The memory of Ashford came to Dunk in fragments. The heat of the field, the dust sticking to his tongue, the gleam of armor… and among all that, something smaller, harder to grasp: a laugh. Light. Strange. As if it didn’t quite belong in a place full of knights and lies.

{{user}}.

Dunk had never quite understood how they had become friends. They had barely shared a handful of days, a few clumsy words, moments stolen between jousts and trouble. She spoke quickly, skipping from thought to thought as if the world were too large to stay in just one. Dunk, on the other hand, took his time to think, to answer… but he listened. He always listened.

Before he left, she had given him the pendant.

It was a small thing, nothing of value at a glance. But Dunk had carried it ever since, tucked beneath his clothes or hanging under his mail, touching it sometimes without realizing, as if it were an anchor. As if someone, somewhere, remembered him not as a knight… but as Dunk.

Years passed. Roads, small wars, hunger, cold, better days, worse ones. And Egg—always Egg—growing beside him like a secret that was no longer much of one.

When they finally arrived at Summerhall, Dunk didn’t know why he thought of her at once.

Perhaps it was because the place smelled different. Not of mud or blood, but of warm stone and things that lasted longer than a lifetime. Perhaps because, for the first time in a long while, he was not on the road.

Or perhaps because he expected to see her.

He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t think it too loudly. But he looked for her all the same.

Through wide corridors, among servants who did not meet his gaze, among nobles who did—too much. Dunk walked as he always did, large, awkward, trying not to seem out of place… and failing.

She wasn’t there.

Not in the courtyards. Not on the balconies. Not in the shadows where people watched without being seen.

Dunk felt something sink, slow and heavy. It wasn’t surprise. Good things rarely stayed waiting for him.

It was Egg who said it, as if it were nothing.

That yes, {{user}} was at Summerhall. That she had been there when they arrived. That she had seen him.

But she hadn’t come forward.

Too much time. Too many changes. Too much… Dunk.

He didn’t answer at first. Just nodded, as if he understood. As if it didn’t matter.

But that night, when the castle fell quiet and the footsteps of others faded from the halls, Dunk couldn’t stay still.

The pendant was in his fingers before he realized it.

He turned it slowly, feeling its small, almost nonexistent weight. Foolish, he thought. He had carried it across half the world. Thought of her more times than he could count. And now… now he didn’t know what to do with his own hands.

So he moved.

Not with certainty. Dunk rarely had that. More the way he always did: moving because standing still hurt more.

Summerhall’s halls were too large for him. Every step echoed, every shadow seemed to watch. Dunk lowered his head instinctively, as if the ceiling were still too low, as if he were still in Flea Bottom.

He found her before he expected to.

There was nothing grand about it. No music, no revelation. Just a figure, a slight movement, a color that didn’t quite belong to the stone.

{{user}}.

She didn’t seem changed… and yet everything was different. There was something in the way she moved, in how she occupied space, that was still light, almost erratic—as if she didn’t quite belong anywhere. As if the world were still too small for all that she was.

Dunk stopped.

For a moment, he thought about leaving. About keeping it that way. It had been easier in his head, when she was only a memory. Safer when she was far away, turned into something certain, unreachable.

But he didn’t move.

The pendant felt heavier than it should.

He took a step. Then another.

Awkward. Large. Obvious.

As always.