I did not deny it.
He raised his palm.
I sat on the stone until dawn. When the sun touched the koi pond, the water was clear. I saw fish. I saw pebbles. I saw my own reflection, older than I remembered, with something missing from my chest. The Chimera-s Heart -Final- -Sirotatedou-
And none of them were mine.
The rain had stopped three hours ago, but the garden still remembered. I did not deny it
“It wasn’t a monster,” he said now, watching the water. “It was a mother who had lost all three of her children in the same winter. Famine took the lion-hearted son. Fever took the gentle daughter. A snakebite took the youngest, the one who still believed in mercy. Grief sewed them together. Grief became its shape.”
“The bridge was real,” he said. “The mountain was real. But the monster was never outside us.” When the sun touched the koi pond, the water was clear
Not a heart.
The chimera lowered its heads. One by one, it laid them in his lap — lion, goat, serpent — and wept. Not tears of blood. Just tears. Salt. Loss.