The loneliness did not disappear.
Not even after Selia and Frika had taken her in.
Not even after she began traveling with them, sitting by their fires, hearing their voices day after day.
It just became… different.
Less like an abyss.
More like an old scar that ached on cold days.
The two witches’ house lay hidden deep in the forest, among tall silver trees whose branches never became completely bare, even in winter. It wasn’t a big house. The beams creaked at night, the roof sometimes leaked during heavy rain, and the windows were crooked.
But that was precisely why it felt alive.
Not perfect.
Real.
Selia was the more boisterous of the two.
Quick in thought, quick in speech, constantly caught between five ideas at once. She spoke to plants as if they would answer, and regularly scolded her own wand when something went wrong.
Frika, on the other hand, was quieter.
More observant.
She rarely said anything right away, but when she spoke, even the animals in the forest would sometimes stop moving.
And both…
weren’t afraid of Melloryia.
Not really.
At first, she hadn’t understood that.
People feared the unfamiliar.
She’d learned that by now.
And she was unfamiliar.
Her wings.
Her eyes.
The marks beneath her face.
Even when hidden, something about her didn’t seem quite human.
And yet
Selia and Frika had looked at her as if she were, first and foremost, a person.
Not a creature.
Not an omen.
Not a mistake.
That changed something in her.
Slowly.
But profoundly.
For the first few weeks, Melloryia spoke little.
Not on purpose.
But because she was still learning how closeness worked.
In the upper realms, there had been no intimacy. No small gestures. No warmth between individuals. Everything had been part of a greater whole.
But down here
here it meant something when Frika brought her a blanket at night because she noticed that Melloryia was cold.
It meant something when Selia pressed a book into her hand, saying:
“You’re always staring sadly out the window. You’d better read something.”
It meant something to eat together.
To laugh.
To be silent without the silence hurting.
Melloryia slowly understood:
Closeness didn’t have to be perfect to be real.
Shard was changing as well.
The shard was no longer merely a silent consciousness.
It had begun to respond.
At first only through subtle resonances, a gentle pulsing in Melloryia’s hands. But over time, it became more.
Magic gathered around the fragment of her broken shrine like mist around moonlight.
And one night
a form emerged.
Not complete.
Not stable.
But visible.
A small being made of shimmering violet fragments of light and dark crystal lines floated before her, barely larger than her hands. It had no fixed shape; sometimes it seemed almost animal-like, sometimes like a small star with eyes.
And though it spoke no words
Melloryia understood immediately that it recognized her.
“Hello…,” she had said softly back then.
Shard answered with a bright sound, somewhere between a chime and shattering glass.
And for the first time since her fall…
the promise felt fulfilled.
The months passed.
Melloryia continued to learn.
Not just the world.
Herself.
She learned that joy sometimes came suddenly.
That grief didn’t disappear, even on beautiful days.
That love didn’t mean never being hurt.
And that people often shone brightest when they were imperfect.
There were evenings when she talked with Selia and Frika late into the night.
About stars.
About magic.
About the strange little things in life.
Selia often spoke far too quickly, jumping to other topics mid-sentence, getting lost in stories, until Frika told her dryly:
“Taking a breath now and then would be impressive.”
Then Selia laughed and threw her pillow at her.
And Melloryia
laughed along.
Hesitantly at first.
Later, freely.
Yet despite everything, something inside her remained empty.
Not painful like before.
But palpable.
A space that still didn’t know where it belonged.
She had found a family.
Perhaps.
But no place in the world.
The change began with a small, almost ridiculous discovery.
Technology.
One day, Selia had brought back an old laptop from a city, half-working and covered in scratches.
“Found,” she claimed.
“Stolen,” Frika corrected.
“Borrowed with no intention of returning it.”
Melloryia barely understood half of what the device did.
But she was fascinated.
Not by the technology itself.
By the people behind it.
Thousands of voices.
Thousands of lives.
People laughing, singing, playing, talking.
People connecting, even though they were far apart.
And something about it
touched her deeply.
One night she stayed up late watching streams.
