Every step Tifalla took was heavy. She swayed with exhaustion, and stumbled with nausea. She had run far enough and her body, blessed as it was, couldn't bear the weight of overexertion any longer. She found a sturdy tree and fell back against it, her back hitting the wood hard and momentarily shooting pain up her spine. She went limp. Her eyes, hazy and unfocused, stared blankly at more trees lying ahead of her. There was no variation, and no threats. It was just her and the silent woods.

  Her head eventually slumped, hanging down as the tension in her muscles faded all at once. She could see her hands when she looked down and found that the skin of her palms were thoroughly burned. Her accelerated healing struggled to put the pieces of singed skin back to normal, and Tifalla knew it would leave a permanent mark. She didn't entirely care either. Her entire body was covered in smoke and burns, the worst of it being centered on her arms. She slowly rolled the limb, blankly inspecting the dark charred skin and testing if it was still usable. When she clenched her fingers, her nails dug into the raw skin. Finally, a noise left her; a sharp hiss that seemed to plunge life back into her.

  Tifalla's heart raced. She exhaled faster than she inhaled. Muscles began to twitch and shake. Slowly, the situation at hand began to dawn on her.

  Someone had died. Tifalla almost died. Her skin was burned and it felt like hell against the cold air around her. She inhaled one more time before leaning to the side and expelling everything in her stomach. She coughed and wheezed loudly. The acid burned her throat raw, turning her cries into a noise far more guttural and hoarse. Tears mixed with the bile on the ground.

  She was nearly burned alive. She could feel it so close to her skin. Every death, every possibility, was too close for comfort. She hiccuped, sobbing as closely as she could to silence.

  Her heart may still beat, but she felt what it was like to have it stop. It was only for a moment, but with every apparition, Tifalla could feel death's embrace graze her skin.

  Nearly fifty different ways to die came across her vision and that number was only an estimate. If she moved even a little slower, or failed to change her strategy, the number could have climbed higher.

  She felt sick; this was sick. She hadn't even left Silence and her life was at risk. The other Virtuosas would surely try to hunt her down. She didn't have time.

  Dali's cries felt sharp in her ear. Tifalla would be next if she sat around waiting.

  Once she forced her legs to pick herself up, Tifalla was on the move once again.

  Her body would heal with time, but that didn't make walking through the woods blindly any easier. Tifalla saw nothing but trees for what felt like hours. She didn't know if her direction was even the right one. She had no tools for navigation besides the sun, hopes, and a bit of delusion. As difficult as the situation was for her, it did, however, provide clarity to her mind.

  It was quiet and serene. The wind would, sometimes, shake the trees, pulling her dress along in the breeze. Small animals would poke their heads from burrows to watch her and birds would perch atop branches to sing their songs. What was once quiet dread morphed into something lighter. Tifalla didn't realize it herself at first, but her footsteps had a little more bounce to them.

  She was free. Truly, completely, free.

  Surrounded only by nature and with only her heart to guide her, she could do whatever she wished and go wherever suited her most. She could follow every whim and chase anything that caught her eye. She was no longer bound by the rules that dictated every fiber of her being. She did not need to look like a symbol.

  Cantabile was behind her. The only thing she had to do to maintain this freedom was fight.

  She stopped, just for a spell, to stare at the world around her. She had not seen the woods of Silence in four years. Not since the days in which she was dragged through them by force.

  A twisted emotion threatened to consume her. She was free. She was happy. What she wanted for so long was finally in her grasp.

  Yet, those feelings were laced with an undercurrent much too deadly. This freedom came at a cost.

  She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  She thus did neither.

  She would silently continue walking.

  Snow would surely fall soon and she needed food, water, and shelter.

  “My Lord?” she called.

  His voice soon arrived.

  “I am here…”

  “Are you able to guide me? I need water.”

  “I am not... Intervention is forbidden… Balance cannot be maintained with such interferences…”

  Balance? Fairness, she supposed. Tifalla looked around herself and scanned each surrounding tree. Nothing was nearby. She could just continue walking until fortune struck, but how long that would take left her feeling grim. Eiwar's voice stopped her before she could continue.

  “I cannot guide you… but they can.”

  A butterfly flew just out of the corner of her eye. Tifalla turned to find it going off in its own direction. She picked up her paces to chase after it.

  “Is this not against your rules?” she asked. When she thought more deeply, she never fully understood what the butterflies were or what they could do. “Just what are these?”

  “They are faces of the past… names upon a notch. Their paths… their failures… can manifest before your eyes… They are those I keep at my side…” he said.

