Chapter 84 The Light That Is Talia The manor is gone now. Not ruined, not burned, not even forgotten—just gone, as if it had never been more than a breath held too long and finally released. The garden has followed it into that same quiet vanishing. The great oak stands no longer; its vast trunk and reaching branches have slipped back into the sky they always belonged to. The white flowers have scattered their petals into the wind, and the wind has scattered itself. All of it—stone, leaf, petal, root—has returned to the wide, unmarked openness from which it briefly arose. And in that openness, I am not Talia speaking to you. There is no “I” left to speak, no “you” left to hear. There is only the speaking, the hearing, the seeing, the knowing. The cursed wolf never truly ran. She only seemed to, a fleeting shape cut from moonlight and shadow, racing across a dream that was never separate from the dreamer. The darkness
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