After ending the call with Morgana, Raiden didn't go back inside to sleep in his bed.
The farmhouse still felt too quiet, and sleep was the last thing on his mind on his final night in Verdant Hollow.
Instead, he walked out across the moonlit meadows toward the heart of the fifty-square-kilometre farmland, stopping beneath the sprawling, hundred-meter canopy of the ancient Banyan Tree.
This tree held more memories for him than almost anywhere else on the farm.
It was under this tree that Aunt Ruby had always curled up to nap in the afternoon sun. It was under this tree that he and Woolie had evolved to Silver Rank, and where Cinder had regrown her wing in a pillar of azure fire.
Sitting down cross-legged against the thick, gnarled roots of the Banyan Tree, Raiden pulled the two-inch scrap of Sylvia's bloodied white sleeve from his pocket, resting it gently on his knee alongside the broken half-mask of the Ashen Clan Enforcer.
