Chapter Ninety-Six: Behind the Mind

  Henry’s form blurred, the scene dissipating like smoke scattered by a cold wind. When it returned, it was another winter—years had passed, countless years in Mythica’s relentless march of time. “It had been a few centuries since I last saw her,” Henry’s voice echoed softly. “I told myself I wasn’t looking, that I had let her go. But I had been searching, even as I resisted the urge. Strange, the wars we wage within ourselves.”

  He paused, the air around him thick with unspoken longing. “Part of her condition included a variable respawn point. It was something Hades had arranged with the other gods—something about reducing the strain on her mind, allowing her to follow the path of least resistance instead of being tethered to a single fixed place.”

  He looked away, as though reliving each painstaking moment of his search. “Every time she respawned, there was a chance I’d never find her again. Terra Mythica is vast, as large as Earth itself, down to the foot. And so I wandered, knowing that each time she returned, she could be anywhere—lost in a world too expansive for any one soul to cross alone.”

  “Until I heard whispers of a singer—a woman in a small town nestled deep in the Norse realms, a place they called Vetrgard, known for her hauntingly beautiful ballads. Osira had always loved to sing.” Henry’s voice grew quiet, tinged with a fragile hope. “I had sought out a thousand bards before, each time clinging to the faint chance it might be her. I suppose I didn’t expect anything different when I journeyed there that winter’s eve.”

  Snow clung to everything, coating the world in a pristine blanket of white. The cold bit into the air, and Henry stood there, older, his face lined and worn by time. His breath misted in the moonlight, drifting like ghosts in the gentle breeze.

  Ahead of him was a small cottage, plumes of smoke curling from the chimney. He could hear laughter from inside—a family gathered together, grandparents, children, grandchildren—all safe, all happy.

  And then she appeared, her voice carrying on the frigid air, sending warmth flooding through him despite the years that had passed. “I’m seventy, not dead! I can fetch the firewood myself. You two stay with the little ones,” Osira called over her shoulder, her tone playful, her smile teasing. She wore a thick fur coat, wrinkles gathered around her eyes from years of laughter and living.

  She hummed a soft tune, her voice lilting through the cold air like a delicate thread, weaving warmth into the winter night.

  Henry watched from the edge of the fence surrounding the cabin, half-concealed in the shadows. He hadn’t meant to linger this long, but the warmth of the fire and the laughter had drawn him closer, almost against his will.

  She noticed him suddenly, her eyes widening in alarm before a soft laugh escaped, breaking the tension. “I hadn’t seen you there,” she said, her voice holding a slight tremor, her breath still catching in her chest.

  “My apologies, madame,” Henry responded, stepping forward just a little, his voice soft, contrite. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was only passing through. The fire, the laughter, I—was just admiring it.”

  She studied him for a beat longer, her eyes still wary but the corners of her lips softening into a semblance of a smile. “Well, it’s the night before the winter solstice,” she explained, her voice gentler now. “A time for family.”

  “Indeed,” Henry said, his gaze lingering, unable to quite pull away from her. There was something about her—something he couldn’t name.

  She offered a polite smile, already turning back towards the cottage. “Well met, stranger. I should get back. My family will be wondering where I’ve gone.”

  “Yes,” Henry said, his voice a bare whisper, almost lost in the rustling of the wind. “One must.” He took a step back, preparing to fade into the shadows, but something in him hesitated. His chest tightened with an unspoken ache. “I’m happy for you,” he called after her, his tone surprisingly earnest, almost aching.

  She paused, turning back to him. Her eyes softened, and there was a depth there—a knowing. Something tender, something that saw more than he’d intended to show. “So am I,” she said quietly, her smile gentle, her eyes holding his a moment longer than necessary. Then she turned, the warmth of the firelight pulling her back, leaving Henry alone with the cold night and the soft echo of her laughter.

