Two years passed on the narrow plank.

They wandered the borderlands between light and shadow, helping those who fell through the cracks of the Council’s pristine system. Cassia’s shadowcraft evolved, no longer the crude forbidden technique she’d first wielded, but something new—a balance between light and dark, healing and harm, control and emotion.

Elian remained her constant, the rigid back that shielded her from the worst of the world’s scorn, the steady hand that pulled her back from the edge when the shadows threatened to consume her.

News reached them one autumn morning: the plague they’d thought contained had returned, worse than before, striking even the heart of Luminar itself. The Council, for all their sanctioned magic, couldn’t stop it.

“We should go back,” Cassia said, though the words tasted bitter.

Elian studied her carefully. “Are you sure? They’ll arrest us the moment we set foot in the city.”

“Probably.” Cassia managed a wry smile. “But what’s the alternative? Let them die because of pride?”

“There’s the Cassia I know.” Elian stood, extending his hand as he had so many times before. “Then let’s walk this final stretch together.”

They returned to Luminar under cover of darkness. The city that once gleamed golden now lay shrouded in sickness and fear. Cassia worked through the night, using the techniques she’d perfected in exile—shadow and light woven together, forbidden and sanctioned magic united.

The Council arrived at dawn, led by High Councilor Veyra himself.

Cassia faced them without fear, Elian at her side. “Arrest me if you want,” she said calmly. “But let me finish healing them first.”

Councilor Veyra surveyed the recovering patients, then his gaze moved to his son. Elian stood tall, his hand firmly clasped in Cassia’s, meeting his father’s eyes without flinching.

“You chose this,” he said to Elian, his voice heavy. “This narrow path.”

“I did,” Elian confirmed. “And I’d choose it again.”

Something shifted in the Councilor’s expression—resignation, perhaps, or the first crack in understanding. He turned to Cassia. “Your methods are… unorthodox. Dangerous.”

“They work,” Cassia replied simply.

“Because you balanced them,” another Council member observed, a younger woman who’d lost her own sister to the plague. “You didn’t let the shadow consume you. Somehow, you found equilibrium.”

The deliberations took weeks. In the end, Cassia wasn’t reinstated to the Council—the rules were too rigid for that, the precedent too dangerous. But they granted her official pardon and a new title: Shadow Healer, sanctioned to practice her unique magic in the borderlands.

“You’re still exiled, in a way,” Elian observed as they prepared to leave the city once more. “Still walking that narrow plank.”

Cassia looked at him—this man who’d given up everything, who’d walked through darkness without hesitation, who’d held her hand through every impossible step. The fog of her future had finally lifted, revealing not a golden road or a narrow plank, but simply a path forward.

“Not exiled,” Cassia corrected softly. “Free. And not alone.”

They walked out of Luminar together, toward the borderlands that needed them, toward the life they’d chosen. The path ahead remained uncertain, likely filled with more thorns and swords and scorn.

But Cassia had learned something in her years on the narrow plank: the width of the road didn’t matter. What mattered was who walked beside you.

And Elian would be there, rigid back shielding, steady hand guiding, until they reached whatever light waited at the end.

Together.