⭐️ Eternal Shadow 🌙 Damian wayne ~~~~complete

Chapter 17: Faded Shadows, Lingering Light

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The world was blurry and soft when Marceline woke up.

A thick, gentle warmth clung to the air, carrying the scent of damp earth, rain-soaked leaves, and blooming jasmine. The space around her felt both open and safe — an unfamiliar but oddly soothing sensation.

She wasn't in the infirmary anymore.

The steady hum of the Tower's distant systems pulsed softly beneath her, blending with the soothing whisper of wind against glass walls. The sound of distant waves brushing against the rocky shore mingled with the quiet chirping of early evening birds. Somewhere nearby, faint, mellow music played — the kind of old, instrumental track Raven liked to leave playing in the garden at dusk.

It wrapped around Marceline like a strange lullaby, both grounding and unreal.

Slowly, she sat up.

Her limbs felt heavy, like her body was trying to drag her back into sleep. A dull ache settled in her chest, but the crushing, unbearable weight from before was gone. In its place lingered a faint pressure, as if someone had scraped away the storm but left the bruises behind.

The sky overhead stretched in a wide expanse of bruised indigo and violet. Faint streaks of soft orange clung stubbornly to the horizon as the last traces of sunset faded into evening. The Tower's rooftop garden around her swayed gently in the breeze — tall, leafy plants and small hanging lanterns giving the place a strangely magical air.

A light mist clung to the greenery, and the heady scent of wet petals and earth seemed to steady her pulse.

For a moment, Marceline just sat there, letting the textures of the world settle in. The soft music. The birds. The salty scent of the ocean.

And for the first time in what felt like forever... she wasn't afraid of the quiet.

A few strands of dark hair clung to Marceline's cheek, damp from the cool air. She reached up with a slow, unsteady hand, brushing them back behind her ear. The ache in her body lingered — not gone, but dulled, like the sharp edges had been worn down to something manageable. The worst of it had been scraped away, leaving only the sting, the echo of what had been.

And then it truly settled in where she was.

She was in the Tower's rooftop garden.

The garden had always felt like a world of its own, separate from the chaos below. Tall plants with thick, leafy stalks swayed gently in the evening breeze, catching the dim light of small lanterns strung along the trellis. The sky above was painted in shades of bruised blue and soft lilac, the last colors of dusk clinging desperately to the horizon. The city lights shimmered in the distance like scattered stars, while the real ones slowly peeked out through thinning clouds.

For a few heartbeats, she let herself just exist there, wrapped in the cool hush of twilight and the salty perfume of the ocean.

"About time you woke up," came a familiar, dry voice.

Marceline turned her head.

Raven sat cross-legged a few feet away, one of her many worn, leather-bound books floating lazily beside her, pages softly ruffling in the breeze. The sorceress's expression was her usual unreadable calm, but there was a subtle half-smile tugging at the corners of her lips — faint, almost fleeting, but unmistakably there.

The quiet between them wasn't uncomfortable. If anything, it felt like a kind of unspoken understanding. The way only two people who lived with constant shadows could share.