother in that clearing."

　"The manner you've described――fast, final, no hesitation――matches everything the old texts say about him."

Skorne.

The one who split my mother in two.

I finally have a name to put to that.

　Something cold and absolute settled into my chest.

　Old grief sharpened into something with an actual edge to hold onto now.

　"Why?" I asked quietly. "Why did they come for me specifically?"

　I lowered my gaze.

　"I still don't fully understand what I actually threatened, just existing."

　Aeron considered his answer carefully.

　"Dragons who reach True Dragon status without ascending further tend, over centuries, toward a particular kind of rigidity. The rules that govern their own path to godhood become, to them, something closer to sacred law than simple biology."

　His expression grew more solemn.

　"A hybrid like you, breaking those rules simply by existing, isn't merely an insult to bloodline purity, as you've likely already guessed."

　"It's a crack in the foundation they've spent millennia believing was unbreakable."

The anomaly reveal.

The same shape Anti-Subconsciousness already gave me, confirmed independently by someone who actually lived through the era when it might have mattered.

　"Vahlreth, specifically," Aeron continued, "is rumored――and I stress rumored, since no elf alive has confirmed this directly――to have been closest of the three True Dragons to the one who eventually ascended into the God of Creation."

　"If that rumor holds any truth, her stake in maintaining the old order isn't merely philosophical."

　He looked toward the distant horizon.

　"It may be personal."

Personal.

That's a different, more dangerous shape of motive than 'ancient bigot enforces old rules.'

　"Where would I even find them?" I asked. "If I ever reach a point where facing them is actually survivable."

　"Dragons of that stature rarely dwell anywhere ordinary maps record," Aeron said.

　"There are old stories――likely exaggerated, likely incomplete――of a place called the Ashfall Peaks, far to the north, said to be a resting ground for True Dragons between their long stretches of activity in the wider world."

　He gave a small shake of his head.

　"I couldn't tell you if it's real. I could tell you it's the only lead elven memory has ever offered on the subject."

Ashfall Peaks.

Filing that away.

Not a destination yet.

A direction, maybe, for whenever I'm actually ready.

　"Thank you," I said, meaning it fully. "For all of this. I've been carrying this particular unknown for a long time."

　"You're not carrying it alone anymore," Aeron said, simple and certain.

　"Whatever this family actually is――that includes carrying your unfinished business, same as everything else."

　I sat with everything he'd given me for a long while after he'd gone, watching Horizoncrest's lights below.

　Turning two names over in my mind like stones I'd been handed after years of only having their shape to work with.

Vahlreth.

Skorne.

You have names now, same as I do.

Same as everyone I've lost has names, carved somewhere I won't ever let myself forget them.

I'm not ready yet.

I know I'm not ready yet.

But knowing your names is a start.

Everything else, I'll build the same way I've built everything else since that clearing――slowly, carefully, one true thing at a time.

　< You are being uncharacteristically quiet. >

　Anti-Subconsciousness's observation came without judgment.

Just thinking.

About names.

About how much lighter some kinds of grief get, once you actually have something solid to hold onto instead of just an absence.

　< A reasonable observation. >

　And then it left me to the rest of the evening.

　In a silence that, for once, felt companionable rather than simply procedural.