WHEN THE MOON FINDS US AGAIN

REFLECTIONS OF REGRET

Kael

The cliff edge has a way of making a man feel small, and tonight I'm grateful for it. I didn't plan to come here. My feet just brought me, the way they always do when the weight in my chest gets too heavy to carry through the village without someone noticing.

Below me, the abyss swallows the moonlight whole, and above me, the same moon hangs there like it's mocking me — bright, indifferent, completely unbothered by the fact that I single-handedly destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me. I wonder if Serena's looking up at this exact same sky right now, wherever she is. I wonder if she's thinking about me, or if she's already started the long, deliberate process of scrubbing me out of her memory like a stain she's determined to lift.

I deserve that, probably. Doesn't make the thought hurt any less.

"Kael?"

I turn to find Luca approaching through the trees, hands in his pockets, that careful, steady look on his face he always gets when he's about to say something I don't want to hear. My brother has a gift for showing up exactly when I'm trying hardest to be alone.

"Didn't think you'd come out here," I say, and it comes out harder than I mean it to, edged with a bitterness that isn't really aimed at him.

He doesn't flinch. He never does. "If you're out here wallowing, then I'll wallow with you." He leans against a nearby tree, arms folding across his chest in that infuriatingly patient way he has. "But you can't keep running from this, Kael. You need to actually talk about it instead of staring at the bottom of a cliff like it owes you an apology."

I drag a hand through my hair, frustration boiling up faster than I can contain it. "What's there to talk about? I hurt her, Luca. I ruined the one good thing I had going for me, and I did it for nothing. For a moment of weakness I can't even fully explain to myself, let alone to her."

The admission tastes like poison coming up. I say it anyway, because keeping it locked inside has been worse.

"Yeah, you did," Luca says, no judgment in his voice, just plain fact. "But beating yourself bloody over it isn't going to fix a single thing. What's your plan, exactly? Stand out here until guilt finishes the job your own teeth started?"

I don't have an answer for that. The truth is there isn't a plan. There's just this — the cliff, the moon, the gnawing certainty that I let something slip through my fingers I'll spend the rest of my life trying to get back, if she'll even let me try.

I think back to the moment everything cracked — the look on Serena's face when she found us, the way her whole expression folded in on itself like the ground had opened beneath her. I told myself, in the moment, that I was protecting something. Some misguided sense of duty, some old insecurity about not being enough for her that I never bothered examining too closely. It felt justified, somehow, in the dark, in the loneliness. It doesn't feel like anything but a mistake now.

"What if I can never make this right?" My voice cracks on the question, the composure I've been clinging to all night finally giving out. "What if I've lost her? Really lost her, for good?"

Luca steps closer, his expression softening but not going soft, exactly — there's still steel underneath it, the kind only an older brother who actually gives a damn can manage. "You need to own what you did. That's what makes you who you are, Kael. But it doesn't have to define the rest of your life. You still get a chance to take responsibility, if you're willing to actually take it instead of just talking about it."

"And if she hates me?" The thought makes my stomach drop straight through the cliff edge. "What if the reason she ran to Crescent City was specifically to get away from me?"

"Then you let her know you're here," he says, without a beat of hesitation. "Ready to face whatever's coming. You can't rewrite the past, Kael, but you can absolutely decide what you do next. Fight for her. Show her you're more than the worst night of your life."

Something in his voice cuts straight through the noise in my head, landing somewhere I've been too scared to look. I turn away, trying to mask the storm churning underneath my ribs, but the moonlight on the cliffside doesn't let me hide from much. It just sits there, serene and beautiful, completely indifferent to the war happening three feet away from it. How does beauty manage to exist this close to agony without flinching?

"What if I fail?" I murmur it more to myself than to him.

"Then you fail," Luca says, flat and immediate, like it's the simplest math in the world. "But you can't let fear keep you frozen up here forever. You owe her — and yourself — at least the attempt."

Something catches fire in my chest at that, low and stubborn, fed directly by his words. My heart pounds against my ribs in time with the wind moving through the leaves, and for the first time since the worst night of my life, the rhythm doesn't feel like dread. It feels like the beginning of a decision.

"Okay," I say finally, the word strange and foreign on my tongue. "I'll do it."

It sounds so simple saying it out loud. It doesn't feel simple at all. The image of Serena's face — first the bright, easy smile I fell for, then the devastation I caused, both of them tangled together in my memory now, inseparable — refuses to leave me alone. I have to find a way to walk the road between those two versions of her without losing myself entirely in the guilt of having put the second one there.

"Good," Luca says, and his smile breaks through the tension between us like sunlight cutting through storm clouds. "But don't just tell her you're sorry. Show her. Love isn't just words, Kael — it's making sure every choice you make from here on actually backs up the promises you're about to make."

We stand there together a while longer, the forest holding its breath around us, as if it knows exactly what's being decided on this cliff tonight. I look down into the abyss one more time, except this time something in me has shifted. The fear hasn't left — I don't think it ever fully does — but there's resolve sitting next to it now, steady enough to hold some weight.

I know what's ahead won't just take courage. It'll take honesty I've avoided my entire life, vulnerability I've never been comfortable with, and the willingness to actually sit in whatever consequences come from showing up and trying anyway.

"Thanks, Luca," I say, quieter now. "I needed this more than I wanted to admit."

He claps a hand on my shoulder, steady and warm. "You're not doing this alone. We'll figure it out together — same as always."

We make our way back through the trees, and my heart does this strange thing where hope and anxiety seem to be fighting for the same space at once, neither one willing to fully win. I think about every ounce of courage I'm going to need to win back something I nearly threw away with both hands.

The moon stays with us the whole walk back, silver light threading through the branches like it's leading the way on purpose. With every step closer to wherever Serena is now, I feel something in me chipping away — the version of myself who made that mistake slowly giving ground to whatever version I'm trying to become. I don't know yet if it'll be enough. I know I have to try regardless.

By the time we clear the treeline, Crescent City glitters faintly in the distance, a whole world of challenges and possibilities I haven't earned the right to enter yet. But I will. I'm going to make myself earn it, one impossible day at a time, starting tonight.

Fate, I suspect, isn't going to make this easy on me. I take a breath, steady myself against everything I'm about to face, and start walking forward anyway. This is just the beginning of the story I still have a chance to write — assuming she's willing to let me hold the pen at all.