  Tifalla's brow furrowed.

  “You're saying that these butterflies are the Virtuosas who came before me?”

  “Correct.”

  Tifalla watched the butterfly slowly float in the air. It seemed to be waiting for her to follow.

  This used to be someone. A girl like her, perhaps?

  “Do they have names? Do you remember their names?”

  “This one's name was…”

  Eiwar paused.

  “... I cannot recall…”

  Tifalla smiled a weary smile.

  “You can't remember those who die for you?” she asked. “You keep them with you forever and you don't know their names?”

  To be faceless in death, stripped of a body, and reduced to a delicate form… Tifalla couldn't think of a sadder fate.

  She thought she was angry. Her tone seemed to match. But there was gratitude within her. Without them, she would have died, no doubt in her mind existed. She was being supported by all the Virtuosas of time. Every possibility, and every timeline, allowed her to live.

  Even now, it guided her to water. How many died failing to reach it? Who had to struggle to find a safe source of drink?

  Still, Eiwar's distance from those who gave their lives to him unsettled her. A bitter well gradually filled with water.

  He spoke after a period of silence. He sounded… off.

  “I knew their names… there should be no error in my recollection… but there is. A gap exists too wide to cross… when I try to see their faces… I am unable.”

  Confusion took root, sapping away those waters. Tifalla had no idea how to react. A Lord unable to do something? Of course, the Fall was a natural restriction imposed upon their power. Outside of it, however, Tifalla couldn't fathom why he would fail to recall something he could so blatantly see.

  Unless, if she took him at his word, there were some things he simply couldn't see.

  “Why…? Why can't I…?” he asked.

  He wasn't speaking to her directly anymore. His voice was small and so deeply uncertain. He was searching for an answer no one could provide to a question that seemed to haunt him. Tifalla was certain that she heard some sort of emotion in his voice. Confusion, sadness, grief, she couldn't precisely name one, but something was there beneath it all.

  “I must repair… I must fix… these faults cannot remain… but where did they come from? Why have I forgotten?”

  Tifalla had no answers. She couldn't fathom the idea of having such noticeable gaps in her memory.

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  “My Lord?”

  “You…”

  She pulled her coats close. Her footsteps to chase the butterfly were slow. With contemplation on her conscience, she could do little more besides a small stride.

  “Will you forget me when I die?” she asked.

  Eiwar was silent.

  Tifalla let out a faint puff of air. Her breath, as delicate as the butterfly's wings, faded into nothingness. When he finally spoke, his words were gentle.

  “I do not wish to… I dislike forgetting…”

  She nudged a small branch with her foot, and stepped over twisted roots towards what she could only hope was salvation. She spoke again, in turn.

  “You do not want to?”

  Eiwar's words gave her pause.

  “It's all gone… my time among man, my time with my chosen… I cannot find them.” His voice wavered.

  “Wh– What do you mean? You saw into my past. Can you not do the same for yourself?”

  “I cannot… it's– it's all gone…!”

  The sound of birds taking flight filled the silence that followed the Lord's words.

  Eiwar had let out a cry. He stammered and lamented no different to the way a mortal man would. A man who lost something he knew he shouldn't have.

  In between the long silent spaces his words created, Tifalla thought, for but a scant moment, that she was speaking to another. It did not last forever, however. When he spoke to her again, everything reset. His tone was soft and neutral once more.

  “My apologies… I have shown an unsightly image…”

  Tifalla wanted to encourage him. She wanted him to express more of himself. The joy of finding some semblance of humanity clashed with the agony that it disappeared so soon.

  But then a quiet dread seeped through the fibers of her muscles. It overtook everything, tainting her mind with worry.

  The Lords, the infallible paragons that built Fantasia with their own hand, could suffer. They, too, had something terribly amiss within them; something infinite power could simply not fix.

  But, if so, did the Lords truly have that much power at all?

  Did everything Tifalla knew turn out to be false?

  The sound of rushing water snapped her from her spiral.

  When she stepped past the last tree, a flowing river stood before her. It was relatively small, closer to a stream in size, but there was water not yet frozen over. The sight alone made her realize how dry her mouth was. Smoke, blood and bile made for a terrible taste that she was desperate to wash away.

  She rushed to the stream and crouched beside it. She couldn't see its origin point, and her own supplies were paltry. She didn't even have anything to contain water, much less treat it. She could take a drink. The water was clear enough. Even so, she fretted.

  “How effective is this gift of healing?” she asked.

