Yu Lin Bloodhawk raised his head and met Sylvanas's smiling, tearful gaze. He slowly stood and flexed his fingertips, drawing faint cracks from his joints. The sluggish resistance he had felt when the laws rejected him was gone. Now, the currents of magical elements between heaven and earth were clear to his senses, as natural as breathing.
"I'm back," he said softly. His voice was dry and weak after half a month of sitting in meditation, yet it carried an unprecedented sense of certainty. He looked down at his palms. Faint blue traces of light flowed through their creases-the marks quietly imprinted by Azeroth's laws of order, and proof that this world had fully accepted him.
Sylvanas stepped forward and studied his eyes, as though trying to find something unfamiliar in that familiar gaze. Only after a long while did she breathe a sigh of relief. She reached out to brush nonexistent dust from his shoulder. "Those shadows just now... that final image they settled into, was that you?"
Yu Lin Bloodhawk nodded, looking past her toward the sprawling grove of breadfruit trees beyond the magic array. A breeze passed through, setting the emerald leaves rustling and filling the air with their fresh scent. "Lin Yu's memories are still there, but they're part of me. They're who I used to be, not all that I am." He paused. "The person I am now is Yu Lin Bloodhawk, who has drunk the water of Eversong Woods, fought in Quel'Thalas, and witnessed the storms of the Great Sea. I used to drift in the gap between two worlds, but you were right. My past self was me, and my present self is me too. Accepting who I was doesn't actually conflict with accepting who I am."
He raised his hand and loosely