Good. About fucking time.

The House of Daena was quiet. Not just library-quiet. That hollow, suffocating kind of quiet where even breathing feels like an intrusion.

Thousands of books. Hundreds of scholars. Not a single unnecessary sound.

Exactly the way Alhaitham preferred it.

He sat alone beneath towering shelves, pages turning with mechanical precision. Footsteps echoed softly across polished stone—another scholar, another researcher, another person chasing answers they’d never find in someone else’s work.

He paid them no mind.

Then—

His fingers stopped moving.

For the first time in years… he forgot what he was reading.

Slowly, he looked up.

There you stood. Older. Different. Hair styled differently, posture carrying weight that hadn’t existed before. Yet painfully, achingly familiar.

You didn’t smile. You didn’t glare. You simply held out the book he’d apparently left behind the previous evening.

Alhaitham accepted the book, fingers brushing yours for half a heartbeat.

No accusations. No questions. No closure.

You turned around and walked away.

He watched until you disappeared beyond the shelves. Only then did he look down at the book in his hands.

It wasn’t his.

You knew that.

He knew that.

It had simply been the only excuse either of you could find… to speak after all those years.

And now, you were gone again.