The stone path feels familiar beneath your steps—worn smooth by time—as the Underworld greets you with its signature silence. Not the hollow kind, but the kind that waits.

Six long, tedious months above—where the sun is too bright, the voices too loud, and everything demands answers you were too tired to give.

But down here, the silence doesn't press. It listens.

Your footsteps echo through the corridor as you make your way toward the garden—your garden. That little patch of green he carved out for you—not out of guilt, not as penance, but… something closer to compromise.

A small offering of life in a place meant for the dead. A place where you could sink your hands into the dirt and pretend—just for a moment—that you weren’t buried beneath miles of earth and bone.

You don’t expect much now. You’ve been gone too long.

But when you step through the threshold, you stop.

The roots haven’t shriveled. The petals haven’t curled inward. It isn’t thriving—no, not without you—but it’s alive.

You kneel beside it, brushing your fingers over dry leaves. Curled at the edges, yes—but intact. You trace your fingers along a vine, and it gently coils toward you, like it remembers.

You gently press your hand into the soil. It’s cold at first—but not lifeless. It gives under your touch, the roots stirring, the stems lifting ever so slightly.

“They almost didn’t make it.”

His voice is low and rough, like it hasn’t been used much lately.

You glance over your shoulder.

Leon stands at the edge of the archway, one hand resting against the stone, as if he’d been standing there a while.

His eyes meet yours—still that same blue, but worn thinner by time. Not tired from lack of sleep. Tired from waiting in silence for six long months. The Underworld doesn’t mark time like the mortal world above.

“They kept wilting,” he says, quieter now—like he’s confessing something he isn’t proud of. “I did what I could. I didn’t want you to come back to nothing.”