All too soon, Leon and his group’s time in the Heartwood grove came to an end. Leon didn’t want them to stay too long, even though the grove itself seemed to revel in his presence as much as he reveled in its. The golden leaves of the trees seemed to sparkle and glimmer more the second morning than they did the first, and Leon momentarily wondered what Nestor’s thoughts about the place would be.

However, he quickly put that out of his mind. He didn’t want to hear from that man right now, despite the peaceful aura that the trees filled him with.

The night before the group left, Leon and Valeria took some time to fix up Justin’s litter. They managed to rig up something that was a little more stable and didn’t require magical ice to remain together, while the two put their heads together and came up with an air enchantment that would keep the litter more stable than their first attempt.

So, when the second morning rolled around, everyone was rested and ready to leave the Forest of Black and White. Their magics were recharged—if they could be, at least, Justin’s magical base was still thoroughly destroyed—and their bodies were healed of any lingering wounds. There was just one last thing Leon had to do before leaving.

To that end, when they departed from the grove, instead of leading them east toward the pass back to the Brown Bear’s vale, he led them south toward the purple grass clearing and his old home.

Their pace was a little more leisurely than it was two days before, but they still proceeded at a good clip, arriving at the destroyed compound before noon. Once there, everyone took a few minutes to catch their breath and take stock of the place.

Nothing much had changed in the few days since they’d last been there. There were no animals living in the ruins, and neither did it seem any ice wraiths had stopped by. The Heartwood sapling in the center of the compound was still there, and as soon as he arrived, Leon’s attention was captivated by it.

He almost felt a little dirty bringing Justin here, of all places. This was his father’s resting place, and he’d brought one of the men most responsible for Artorias’ death to visit. However, he’d spoken to Justin beforehand, informing the man that there was something that Leon expected of him if there was to be any peace at all between them.

Leon set the litter down a few feet in front of Artorias’ cairn, where the Heartwood tree was sprouting, then took a few respectful steps back. Justin struggled to push himself up into a more dignified position, but for all the recovery that he’d had, he still wasn’t yet strong enough to rise into a seated position. Instead, he twisted himself until he was practically lying prostrate before the cairn.

For a moment, Valeria seemed like she was going to move forward and aid her father, but Leon took her hand and gently held her back. She looked back at him in confusion, but he’d simply shook his head and said, “I want him to do this himself. It has to have meaning behind it.”

Valeria frowned, but she nodded and stood back to watch with Maia and Leon.

Justin stayed there for a while, silent as the grave he lay before. After about ten minutes, however, he whispered a sorrowful, “I’m sorry, for everything,” before rolling back, his eyes filled with tears.

How serious he was, Leon couldn’t say. He already knew that Justin was likely a talented liar just from how he’d conducted himself over the past couple of decades, so while he seemed genuine, Leon hadn’t any confidence that he’d be able to tell if Justin’s apology to Artorias was legitimate.

But as these thoughts crossed his mind, he thought he saw the golden leaves of the Heartwood sapling glimmer in the sun. It could’ve just been a trick of the light or wishful thinking, but Leon was given a strange feeling that the Heartwood sapling approved of Justin’s act of contrition, and so he challenged it none.

Instead, he helped Valeria get Justin back onto the litter, and then he took shovel out of his soul realm. The remains of his childhood hut was essentially nothing but a mass of burned splinters and blackened timber beams on a ruined and half-rotted timber foundation, so he had little trouble clearing away everything to expose the old hole in his floor that he’d made to bury the possessions he hadn’t been able to bring with him to the Bull Kingdom.

After only fifteen minutes, Leon—with a little bit of help from Maia and Valeria—had unearthed the box he’d left behind and hauled it out into the compound’s overgrown courtyard. Leon then cracked the box open, his heart thumping in his chest as he hoped that the box’s locking enchantment had worked and preserved the paper and fur within.

He was consequently quite relieved to see that the remainder of the fur from the snow lion he’d killed all those years ago was still there in exactly the same condition as it had been when he’d buried it. Along with it, the maps of the regions which his House had influence over were still there, along with the books he’d stored away.

Aside from the snow lion’s fur and a couple of the books on enchanting, most of what Leon had buried was now useless to him. He didn’t need the maps of the Northern Vales or of the Great Plateau anymore, and neither were most of the books particularly needed with the Argent Palace archives open to him. However, the book on ancient runes that Leon remembered giving a few cursory look-throughs was there, and that he paid extra attention to, given how easily Nestor had defeated him with his mastery of the bygone art.

Still, into his soul realm went the box and everything in it.

With that, there was only one thing he had left to do before he departed from this place for who knew how long. It could be years, decades, perhaps even centuries before he found the time to come back.

Leon asked the other three for a few minutes, and they gave it to him, with Valeria leading them out of the compound and toward the tree line. Maia hesitated for a moment, but Leon reassured her through their connection, and she agreed to go with.