  “There is no need to fret over impurities… know that your body will remove them before danger and… before illness.”

  Tifalla looked at her hands and arms.

  The burns had already begun to mend. Slow, but steady. By her best estimate, it had only been an hour. The raw skin still stung against the cold air, but she could tell she was healing.

  If infections weren't a cause for concern, then there was little reason to wait. She crouched by the stream and began to cup water into her mouth. Its cold burned her hands, but she couldn't find it in herself to care. The water's chill slid down her throat and eased her upset stomach with a soothing touch. She greedily gulped down mouthful after mouthful and only occasionally stopped to swipe her fingers across her teeth and gums. She had nothing to clean the old tastes out with besides the water, but it did the job well in removing the worst of it.

  When she finished, Tifalla sat by the stream bundled in her layers. She was reluctant to leave it behind so soon. Unfortunately, she was similarly reluctant to stay. She knew she couldn't afford to slow down for even a moment. Still, she remained, overwhelmed by exhaustion as her body slowly healed. Nightfall was fast approaching, and the temperature was dropping. To travel with no supplies or warmth was asking for trouble.

  She sat at a loss on how to proceed.

  “The cold… need to fight the cold,” she murmured.

  On colder nights at Cantabile, Tifalla would often lay with others under heavy blanket layers. Back at home in Calix, she would sit by the fire until her numb fingers thawed.

  Here? In the frost of Silence? She had nothing but the clothes on her back.

  Whatever crawled in the darkness could find her with ease. If the cold did not claim her life, something else could and perhaps would.

  She needed fire.

  Pulling herself from the frost settling over her body, she began to search the nearby area for supplies. Dry sticks would be hard to come by once snow fell, so she worked quickly to gather what she needed. She worked off memory, fuzzy as it was, and made her first few attempts at starting a fire. They didn't bode well.

  She didn't know how long she sat by the stream trying to start a fire, but the numbness in her fingers told her that she was performing an exercise in futility.

  Even so, persistence remained.

  Scraped hands were far more preferable compared to freezing to death. Not even her body could heal that away.

  As she worked, the light of the sky began to fade. By the time she got her first successful spark, the surrounding forest was much, much darker. She directed the spark to her makeshift fire pit, and finally a flame was born. She just had to tend to it and let it grow; something she was far more adept at.

  Tifalla sat beside the growing fire and watched it dance. The surrounding night was quieter, more mysterious as to what it contained. For good or for bad, Tifalla was trapped in the forests that surrounded her. At least, until the sun rose again. How long would that be? Every minute seemed to travel by so slowly. She did not sleep, nor did she let her guard down. But, in doing so, she was subject to the agonizing passage of time.

  Her eyes shut, contemplative.

  She was still deep into Silence. How long she traveled and how much distance she covered remained unknown to her. All she had to comfort herself was the knowledge that Silence was the smallest of the four realms. A full day of unimpeded travel could likely take her to the gate. She just had to make sure she didn't get lost.

  Dissonance followed Silence. Though Silence was colder, Dissonance was more dangerous. She needed supplies if she could ever hope to survive its brutality.

  She sighed and borrowed deeper into her robes. They kept her insulated from the cold, but the singe marks and burns troubled her. She couldn't even hope to mend what little she did have.

  Another encounter with a Virtuosa could prove fatal for her. Her body healed fast, but it didn't feel fast enough. Her burns stung hours beyond.

  She opened her eyes and froze when she saw butterflies surrounding her. Immediately, her head whirled and her eyes searched the darkness for any approaching threats. She certainly couldn't feel anything, but that only meant that she needed to prepare.

  So she presumed.

  “Ease…” Eiwar said. “They are here… for you.”

  Tifalla tilted her head. She then noticed. The butterflies weren't moving to a particular goal. They were flying about in a manner unorganized and butterfly-like. Like the stars in the sky, their light shone, peppering the darkness with a faint glow.

  Tifalla reached her hand out. One landed on her finger, its touch like a kiss.

  “For me? Thank you.” she said with a smile.

  “Your gratitude is misplaced… It is them you should thank...”

  Tifalla looked at the butterflies scattered about the sky, the butterflies landing on her skin, and the butterflies nearing the flame. They seemed to go wherever their heart led them; no rhyme nor reason guiding them forward.

  Were they free to do as they wished? They were no longer bound to the confines of life. They were warm and able to spread their wings, surrounded by their kin.

  Maybe it wasn't a completely terrible fate.

