"A Flame that Fades"

Chapter 12: The Cost of Running

Freya's POV

Does he miss me? Would he even notice my absence? Or did he read the letter at all? The questions echoed in my mind as I watched the orc tribe's border recede bit by bit behind me, swallowed by the growing distance. The farther I walked, the more the landscape blurred into nothingness. I tried to push it all away, to make myself believe this was the right decision. But my heart...my heart screamed at me to turn back. To go to him. To fix it.

But my head, that small rational part of me, insisted it was better this way. It has to be better this way.

My feet kept moving, driven by something deeper than thought. My body ached with every step—blisters burned, muscles protested, bones groaned from the endless pounding of the hard ground—but still, I didn't allow myself to rest. Not yet. Not now. I needed to cover more ground. Get farther away, farther from the possibility of him finding me. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how weak I felt, I couldn't let him catch up.

He had made his intentions clear, and I had to respect that. Even if it was breaking me, I had to accept it. I had tried—no, we had tried—but it wasn't enough. I craved so much to be the one for him, to be the one he walked through life with, the one who could soften his edges and help him carry the weight of his world. But I wasn't. I couldn't be.

He would find his own happiness, in his own time, and he would battle through the darkness of his past until he could claim victory over it. I knew he would. I believed in him, like I had from the very first moment we met. He had the strength to overcome anything, even if he didn't see it yet.

Underneath all that roughness, that anger and coldness, there was just a broken soul. A soul as wounded as mine, trying to make sense of the world. I thought, I hoped, that maybe our pieces would fit together. Maybe, together, we could heal each other. But I see now—no matter how hard you hope, you can't force two pieces together that don't fit.

The harder you try to shove them into place, the more the edges begin to chip away. And in the end, the pieces don't just stay broken—they become completely different, unrecognizable fragments of what they were supposed to be.

I believed we could make it work. I thought our love could fill the gaps, bind the cracks. But the truth is, we were never meant to be whole together. Not in the way I imagined.

I kept walking, my pace unwavering, even as my heart shattered with each step. There was no turning back. Even if part of me would always wonder if he missed me. If he thought about me as I thought of him.

But I couldn't be the one to fix him. I couldn't be the one to fix us.

Yet, deep down, as much as I knew I had made the right choice, a tiny, fragile part of me still hoped he would come looking for me. I knew how he was—he didn't express his feelings openly. He held them in, buried them under layers of silence and anger. But if he came after me, if he came looking for me, if he made the effort to find me, it would mean he still cared. It would mean I wasn't just a passing thought in his life, that I had meant something, even if only for a moment.

But then I realized how foolish it was to hold onto that. To need that validation. It might even make me look petty, like I had run away just to test whether he would come after me. And if he didn't...well, then what?

No. I couldn't let myself believe that. I couldn't let myself need him to prove anything.

I had to believe that this was the right choice, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how much I missed him. Because if I didn't let go now, I would never be free.

***

I began to notice the dark clouds slowly swallowing the sky's blue, replacing it with a thick, ominous cover. The wind picked up, whipping the dirt from the ground and sending it into the air, stinging my skin and blinding me for a moment. My heart raced as I realized the storm was coming fast—too fast.