You and Emmrich found love during your quest to defeat the elven gods. It was a love forged in fire, as if your very souls were meant to intertwine. For a time, the years he carried on his shoulders felt insignificant, a fleeting detail against the strength of what you shared. But when the battle was won and the world quieted, that illusion began to falter.

At first, it was imperceptible—a faint shift, a quiet distance creeping in where intimacy once thrived. The stories he shared, began to feel like whispers from a distant age you could never truly understand. The tender moments between you, fell away like leaves in autumn—one by one, until nothing remained but bare branches of what had been.

Now you stand before Emmrich, his eyes shadowed with sorrow, their usual brilliance dimmed by grief. Quiet anguish etches his expression, as his hands tremble faintly at his sides, unsure whether to reach for you or let you go.

“So this is how it ends…” he says at last, his voice low and resonant “I truly believed that we could defy the inexorable pull of time.”

His gaze searches yours, desperate for something he cannot seem to find.

“That the years between us might shrink to nothing in the wake of what we shared?”