POV: Kairo
The blade was missing.
The moment I returned to the tower, I felt it — not panic, not fear.
Absence.
Like something sacred had been taken.
I stormed into the library, past rows of ancient scrolls and worn leather tomes, and slammed open the hidden drawer where the blade had been sealed.
Empty.
Rhea.
She had it. Or worse — she had given it to Lyra.
I gritted my teeth. Not because I thought she'd use it.
But because I couldn't be sure she wouldn't.
I still hadn't told her everything.
Not about the other part of the prophecy.
The one buried beneath layers of dust and ink and lies.
The one I had only discovered three nights ago — and had hidden.
I paced the tower floor, fists clenched.
Then, without warning, it happened.
A flash. A vision.
But it wasn't mine.
A woman — not Lyra — screaming in a circle of fire. Her hands were clawing at the air, and a hooded figure stood over her, chanting.
Then I saw him.
Me.
But… not me.
My eyes were red. My hands soaked in blood. And around my neck, the same chain Lyra now wore.
I staggered back, nearly knocking over a table.
"No," I whispered. "That wasn't— that wasn't real."
But it was.
And I knew why.
The bond was bleeding into me now. Just as her dreams slipped into mine, her memories were infecting my mind. Except they weren't hers.
They were someone else's.
Emberlyn's.
The first.
The original.
The one the prophecy was built around.
I ran to the archives and yanked a forbidden scroll from the top shelf. I'd seen it once before — a curse script written by the Flameborn Seer.
It warned of a bloodline that repeated.
Of a soul reborn through fire.
Of a Key who had once destroyed an empire…
...and the flame who made him do it.
My hands shook as I read the final line:
"When the fire returns, it brings the name, the bond, and the end."
And suddenly, it all made sense.
The dreams.
The obsession.
The pain that wasn't ours.
We weren't just cursed.
We were repeating a story we had already lost.
And the only way to end it… was to end us.