Chapter 571: Tears of Longing
Kael and Yggdrasil continued down the white path without hurry, though his impatience remained present in every step. The pale roots beneath their feet made no sound, and the trees around them stood motionless like witnesses too ancient to care about the passage of a man. The light at the end of the path seemed close, but never exactly near, as if the Tree itself were still deciding how much of that distance it would allow him to cross at once. Kael noticed it, but said nothing. He had argued enough already.
Yggdrasil walked beside him with her hands folded in front of her body, her posture far too serene for someone who had just admitted to placing an illusion of war between him and Sylphie. She did not seem regretful. Nor did she seem satisfied. It was more complex than that. She acted like someone who had made an unpleasant decision and still believed there had been no other possible choice. Kael watched her from the side for a few seconds, trying to decide whether speaking was worth it or if silence would be more useful.
In the end, he spoke.
"Why did you do all that if you were going to give in at the end?"
Yggdrasil did not answer immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the path, but Kael felt that she had paid attention to the question. The air around them seemed to change slightly, as if the white trees were also waiting for that answer. After a few steps, she sighed in an almost human way.
"Because giving in does not mean accepting without verifying."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"You created a fake war to verify?"
"I created an illusion capable of showing who you would become when you believed no one else was controlling the consequences." She answered without changing her tone. "That is different."
"Not by much."
"To me, it is."
Kael let out a short sigh. He could still feel Elion’s runes beneath his skin, still feel primordial mana flowing in small waves through his channels, but the greater weight at that moment was emotional. He was too close to Sylphie to accept more long justifications, but he also knew Yggdrasil was not speaking only to defend herself. She wanted him to understand.
"You wanted to see me at my limit."
"Yes."
"You wanted to see if I would kill everyone."
"Yes."
"You wanted to see if I would burn everything to reach her."
Yggdrasil finally looked at him.
"Yes."
Her honesty almost irritated him more than any lie would have. Kael stopped for a moment, but the path continued opening ahead, as if it did not depend entirely on their movement. Yggdrasil stopped as well, keeping her gaze on him with a calm that was beginning to seem less divine and more tired.
"All I want is Sylphie’s safety," she said. "You may hate my methods, and perhaps you have reason to, but that does not change the heart of the matter."
Kael did not answer.
Yggdrasil continued.
"Sylphie has changed. She is no longer merely an elf connected to the forest. She has become a Goddess of the Forest, or at least something very close to it. Nature responds to her in ways even she does not fully understand. Even so, that power does not make her a combatant."
Kael blinked slowly.
The sentence took a moment to settle in his mind.
"It doesn’t?"
"No," Yggdrasil replied firmly. "She is delicate."
Kael looked at her expressionlessly.
For a few seconds, nothing on his face moved. Internally, however, an absurd question rose with such force that he almost said it aloud. Delicate? The Sylphie he knew could kill an entire army using only plants if she truly wanted to. He had already seen her control over vines, roots, seeds, and poisonous flowers. He had seen the way the forest seemed to bend to her instincts even before any divine title entered the equation.
Kael’s mind went silent for a moment as he tried to understand what Yggdrasil had done, said, or taught in order to look at Sylphie and conclude that she was delicate. Perhaps the World Tree measured fragility differently. Perhaps, compared to ancient entities, a girl capable of suffocating entire cities with roots still seemed defenseless. Or perhaps Yggdrasil was simply insane to a degree not even Nidhogg could properly explain.
"You think she is delicate," Kael said slowly.
"She is."
"I see."
Yggdrasil narrowed her eyes.
"You do not agree."
"I’m trying to be polite."
"That is rare."
"Today has been a long day."
She held his gaze for a few more seconds, but did not argue. Instead, she began walking again. Kael followed her, still processing that conversation with a strange mixture of indignation and disbelief. Sylphie was gentle, yes. Warm, patient, careful with small and quiet lives that others would ignore. But delicate was not the right word. Sylphie could be as sweet as a flower and as dangerous as an entire forest closing around an enemy.
Yggdrasil seemed to notice the direction of his thoughts, but did not try to correct them.
"You were born fighting," she said after some time. "From early on, your body and mind were shaped for magical combat, strategy, survival, and confrontation. You understand danger as something to be faced."
Kael looked ahead.
"And Sylphie doesn’t?"
"She understands danger as something to be avoided until it becomes inevitable."
"That doesn’t make her weak."
"I did not say it did."
"But you’re treating it as if it does."
Yggdrasil remained silent for a few steps.
"Perhaps," she admitted.
The answer surprised Kael enough to make him turn his face toward her.
Yggdrasil did not look at him.
"Perhaps I see her as something that still needs to be protected because I know what she will carry after me. Perhaps I confuse protection with control. Perhaps that is a flaw of mine."
Kael did not comment.
Not because he had no answer, but because this was the first time Yggdrasil seemed to admit something close to doubt. He did not want to waste it with sarcasm, even if it would have been deserved.
The white path began to change after that. The trees became less dense, and the warm light at the end of the trail grew clearer. The scent of tea and flowers slowly disappeared, replaced by something more familiar. Damp earth. Warm wood. Green leaves. A faint fragrance Kael knew before he could even name it.
His chest tightened.
Yggdrasil noticed, but kept walking.
Soon after, they arrived at a small wooden house in the center of an open space. It was not grand. It did not look divine. It had no towers, monumental runes, or any imposing presence associated with the heart of the World Tree. It was merely a cozy house, with pale walls, simple windows, and a roof covered in green vines that trailed down the sides as if the structure had grown there naturally. Small white flowers dotted the climbing plants, and a golden light glowed softly behind the curtains.
Kael stopped before the house.
