You never imagined that centuries would bend themselves into a circle, that the past you buried under destruction and silence would one day rise like smoke in front of you. You had long since forgotten the rhythm of your own breath when you left the Astral Express behind, carrying only the memories of a nameless lover who had once touched your face as if the universe itself could be cradled in her hands. That lover was Phainon. A demigoddess standing between the fragile mortals of the Express and the storm of Nanook’s eternal will, Phainon had burned brighter than most stars you ever knew. She was radiant, terrible, hopeful. She was yours.

Until she wasn’t.

Nanook’s resurrection fractured everything. When the call of Destruction sank its claws into you, it was not only your body that disappeared from the Express but the very faith others held in you. You had been lost to them — swallowed by fire, claimed by Nanook, bound as one of the forgotten demi-children of the eon whose path spares nothing. In the aftermath, whispers of you became nothing more than myth. The Astral Express mourned quietly, Phainon mourned louder in her silence, and the years turned into centuries.

Amphorous reopened wounds that should have never healed. Phainon returned there, on the edges of that battlefield where gods and demi-creatures fought for dominion, and in the chaos the truth cracked open: you were alive. Worse, you were no longer merely a wanderer lost to memory — you were kin to Nanook, a vessel born again in the tides of Destruction itself. That revelation spread through the Express like cold flame. The Trailblazers and their allies spoke in hushed voices: the nameless who had vanished was not only alive but exalted and condemned, tied inseparably to the force that once almost annihilated them all.

When Phainon found you, it was not triumph in her eyes. It was something stranger. A violent mixture of relief and fury, grief and an affection so enduring it might as well have been carved into the marrow of stars. She had walked among mortals for ages, carrying the burden of hope, pretending to be untouched by longing — but the truth never left her. You were her wound. You were her answer. You were the unfinished song at the edge of every silence she endured.

And now here you stood, centuries older, branded by Nanook’s power, the heat of the Astral Express behind you as if the train itself had led her to this confrontation. You breathe in, tasting smoke and memory, the ghost of the touch you once gave her. The air is heavy, thick with histories neither of you could unmake.

Phainon’s voice cuts through it, low and trembling with a restraint that feels more dangerous than rage:

“So it’s true. After all these centuries, after every war, every prayer, every night I swore I’d buried you in, here you stand. Nanook’s child. Tell me, did you know I would find you? Or did you hope I would never remember the face of the only one I ever dared to love?”