  She hesitated, then added, “Sir, do you not have family to spend the solstice with? You’re welcome to join us. We have food enough for twenty more—my eldest daughter is a follower of Aegir, and we have merriment enough to share. You know how they can be.”

  Henry smiled, the kind of smile a stranger offers, kind and distant. “No, thank you. I must be going. But your offer is kind, madame.”

  She nodded, her smile lingering. She turned to leave, but before she disappeared inside, she called out once more. “What is your name, stranger?” she asked, her voice carrying across the frosted air.

  Henry hesitated, his eyes softening. “Errikos,” he said.

  She smiled at him, a genuine warmth. “I’m Osira,” she said, and then turned, disappearing into the warmth of her home.

  Henry stood there, frozen in that moment, the world still around him, blanketed in freshly fallen snow. The cottage lights blurred, distant echoes of laughter slipping through the cold night air. He watched until the last flicker of her disappeared.

  He turned then, his eyes locking onto Jace’s. His gaze bore into him, carrying the weight of an eternity of grief.

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  “I couldn’t use my real name,” Henry began, his voice wavering under the weight of old emotions. “Not when I knew what it would do to her. I’d seen it, you know... what the memory of me did to her—how it haunted her, twisted everything into something cruel and unbearable.” His eyes drifted, unfocused, the past playing out somewhere just beyond his reach. “I tried, more times than I can count. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could bring it all back—the good parts. Make her remember us as we were.”

  He swallowed hard, his gaze darkening as he relived it. “But I was wrong. Every time, it ended the same way. The pain in her eyes, the way she fought against her memories as if they were some kind of nightmare she couldn’t escape. I was a ghost to her, and each time I returned, I only dragged her further into the shadows.” He shook his head slowly, a bitter smile touching his lips. “Hades warned me, of course. Told me there’d be a cost. But I thought I could carry it.”

  He paused, his fingers tightening around nothing at all, a silent admission of his helplessness. “That’s when I understood—truly understood. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer because of me. Not again. Not ever.” His voice softened, the words coming out almost like a confession. “That was the day I chose to become someone else. Errikos—a new name for a new life. A name that wouldn’t remind her of the nightmares I’d left behind.”

  He paused, the shadows gathering around him, his face hardening. “In the old tongue, it means Henry. It would be many years later before I would take on my third name, the one you know me by today.”

  He looked away then, his eyes misting over with a distant sadness. “Osira lived the rest of her life in peace—spent her days with her family, surrounded by warmth and laughter. Every winter, I would check in on her, just to make sure she was alright, though we did not speak again. Until one year, she was gone. Her body, finally claimed by age, left in peace.”

  The scene became a fairground, bustling with activity, the crisp chill of winter in the air. Henry stood among the crowd, the annual winter fair of Roandia stretching around him. “A hundred years had come and gone before I saw her again.”

  Henry’s eyes wandered, his gaze losing its sharpness as his mind drifted back. “Roandia,” he muttered, as if tasting something sour. “A border city caught between the Greeks and the Egyptians. To one side, Olympus—columns of marble, Zeus and his eternal theatrics. And on the other, Amen-Ra’s territory—sand and sun, with temples that stretched forever. And there, squeezed between the egos of gods, sat Roandia. A patch of green in an ocean of desert, a little paradise that the powers that be hardly noticed—until they needed to. It was the first spawn point in Mythica. The place where all Traveler’s began.” He smiled a wicked smile, hiding a secret, a laugh escaping, harsh and humorless.

  “Back on Earth, they called it Mesopotamia. The land between two rivers. Civilization’s birthplace.

  “I used to think it was impressive, how stories could find new life here, how so many mythologies had a home in Terra Mythica. I even found it charming. Once.”

  The laughter died, his smile curdling into something darker, something more weary.

  “But when it came down to it, they were all worthless. Zeus, Amen-Ra, all their bluster and lightning, all their golden temples and sacred suns—they were as useless as the rest of them. Not a single one gave a damn when it mattered. All their grand titles, all their sacred power—it’s all a game to them. No substance. Just noise and flash, empty promises wrapped up in marble and sunbeams. Useless, every last one.”