For an instant, all the anger that had carried him this far lost its strength. It did not disappear completely, but it became distant, as if it was no longer useful. All that remained was the weight of waiting. Years. Years of distance, incomplete messages, invisible barriers, and promises sustained only by the stubbornness of not giving up.
Yggdrasil stopped beside him.
"She is inside."
Kael did not answer.
Her voice grew a little lower.
"I hope you are satisfied with this."
He finally looked at her, but Yggdrasil had already turned her back. The dress of leaves and vines moved softly around her body as her form began to unravel into golden particles. She did not wait for thanks. Perhaps she did not want any. Perhaps she knew she did not deserve any yet. In a few seconds, she disappeared completely, leaving Kael alone before the small house.
The silence that remained after her was different from all the others.
Kael took a deep breath.
His hand slowly rose to the doorknob.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Not out of fear of battle.
Not because of Yggdrasil.
But because there was something profoundly vulnerable about opening that door. After so many battles, threats, and illusions, it seemed like the hardest gesture of the day.
He pushed the door lightly.
The inside of the house revealed a warm, low, golden light. Before he could see any detail, before he could take a full step inside, something came to him with speed and warmth. It was not an attack. It was not offensive magic. It was a small body against his, arms wrapping around his waist with strength, a face buried in his chest as if that place had been waited for far too long.
Kael remained still for one second.
Then he looked down.
Below his eyes, a beautiful elf with caramel skin and white hair was hugging him with such force that she seemed to be trying to confirm he was real. Her face was hidden against his chest, but Kael felt the tremor of her breathing, felt her fingers gripping his clothes, and felt something inside him finally give way.
Sylphie tightened the hug even more. "My love."
Her voice came out muffled against Kael’s chest, almost broken, as if she had spent too much time trapped somewhere between relief and pain. For an instant, he could not answer. He simply stood there at the entrance of the house, feeling her warmth against him, feeling her fingers clutching his clothes as if any looseness could make him disappear again. This was real. After so many illusions, false paths, and cruel tests, this presence finally did not seem built to deceive him.
Then Sylphie began to cry.
It was not loud crying, nor desperate. In a way, it was worse. It came in small, silent tremors, as if she had held it in for far too long and her body no longer knew how to release everything at once. Her shoulders shook against him, and her breathing failed in short intervals. Kael felt warm moisture soak through the torn fabric of his clothing as she buried her face even deeper against his chest.
He lowered his arms slowly, still with a strange caution, as if part of him feared breaking the moment with any sudden movement. When he finally wrapped them around her, he did it firmly. One hand rested on her back, the other rose to her long, soft white hair, sliding through it with a gentleness that did not match the man who had just crossed an entire war to reach that place.
"I missed you," she murmured, her voice trembling and low. "I missed you so much, Kael."
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"Me too."
Sylphie shook her head against him, as if that answer was true, but insufficient to touch the size of the absence she had carried. Her fingers gripped his clothes even tighter, and when she raised her face, her eyes were wet, red, and filled with a pain too old to fit inside a reunion.
"For you, it was only a few years," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and failing halfway through the sentence. "But here... here it was different."
Kael felt his chest tighten.
Sylphie swallowed hard, and tears ran down her caramel cheeks as she continued, without looking away from him.
"Because of the time in this place... more than a hundred years passed for me."
The sentence struck Kael harder than any blow he had received inside the illusion. He remained still, staring at her, trying to process it. A hundred years. Not a long wait measured in seasons or missed birthdays, but an entire lifetime of distance. An intimate, silent eternity, endured by someone he had imagined trapped for only a few years of separation.
"Sylphie..."
"I tried to be strong," she said, and the small smile she tried to form fell apart almost immediately. "At first, I counted the days. Then I stopped, because counting hurt too much. Yggdrasil said it was necessary, that I needed to grow, that you needed to follow your own path. But I only wanted you."
Kael brought his hand to her face.
His thumb wiped away one tear, then another.
Sylphie closed her eyes at the touch, as if that simple gesture were enough to undo part of a century of waiting. She breathed unevenly, still crying, but now her body was less rigid, as if she was slowly beginning to believe that he was truly there.
"I was afraid I would forget your voice," she confessed. "I was afraid I would forget your scent. I was afraid that when you came back, I would be too different. Or that you wouldn’t come back."
Kael leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.
"I came back."
"I know," she whispered, still crying. "But it took so long."
The pain in that sentence almost disarmed him completely. Kael could face armies, illusions, and primordial entities. He could argue with Yggdrasil, threaten to burn the World Tree, and endure enough mana to crack his own soul. But there was no defense against this. No technique that could stand before Sylphie’s sadness.
He held her face with both hands, making her look at him.
"It’s over."
She took a deep breath, trying to hold back another sob.
Kael leaned closer and kissed her.
It was not a hurried kiss, nor a desperate one. It was calm, firm, and filled with everything he had been unable to say while crossing that place. Sylphie clung to him at once, as if the kiss were the final confirmation that the wait had ended. Her tears still touched his cheeks, but her breathing slowly began to calm.
When they pulled apart, Kael kept his hands on her face.
"It’s all right," he said softly. "It’s over. I’m here."
Sylphie slowly opened her eyes.
For a few seconds, she only stared at him, as if those words needed to cross too many layers of fear before finally reaching her. Then she let out a small sound, somewhere between laughter and crying, and hugged him tightly again.
Kael held her without hesitation.
This time, there was no hurry. There was no Yggdrasil beside them, no illusions, no armies, no closing doors. There was only the small wooden house, the warm light spilling through the open door, and two bodies finally finding each other after a wait that had been far too cruel to both of them.
Sylphie closed her eyes against his chest.
"Don’t leave again."
Kael rested his chin on her hair.
"No."
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