  But their names and faces were lost. The sacrifice they made brought them no recognition. They were the stepping stones to Arias they would never get to see.

  Did they care? Did they know that the cycle that claimed them would continue indefinitely?

  “Why do you keep them at your side, my Lord?”

  He didn't know their names and could not recall their faces. But they remained by him all the same.

  “They hold fragments of my being. All fragments must return to me… thus, they remain at my side.”

  “Do they like it? Are they happy?”

  “How can I answer? They are not me…”

  “Aha– a bit of a silly question.”

  “There are none…” he said. “Ask… I shall try to answer.”

  Tifalla did have nothing but time on her hands she supposed. The night was long. The light of both flame and butterflies kept the darkness at bay. Busying herself with thoughts would, too, push the darkness away.

  “You say they hold parts of you. Is this true for every Lord? Is it true for me?”

  “It is… We exchange pieces of our being for representation. These pieces must be… returned. Whether one lives or dies… all will return to the source.”

  Tifalla hummed in thought. She thought about her record readings before speaking once more.

  “Is this why Virtuosas disappear when they die?”

  She recalled reading that a Virtuousa's corpse never remains. Those chosen by the Lords are not able to be buried properly. Graves certainly were made, but nothing lay beneath the dirt.

  “Yes…”

  So, even if she did succeed, her fate was to be among the butterflies.

  Was this not a part of Eiwar's promise? That she would never be left alone? She didn't know if she found the reality of her situation touching or troubling.

  “Winning Virtuosas have more power than any other… so just how much power, yourself, can you give away?”

  “As much as the human form can handle… there is only so much to give before… nothing remains...”

  His words were somewhat… vague to Tifalla, but she wouldn't pry much further. A short silence settled, only cut through by flickering flames.

  As she sat by her lonesome, another butterfly landed on her fingers. The one already there approached its sister before ramming its tiny body into it. The butterfly fell and flew away.

  Tifalla watched the exchange in shock. Was that a fight? She suddenly and unceremoniously burst into a fit of laughter.

  “Some are… prone to conflict.” Eiwar promptly said.

  Clearly. When Tifalla looked closer at their interactions, she noticed small quirks about them that once passed her by. Some flew in pairs or trios, never leaving the side of specific butterflies. Some had bent wings that struggled to flap, while others had pieces clipped away. Some flew in circles over and over and some stayed entirely motionless.

  She felt warm at the sight. Though, her curiosity piqued once again.

  “What normally happens when humans perish? Where do they go?”

  “Phi claims all. All humans return to their side.”

  “Does every human carry a piece of Lord Phi's power?”

  “Yes.”

  To think an afterlife existed. Tifalla wondered what Harriet saw when she met her Lord. How many souls existed in her realm? If they were to meet again, she wanted to ask. Until then, Tifalla was left with only her thoughts about mortality.

  The butterflies existed in their own unique afterlife. She didn't know if it truly brought them peace or not, but she still could not understand why Lord Eiwar failed to remember them. Fifty four Virtuosas of time came and went. Surely one could be recalled.

  “What does Lord Eiwar see?” she asked.

  She knew he maintained the flow of time. From sun to moon and the stars in between, he allowed time to continue. It was said he could see into the past, present, and future. All possibilities were laid bare before his eyes. More so than any Lord, he was omniscient.

  Or so she believed.

  “I see paths… lines… outcomes to every action and the sequences that lead to destinations. I see what could exist, and what does exist… I see everything. Everything that is not me…”

  “I see,” she said. “That sounds… frightening.”

  “Frightening?”

  “To see everything? The past, present, and future? You're exposed to all the good and all the bad. When something goes wrong, you're left with only the knowledge that things could have been different. When something goes right, you know how easily something could have gone awry. Does that not seem overwhelming? Scary?” Tifalla questioned.

  Eiwar answered with a question of his own. “This is all that I am… am I meant to fear my very being?”

  “Maybe not,” Tifalla said, lowering her eyes. “My apologies. My questions were rude.”

  For Eiwar, who only knew the sequence of time, calling his very existence scary was a touch far in Tifalla's mind. She only wished to understand him.

  Even with her error hanging in the air, he reassured her.

  “You need not apologize. I long to speak to you.”

  Tifalla perked up. “Really?”

  “You are a curious being. I wish to give more… to satiate your hunger…”

  She smiled small. His tone conveyed little, and bluntly stating his thoughts came across as silly, but every word was spoken with quiet sincerity. Eiwar seemed to mean what he said.

  “Then, may I trouble you for a little longer?”

  “My time is yours.”