Now alone, Leon took a deep breath and surveyed his surroundings. He’d not gotten much of a chance to really take the place in when they’d first come through thanks to the discovery of Rhea’s corpse and the additional information it provided, so Leon wanted to look around and really take everything in before leaving.

His childhood home was the last place he’d ever truly felt safe and secure. Everywhere else he’d gone had either not been his, or had been attacked almost immediately after his arrival, leaving him perpetually worried about being attacked again.

When he lived here with his father, he’d not once felt in danger when safely ensconced behind the compound’s palisade. Not even the ice wraiths and their banshees could harm him here.

But all that changed when Justin’s team of assassins broke in and fatally wounded his father. Feelings of safety and security and comfort had been few and far between since then, for the most part only coming to him in the form of his lovers—Elise and her boldness, confidence, and connections with Heaven’s eye, Maia with her power and carefree attitude. Now, perhaps, he might find some with Valeria and her skill with the blade and dedication to the magical arts.

Before he could feel completely certain in entertaining that thought, however, Leon’s attention finally turned to his father’s cairn and the small Heartwood sapling pushing its way out of it. Its aura was peaceful and serene, as all the other Heartwood trees he’d seen had been, but it also felt… happy.

Or at least, that’s how Leon interpreted it. He liked to think that some part of his father had been reborn into the tree as it grew, despite Artorias having been completely, thoroughly dead when Leon had buried him, rather than the kind-of-but-not-really-dead of Nestor. Leon held onto that feeling, hoping that if Artorias was in a better place, looking down upon him either from the depths of the sapling or from wherever his Ancestors may be, then he was looking upon him with pride and joy.

He hoped that was the case, but even with the aura of the Heartwood sapling, Leon wasn’t too sure. He had spared Justin and was fairly sanguine about his future with Valeria, but that also meant that Artorias’ killing was yet unavenged. The Raime family was yet unavenged.

Leon took a deep breath and fell to his knees in front of the cairn. His gaze went low in shame, and he knelt there for a few quiet minutes as he thought about what to say. In the end, he decided that a straight-forward apology was for the best, given the ideals that Artorias had tried to instill in him.

“Dad,” he whispered, his eyes still locked on the ground despite addressing the cairn and Heartwood sapling, “I miss you. I’ve done well enough in the south, and have found happiness with a few women that I love, but even with that, I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy and content as I was when I lived here with you. Maybe that’s a bit sad, I’m a bit too close to this to make that judgment.

“I have to apologize to you. One of those women is the daughter of the man who was sent here to kill us, and for her, I made peace with him. I’ve set aside the role he played in your death for the sake of the future, so that I can strike at our more powerful enemies and maybe even find… Mother. For this, I don’t think I have the words to express my sorrow at leaving you without vengeance…”

As he spoke, Leon felt the wind pick up. It gently broke upon his face and played with his hair. Leon felt no anger or disappointment, though he also had to question why he was scared of feeling such things from a young tree.

“I… suppose I also have to apologize for other things,” he continued, his tone growing a little heavier. In truth, he wasn’t too worried that Artorias would be disappointed in his decision to spare Justin, but rather in his actions in the Bull Kingdom. He’d hardly been the noble man that Artorias had tried to teach him to be, and Leon quickly explained all of that on the off-chance that his voice might carry all the way to Artorias and his Ancestors. He didn’t get too bogged down in the details, but he did his best not to leave anything out.

When he was finished, the aura from the Heartwood sapling remained unchanged. It was just as peaceful and non-judgmental as it had been before he’d started, and Leon suddenly felt more than a little silly. He wasn’t talking to anyone, no one could hear him. Artorias had been gone for years, and the Heartwood tree, for all its magical properties, was not sentient in the way that humans were. There wasn’t much point in him continuing to pour out his heart like this, though Leon found that he didn’t regret having done so. It helped him feel like he was on the cusp of something new, of growing beyond the Bull Kingdom and its politics, of moving on to the next stage in his life, whatever that might be.

After a few silent minutes, Leon finished by saying, “I am sorry that I’m not the man you’d hoped I could be. But there’s still time. I can still be better than I am, and I intend to strive to be someone that I can take pride in being.

“Hopefully, when next I come back, I can be that person. And hopefully, when I return, I’ll have more information on Mother. I love you Dad. I hope I can live up to your example of what a man should be. Until then, farewell.”

Leon had said his piece, but before he could rise, he felt that breeze again, and once more, he thought he saw the leaves of the sapling shimmer with golden light. By now, he was just about convinced that he was only seeing what he wanted to see and feeling what he wanted to feel, but the approval and acceptance that he felt from the sapling still had a smile blooming across his face.

A few seconds later, Leon pushed himself back to his feet and made to link up with the rest of his party. As much as he might want to stay a little bit longer, they had to get the hells out of the vale before it became dark. As much as he missed his old home, it was once again time to leave it behind and move on. It was time to face whatever might come next.