Kyrell didn't sleep.
He hadn't for days now—not in any way that soothed. Instead, he hovered somewhere between memory and pain, between Lucian's voice and the ghost of what the world expected him to become.
They said he was chosen. That he would bring the ruin.
But all he ever wanted… was to not be alone.
Lucian stood at the threshold of the chamber, silent. The last time he stepped forward without being called, Kyrell had flinched.
But now Kyrell turned. Looked at him. Not the way he once had—not yet—but not like a stranger either.
"Lucian," he whispered.
A name.
Not a command. Not a plea. Just a name held like warmth.
Lucian crossed the distance slowly. No hunger in his step. No power in his hand. He knelt beside the boy he had once thought to destroy—and now could not bear to lose.
"I don't remember everything," Kyrell said. "But I feel it. Like a pulse. Like a fire."
Lucian's hand hovered, then rested against Kyrell's chest. "Because it is fire. You were always going to burn. But you don't have to do it alone."
Kyrell's fingers closed around Lucian's wrist. Tight.
"I'm afraid of what I'll become."
Lucian leaned forward. "Then let's be afraid together."
---
Elsewhere, Mara was not afraid.
She was furious.
She'd clawed through scrolls, spoken to dead seers, slit the throats of lovers to offer blood for answers. And all of it—all—led to the same curse written under Kyrell's name:
> He will choose love and death shall follow.
But what if she killed Lucian first?
She knelt before a pool of silver. Not water—something older. Something from beyond the Veil. It shimmered with faces, all of them Kyrell's, fractured into versions that could have been.
But only one belonged to her. A future in which Lucian never existed.
She opened her palm, let her blood fall in.
The waters roared.
---
Above, in the ruins of the old court, Renak had found the last of Silas's letters he wanted Lucian to see along side other.It had been hidden inside a lantern—burnt into the parchment itself.
Not prophecy. Not threats.
A confession.
> I erased him to protect the balance.
I knew what the boy would become.
But I never knew what the heir would choose.
Renak closed his eyes out of frustration cause he had met with Damien and Damien is making things difficult for him
Silas had feared Lucian not because he was a monster.
But because he might choose love over power.
And that—was the one thing that could break every law their kind had ever written.
So Renak walked out bearing in mind he'd return when Damien is gone...
---
In the chamber below, Lucian and Kyrell still sat while Kyrell looked lost at first.
Yet something had shifted.
The Veil no longer trembled. It waited.
Kyrell whispered, "What if this world burns?"
Lucian took his hand. "Then we light the match together."
So they walked away,to Lucian's room..
They both knew someone was there earlier and had probably left or still within the walls or in the shadows watching them as usual.
---