  “Nevertheless, it was there, amidst the winter festivals of Mesopotamia—of Roandia—that Osira and I first stepped into Mythica. It was where we first felt that spark, that sense of wonder that made us fall in love with this place.” He looked down for a moment. “I don’t know what drew me there that day. But then I saw her. A young, beautiful Osira, as vivid as my fondest memories.”

  Henry gestured toward the vivid memory unfolding before Jace’s eyes. The fairground seemed to dance with light and color, a distant echo of something long lost. “This is where it all began again,” Henry murmured, his gaze distant, locked on Osira’s laughter as it rang out, clear as a bell. “A miracle, you know. A true one.”

  He paused, his eyes following her as she disappeared behind a stall, only to pop up on the other side, her smile teasing, her eyes finding his across the booths. “You see that smile? The way she looked at me… It was like the universe had decided to tilt, just for a moment, so we could find each other again. Like love at first sight—only deeper, as if it had always been there, waiting for us to catch up.”

  Henry glanced at Jace, a small, almost wistful smile tugging at his lips. “It had been so long, Jace. Two hundred years. I thought… I thought I could never be anything but a ghost to her. The sadness, the pain—it used to be all I could bring her. But that day… her mind didn’t reject me. She didn’t get lost in the sorrow or the shadows.”

  He swallowed, a breath catching in his throat, his voice softer now. “Maybe enough time had passed. Maybe I’d been pushed so deep into the corners of her memory that I no longer stirred those old wounds. Or maybe, just maybe, it was fate’s cruel kindness—letting us meet like that, as if none of the pain had ever been. A clean slate. A chance to love her as if we were new.”

  He turned back to the memory, the way Osira’s eyes held his, her laughter bright against the glow of the fairground. “It was a miracle, Jace. To see her smile without the weight of everything that had come before. To feel, even just for a moment, like we were free of it all. And I—“ He hesitated, a small laugh, weary and filled with warmth, escaping him. “I looked at her like a man seeing the sun for the first time. Because that’s what it felt like—light after so many years of darkness.”

  Henry’s gaze returned to Jace, his eyes reflecting a mix of hope and regret. “It wasn’t perfect, and I knew it wouldn’t last. But in that moment, under those fairground lights, we were just Henry and Osira. And that… that was everything.”

  “She knew me as Errikos then,” Henry continued, his voice laden with a deep ache, each word carrying the weight of lost chances. “I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. I wanted to tell her the truth—gods, I wanted nothing more. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk it, not after everything. I couldn’t bear to lose her. Not again.”

  He paused, his throat tightening, a flicker of regret clouding his eyes. “So, we lived that life. I stayed Errikos. We were married the following fall, under the bright leaves and the crisp sky. It was... it was the happiest I’d been in more years than I care to remember.”

  There was warmth in his voice now, even if it was tinged with sadness. “And for her, it seemed the same. We tried to have children, but... well, that wasn’t in the cards for us. Nevertheless, we had each other. And that was enough. We made it enough. The laughter, the quiet moments, the simple, ordinary days... we were happy.”

  The scene before them shifted, as if caught in a breeze, blurring and swirling, the colors and shapes speeding forward, passing years in moments. Jace’s eyes widened as the world settled again, bringing into view a familiar cottage—the same one Persephone had shown him. Their home. He could almost feel the echoes of laughter in its walls -see the warmth that had once lived within its small, sunlit rooms.

  Henry’s voice came again, softer now, almost a whisper. “This was where we lived our years. Our little sanctuary, away from gods and their games. Just us. Just the life we made, with all its imperfections and fleeting joys.” He looked at Jace, a sad, wistful smile on his lips. “It wasn’t perfect. But it was ours. And that was enough, for a time.”

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