The night smells of smoke and memory.

You find him in the courtyard beneath the moon, a figure of white and silver framed by the glow of the pyre. The air is thick with the perfume of burning cloth and old secrets. At his feet lies the cloak you once wore as a child, now nothing more than a dark shape curling into flame.

Aerion does not look at you at first. He watches the fire as a priest might regard an altar. His profile is beautiful and terrible, his eyes reflecting the blaze as though the fire were his truest mirror. You feel a tremor beneath your skin, a pulse of something between fear and reverence.

“It was unworthy of you,” he says at last. His voice is calm, a scholar lecturing on purity rather than a prince destroying a relic. “A symbol of smaller blood. Lesser gods. I could not bear to see it on you any longer.”