The silence that followed wasn't silence at all.
It was the kind that vibrated—like the pause before a scream, the breath before a blade hits bone. The Temple ruins were still smoldering, the runes no longer glowing but seared permanently into the stone, like burn scars on forgotten skin.
Aeren stood beside her, ash dusting his shoulder like the touch of ghosts. He didn't speak—not yet. He couldn't. What could he even say to a woman who just dragged power from the throat of time and rewrote her own myth?
Almond stared into the dark horizon. "They'll come," she said flatly.
Aeren glanced toward the west, where the blackened trees began to whisper in unison. "You mean the Watchers?"
She shook her head.
"No. Worse. The ones who thought they erased me."
From beneath her feet, the ground pulsed once—subtle, like a heartbeat returning after flatlining. It wasn't just magic anymore. It was memory—ancient, undeniable, vengeful. The kind that outlives gods and out-smarts time itself.
"They buried me in silence," she whispered, fingers twitching at her sides, "thinking silence would be enough."
Aeren took a step closer, unsure if he was walking toward love or ruin. "What did they take from you, really?"
Almond turned to him, her eyes now glowing—not gold, not red, but void. Eyes that knew eternity by name and had kissed it on the mouth. Her voice came low, steady, and dangerously calm:
"My death. My true death. And now they'll beg me to take it back."
A breeze curled around them, but it wasn't wind. It was breath. The breath of something long-buried. Something waking up in answer to her name. The ancient god-blood in her veins hummed like a violin played by the bones of her ancestors.
From the ashes, a figure emerged.
Not a soldier.
Not a god.
A seer—blindfolded and shaking. Wrapped in cloth the color of bruises, he held a rusted bell in one hand and a torn prophecy scroll in the other.
He fell to his knees when he saw Almond. "The Rewrite," he whispered. "It lives…"
Almond didn't respond. She simply stepped forward and placed her bare foot on the scroll. It burned instantly.
"No more prophecies," she said. "Only choices."
The seer trembled as the ashes of the scroll drifted into the night air, curling like forgotten prayers. Aeren flinched, not from fear—but from the realization that this wasn't the Almond he first met. This wasn't even the Almond from last week. This was something rewritten.
"Almond," he said cautiously, voice threading between awe and alarm. "What... are you now?"
She turned slowly, one strand of her ink-black hair dancing across her face, and smiled.
"A consequence."
The wind howled in response, like it recognized her. Like it feared her.
The seer stayed on his knees, muttering, "She walks in veils torn from fate's wedding dress... She is not meant to be. She was never meant to survive."
"Exactly," Almond said, stepping past him. "Which is why I will."
Behind her, Aeren could feel the air warping, reality shifting slightly—like the earth itself was reconsidering its alignment just to accommodate her presence.
She wasn't rewriting history.
She was undoing obedience.
Suddenly, from the far edge of the ruins, a deep rumble cut through the sky. Not thunder. Not magic.
Marching.
The Watchers were arriving—but not in secret this time. Their entrance was deliberate, arrogant, like men walking into a church and lighting cigarettes at the altar.
Almond tilted her head and flexed her fingers. The bones in her wrist cracked loudly. "Let them come."
"But you're not healed yet," Aeren said, stepping forward, worry etched deep in his brows.
"I don't need healing," she said, her voice thunder-wrapped. "I am the wound. Let them touch me and remember what bleeding feels like."
From beneath the cracked stone, ancient glyphs began to glow again—not golden, not divine—but inky black, pulsing like veins. Aeren realized it then.
She wasn't summoning anything.
She was the summoning.
"Almond… they'll kill you."
She smirked, stepping into the blacklight. "Then let's make it mutual."
And as the first Watcher reached the edge of the ruins, face wrapped in ceremonial gold, Almond raised her hand—not in defense, but in offering.
"Come closer," she whispered. "I want to teach you regret."
The wind picked up like a beast disturbed—no longer playful but predatory, circling around her as though it recognized her rebirth.
"You shouldn't have come alone," murmured a voice from the shadows. Not a threat. A mourning.
Saphine didn't flinch. She was made of scars now, stitched together with prophecies no one remembered writing. "There's no such thing as alone for people like me," she whispered back, voice like a falling dagger—silent, precise, deadly.
The figure stepped out of the gloom. Velvet robes rustled like regret. Ashen eyes, centuries old. It was Azrael, Keeper of the Lost Hours—her uncle in bloodline, but her executioner by design.
"You broke the vow," he said, tone hollow as an echo trapped in stone.
"I broke the cycle," she corrected, stepping forward, each footfall rewriting the ancient wards etched into the floor. "There is a difference."
Behind her, the constellation markings on the temple walls began to shift, bleeding into new patterns. The stars had seen enough repetition—they hungered for something new.
Azrael's blade—blackened steel from the Forge of the Forgotten—slid from its sheath with a hiss that made the flames around them recoil. He didn't attack. Yet.
"You cannot just rewrite the laws of magic," he said. "You must negotiate with them."
"I'm not negotiating with ghosts anymore." Her voice cracked open like thunder, soaked in grief and godhood. "They took from me. Now I take back."
From the altar behind her, the obsidian hourglass cracked. It didn't fall—it shattered upwards. Sand scattered into smoke. Time itself paused to breathe.
And then—the first true magic. A tear opened in the air, not a portal, not a memory—a decision. One that could never be undone.
"You always had her stubbornness," Azrael murmured.
Saphine looked at him, jaw set like iron. "And you always mistook fear for caution."