Darkest Days (The Wild Hunt) - 5. Epilogue

The next morning dawned softly, the sky behind the jagged peaks painted in pale ribbons of cool light. The forest’s frenetic howls quieted long ago, leaving behind a world that seemed emptied and wiped clean. Fresh snow glistened, untouched except by Elias’s single set of tracks leading down toward the village. He still felt the weight of what had passed in the clearing, what he had seen and been forced to let go of, but it was not the crushing weight it had been before. No, this weight was different, lighter. It was no longer a burden but something grounding, something gentle. He clung to it.

As Elias trudged through the snow, he almost didn’t notice the sounds of life returning to him in subtle ways. Birds were singing again, soft and exploratory, their calls timid as though unsure if their songs would carry after the storm. His boots crunched through layered frost, and the village, still nestled deep in shadow, suddenly came into view: the steeple reaching skyward, its spire a thin line of dark against the dawn’s fragile colors. It was the sixth of January—the day of Epiphany. A holy day.

Elias hesitated as the church loomed closer. The tall wooden door, framed by wreaths frozen in place by winter’s breath, seemed almost unfamiliar, but more than that, it felt... monumental. A threshold. He hadn’t really joined the congregation in so long—not since before. Not since Adrien’s death. When they had once attended together, their hands brushing between tiny moments of quiet devotion. When the village still smiled at him as one of their own, and when he still smiled back.

For a moment, Elias considered turning and walking away—back to his cabin, back to his solitude. The tears from the night before were still raw, barely thawed, like he had only just unclenched a fist he’d been holding tight for a year. But then, Woden’s voice came back to him, low and resonant, and Adrien’s face shimmered again in his mind, golden and free of frost.

“You know what he would say.”

Adrien would want him to step forward—not away.

He pushed open the door, the hinges groaning in the stark silence of the church’s interior. It struck him first how quiet it was inside; the smell of incense surrounded him, mingling with the scent of pine and beeswax from the candles flickering on the altar. There wasn’t a loud sound, save for the murmured prayers of scattered villagers already seated. Elias paused in the doorway, his hands trembling as he grasped at his own uncertainty, his torn and thawing heart unsure of where he belonged.

“Elias.”

The voice startled him, gentle as it was. The preacher stood next to him, greeting his flock at the door, his face soft with recognition and something deeper—understanding. His eyes, deep blue, like crevasses in a glacier, burned with the warmth of a thousand candles. Laying a tender hand on Elias’s shoulder, he scanned his face and saw what others might have missed: the raw, exhausted flush of a man who had cried not to mourn alone, but to begin anew. His tears, though long frozen, had melted, and his grief had found passage.

“Come.” The preacher’s voice carried no judgment, only invitation. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s always a place for you.”

Elias took a halting step forward and then another, his boots echoing faintly across the floor. As his eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight, he noticed the faces of his neighbors turning toward him—some with surprise, some with wide eyes full of recognition, and others with quiet smiles that seemed hesitant but warm. They missed him; he could see that now. They held their grief for Adrien, for the life taken too soon, just as he held it. But he had shut himself away, cutting himself off from the unspoken bonds that had waited patiently for him to return. Adrien would have chastised him for that, teasing but firm. “Your heart isn’t just yours, Elias,” Adrien would say. “It belongs to the world, to the people who need it, even when it’s hurt.”

The preacher gestured towards the rows of pews, not to the corners or the shadows in the back, where Elias might have once sat. No—he gestured to the heart of the congregation, where men and women sat elbow to elbow, bundled in worn clothes, their breath still faintly visible in the cold air of the large building. It was an invitation as much as it was a command: to join them, to live among them again, as Adrien would have wanted.

Elias hesitated only a moment before his legs, unsteady as they were, carried him forward. He lowered himself into the seat in the center of the pew, glancing at the people on either side of him, who nodded their silent welcomes. The church bell rang faintly again in the background, and outside the window, faint shafts of sunlight began to pierce the thinning veil of clouds, illuminating the snow in pale, golden light.

The preacher began his sermon on the message of the Epiphany—the baptism, the arrival of wisdom from distant lands in the form of the Three Magi, the revelation of divine truth. The words wove their way through Elias’s consciousness, the rhythm of the preacher’s pleasant voice steady and flowing like a stream, cutting slowly yet continuously through stone. Yet Elias’s mind wandered, focusing not on the words of the sermon but on his own epiphany—his revelation, granted not through holy scripture but in frostbitten forest hollows and golden light.

Love, he realized, was never something to hoard, to cling to as though it might slip away. Love didn’t fade when shared; it didn’t grow jealous or weaken in grief. Its bounds stretched endlessly outward, reaching beyond loss, beyond death. Adrien had shown him that—both in life, when his every glance and grin had warmed the darkest parts of Elias’s soul, and in death, when his sacrifice had saved him once more. To live, truly live and love, was Adrien’s only unspoken request. And Elias would honor it.

Tears pooled faintly in Elias’s eyes again, unbidden yet not unwelcome. Sitting in the pew, surrounded by others’ prayers and whispered devotions, his own silent promise rose within him like a new-lit flame. He wiped his cheek, smiling faintly.

When the congregation rose for the closing hymn, Elias sang with them, softly joining the others for the first time in what seemed like forever. His voice cracked, unused to the act, but it was there—another step forward. The preacher smiled at him.

Outside the church, a thaw had already begun. The snow glimmered in the daylight, and the ever-present cold seemed to lessen, not gone but lighter. Elias exhaled deeply as he stepped beyond the church doors, the winter air no longer biting, no longer suffocating. It was not spring yet—it would not be for months—but the promise of it was waiting in the soft light. He felt it within himself.

As he walked back towards the path leading toward his cabin, he brought a hand to his chest, as if Adrien’s warmth still lingered there.

“I’ll live,” he said softly, the words only for the wind. “For you, Adrien. For both of us. And I’ll have so much to share with you.”

The sun climbed higher in the sky, its light both pale and golden, as though a little part of Adrien lingered there too. For the first time in a long while, Elias was ready to meet it.