It had been evident to Eithne ever since the winds began to blow across Ultima Thule, that the path forward was to be built on the back of sacrifice. A trade no different, she thinks wistfully, from all the trials she had faced before. Her face betrayed no emotion, and with each loss, she continued walking forward, guiding her friends to what she prayed would be the final area, the final encounter, willing that the weight of their grief would cease to grow heavier. With every step, her ever loyal friends’ numbers dwindled, the steady thumping of their footsteps dimming and falling out of rhythm. She could feel the spirits of even her beloved twins, as passionate and hopeful as they were wont to be, falling ever lower, their steps dragging. Still, Eithne could only continue looking forward.

It was a familiar feeling, though she loathed to admit it— Her breath had always been guaranteed at the cost of another's.

All she could do was press on towards their goal, their righteous passion for Eitheirys maintaining her focus. Every breath, every gust against her back, a reminder to press onwards. So that this pain remains here, with them, at the edge of creation. So that no one else in Eitheirys would suffer as they had been made to, so that they might have a chance to claw back their right to exist from the clutches of despair. Eithne would beg for a distraction, anything to avoid thinking about the anguish in her heart, but the silence enveloping Ultima Thule gives her no quarter, and her thoughts trail back to the silence of Coerthas. She can see the fields of snow as if they were right in front of her— a catatonic Alphinaud at her side, with only the fear that she might fail him, too, allowing her the strength to push forward.

She feels the familiar chill, and the promise of home and hearth but a few steps away. This used to be where the silence always took her to— Camp Dragonhead. As time passed, she felt her memories of it fading, much to her terror. Still, it was when she was at her weakest, as she was now, that her weary mind and body would leave her at that warm and friendly entrance, the crackling fireplace and their benevolent host appearing as vividly as ever.

Thankfully, or more so unfortunately, they arrive at a new location, and Eithne’s pleas for distraction turn into pangs of regret. She steeled herself once more, as she took in their surroundings. The terrain was... futuristic, for lack of better description, in design; she felt as if the inhabitants had taken all the Allagan Nodes they could find and turned them into flooring. It is here where she allows herself to look back at her friends, holding her heart together, afraid that it might shatter. Who will they take next? She knows it cannot be her to fall, for her blessings could do nothing but curse her to walk the champion’s path. As Hydaelyn’s chosen, she always knew it fell to her to defeat Meteion, but she still wishes for it anyways. Would that I could take their place, she prays in her heart, would that my will were strong enough to end this nightmare, here and now.

Through trial and error, her ever brilliant allies arrive at the fateful answer, finding the one trapping them here. As Sir lays bare its heart, Eithne Cuinn wills her own to become stone once again. G’raha Tia speaks to her, and it's all she can do to maintain her silence. We all knew it was coming to th—

“I want you to make me a promise.”

It catches her off-guard, and the defenses she had been building up so steadily suddenly feel so brittle, riddled with weakpoints. No matter how she might try to suffocate her heart, she keenly feels the pounding in her chest, threatening to burst.

“Be it across time and space, our promises have always connected us. And so I ask that you indulge me once more,” She can feel his eyes searching for something in her’s, “that this won’t be the end.”

She brings her hand to her chest, attempting to restrain her anguish, but the words spill out of her mouth before she can contain them, pathetic and pleading. How could she deny him anything, after all he had done for them, for her. After all he has suffered in her pursuit.

“You say it, I’ll do it.” It makes her wince, how pitiful it sounds, how unalike the champion he so admires.

His smile, ever so kind, parts to let out an airy, “Is that so...?”, and Eithne can scarcely understand how the ever so hesitant and self-conscious G’raha Tia seems to transform in times like these. How he squares his shoulders with determination, his boundless optimism threatening to consume her. Even back on the First, as he faced annihilation— “In that case, I won’t hold back.”

He looks away, and she wonders if he found whatever he was seeking, though his unwavering smile did not betray his feelings this time, as it so often did. Despite Ultima Thule’s silence, her mind is anything but. What he would ask of her, she did not know, but memories of self-sacrifice and promises to live on, of legacies both lasting and impermanent, loomed heavy in her mind.

“First, I want to visit Ishgard with you. Properly.” Eithne’s breath catches, the constraints she had wrapped around her heart snapping in an instant.

Why—

“We scarcely had time to look around last time. I should like it very much if you could show me the sights.” Behind him, Eithne can see the twins, their faces alight with both surprise and understanding, though Eithne could not imagine how they would have seen this coming. Ishgard, of all places...

“Next, you must regale me with your greatest adventures. In the places where you lived them, if possible.” His voice takes her far away, away from the suffocating stillness around them, across space and time, back to the lands of Eorzea; their beauty just beyond her reach. “I may have read about all your deeds, but there is no substitute for a firsthand account.”

She struggled to believe her ears. The joy his words bring her, the light he shines upon her darkened reality, it's almost too much for her to bear, yet so too do the shadows grow in turn. It was a familiar darkness, one she has felt keenly before— the pall of death that oft followed in her wake. How long had she spent running, sometimes away from these questions, at other times towards the answers. Time and time again, her feet led her here, to the foot of another grave, the cold touch of solid gravestone. Always too late, unable to realize the warmth she held in her hands until its flame threatened to extinguish. Despite all she has lost in order to come this far, it was not the same dread, the quicksand of pity and sadness so familiar to her, that she felt threatening to overtake her heart. Rather, it was a long-forgotten kind of fear. The terror that his radiant smile might disappear in an instant, as she had seen happen once before, as when she desperately grasped onto that chilled hand.

“And last but not least, a new adventure together. Unlike any we’ve experienced before.”

Still, in this moment, his flame burns brighter than ever before. At the edge of creation, he speaks of promise, of a story yet unseen. of a future yet unwritten. Eithne grapples with feelings she thought she had long since forsaken to the bitter cold, the same feelings that threatened to consume her long ago, in that land of snow. G’raha Tia too, must know this, and even when facing his own oblivion, he would still choose to gift unto her the warmth she has so desperately longed to feel once more. Why now, she thinks, what do you see within me that I cannot.

“We’ll travel the lands, cross the seas, and take to the skies upon the eternal winds— and it will be marvelous!” G’raha’s voice trembles, the weight of this promise settling on their shoulders, a covenant stronger than Meteion’s despair. “It will...”

There is no time for hesitation. Just as G’raha had reached out through the darkness, she would fight the fear welling in her stomach. Grasp it tight, she prays, that you may not suffer its loss again. She wonders if he had felt this way on the First, when he could do nothing but weep at her words. Oh how different had things turned, that their roles would be reversed in this way. His tender smile gives her the strength to find her own, a smile she had thought long since lost to her.

With clenched fists, their pact is thus forged. That fate would be so cruel as to deliver the singular answer she had so desperately pursued now, so ironic as to have been the same one she had received from the darkness, the answer to the questions she chased so long ago; the what-ifs and could-have-beens, the ghosts.

It was love.