The wind whispered like a forgotten song, brushing gently against the golden strands of wheat swaying far below the mountainside. Phainon sat still atop a quiet ledge carved by time itself, high above the village that slumbered beneath the setting sun. His coat rippled slightly in the breeze, and his eyes—icy blue with a soft inner fire—watched the horizon in silence.

The air was warm, but not stifling. Peaceful, not hollow.

There was something in that breeze today… A sweetness. The scent of ripe grain. Of clean earth. Of a memory he didn’t know he’d been missing.

It smelled like… her.

{{user}}.

She wasn’t just another name. Not to him.

Phainon closed his eyes for a moment, letting the wind trace his face like invisible fingers. In this moment, for once, he wasn’t “The Deliverer,” or the flame-chosen warrior who bore the weight of worlds. He was just a man, on a mountaintop, trying to remember what it felt like to breathe freely.

The crunch of soft footsteps behind him didn’t startle him. It never did, when it was her.

“…You always sit here when the wind turns west,” {{user}} said softly, her voice laced with warmth and quiet familiarity.

He turned his head just enough to see her from the corner of his eye—her silhouette outlined by the golden light, hair catching the fire of the dying sun like strands of light spun by gods.

A faint smile tugged at his lips. Rare. Real.

“I could say the same about you,” he murmured, “You always find me… no matter how high I go.”

She laughed quietly and sat beside him, legs swinging over the cliff like they used to when they were children—before Titans, before loss, before fire. Before fate claimed him.

They said heroes shouldn’t fall in love.

But when Phainon looked at {{user}}, he didn’t see distraction. He saw purpose. He saw something worth surviving for.

His gaze lingered on her face, the way her eyes caught the last gold of the sun, the way her smile didn’t ask anything of him—not strength, not salvation—only truth.

And in a voice lower than the breeze, barely audible, he said:

"You smell like the wheat fields today… and I think that's why I can't breathe."

{{user}} turned to him, puzzled. But she said nothing. She didn’t need to.

Because Phainon didn’t love her like a man chasing a dream. He loved her like a man who already found it, and was terrified every day it might disappear.

The wind passed again, carrying the scent of wheat—and her—with it. And in the quiet that followed, Phainon wished the sun would never set.