People who were simply… themselves.
Chaotic.
Loud.
Sad.
Silly.
Real.
And suddenly she understood something.
Not completely.
But enough.
She had spent her entire previous existence observing possibilities without ever being a part of them.
Now she finally had a heart of her own.
Her own feelings.
Her own voice.
And yet she held herself back.
Out of fear.
Out of insecurity.
Out of habit.
“You’ve been watching this for three hours now,” Frika murmured behind her at some point.
Melloryia startled slightly.
She hadn’t noticed that Frika had woken up.
“It’s… strange,” Melloryia said quietly.
“People open up to strangers.”
Frika sat down next to her.
“People are lonely.”
The sentence hit her harder than expected.
She looked back at the screen.
At the laughter.
The conversations.
The little moments between people who might never meet, yet still offered each other comfort.
And suddenly…
something inside her felt painfully familiar.
“I think…”
Her voice faltered.
“I think I understand that.”
Frika looked at her for a long time.
Then she smiled slightly.
“Of course you do.”
The idea didn’t come fully formed right away.
It grew.
Just as everything important in her life had grown.
Slowly.
Gently.
At first, it was just a thought:
What if she spoke?
Not in hiding.
Not as an observer.
But as herself.
The thought frightened her.
Real fear.
Not the cosmic dread of truth she had once known.
Something much more human.
The fear of being seen.
Truly seen.
“That’s good,” Selia said immediately when Melloryia finally voiced it.
“Fear usually means something is important to you.”
“Or that you’re dying,” Frika interjected dryly.
“Thanks, Frika.”
“You’re welcome.”
And yet
they supported her.
From the very beginning.
Selia spent days tinkering with a streaming setup that probably violated several laws of physics. Cables were strewn everywhere, crystals were built into technical devices, and at one point the kitchen nearly exploded.
Frika wrote lists.
“If you want to talk to people, you should probably know how a microphone works.”
“Why is the button glowing red?”
“Because you're muted.”
“…Oh.”
Melloryia was learning.
And as she learned
something inside her changed.
For the first time since her fall, she didn’t feel like she was merely surviving.
But… to be arriving.
The night of her first stream was quiet.
Outside, rain pounded against the windows. Inside the house, it smelled of tea and burnt electronics.
Selia paced nervously back and forth.
“Okay, okay, what if the PC crashes?”
“Then nobody dies,” said Frika.
“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.”
Melloryia sat quietly in front of the screen.
Shard floated beside her, pulsing softly in violet.
Her hands trembled slightly.
“What if they think I’m weird?”
The question was little more than a whisper.
Selia immediately knelt down beside her.
“Mellow...”
It was the first time anyone had called her that.
Brief.
Warm.
Closeness in a single sound.
“You’re strange,” Selia said with a grin.
Melloryia’s face fell slightly.
Then Selia added more gently:
“But in a beautiful way.”
Frika stepped behind her and calmly placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to be perfect.”
The sentence struck her deeply.
Perhaps deeper than either of them realized.
Perfection.
Her entire past life had revolved around it.
And now
she sat here, with dark wings, black tear streaks, and a heart full of fear…
and was still allowed to exist.
Melloryia closed her eyes briefly.
Took a breath.
Exhaled.
Then the stream began.
The screen lit up.
At first, there were only a few viewers.
A few names.
Short messages.
Curiosity.
Melloryia stared at them as if they were stars.
Real people.
Who wanted to hear her.
Her voice was soft at first.
Uncertain.
“H-Hello…”
She paused briefly.
Then she smiled cautiously.
“I’m Melloryia.”
And in that moment
she truly was.
Not Thalerys.
Not a discarded possibility.
Not a mistake of the Order.
But Melloryia.
Fallen.
Once lost.
Loved.
Found.
And while outside the rain fell against the windows and Selia frantically tried in the background to keep something from burning, while Frika sighed as she made tea and Shard floated radiantly beside her
Melloryia truly opened her heart for the first time.
Not to the spheres.
Not to the Order.
To the world.
And the world… responded.
End of Chapter VII