The whispers spread like wildfire — from temple courtyards to the filth-dark alleys of the kingdom.
"The Serpent Maiden has chosen her king."
"The prophecy wakes."
"Time itself will break for their love."
The Nāgavanshi tribes — children of serpent and shadow — rose as one. Scaled warriors spilled from marsh and forest, their armor slick with rain, their battle cries splitting the hills like thunder.
At their head was Aryan. His golden eyes burned with the fury of centuries, the pulse of his half-serpent blood urging him forward — not just to wage war, but to carve a place for his people in history.
The royal court shrieked heresy. The priests shrieked doom.
And Alira? They called her traitor.
Dragged in sacred chains before the crumbling temple steps, she stood unmoving as the mob swelled.
"She consorts with serpents!"
"She has poisoned the king's mind!"
"She calls the storms!"
The High Priest leaned close, his breath thick with incense and rot.
"You could have been a goddess. Now you will burn as a witch."
But Alira's gaze was on the horizon, where a tide of banners rose — venomous black and gold.
Across the distance, Aryan's eyes found hers.
A silent vow passed between them.
This war would be their love's last prayer.
The first arrows fell like rain.
They sang as they split the air — a hiss, a whisper, a promise. The mob scattered, the priests shielding their relics as if brass and bone could protect them from the storm.
Aryan's warriors surged up the temple steps, scales glinting in the smoke-light. Spears clashed with the king's guard, the sound of steel on steel drowning the chants of the terrified.
Alira did not flinch as a sword point pressed to her throat. The soldier's hand trembled — not from mercy, but from the shadow that slid between them. A cobra, broad as a man's chest, reared with its hood wide. Its fangs dripped moonlight. The soldier dropped his blade.
Aryan reached her then, breaking the sacred chains with a single strike of his serpent-forged blade.
"You came," she breathed.
"Did you doubt I would?" His voice was fire, low and steady, though blood streaked his cheek.
Around them, the temple burned — not with mortal flame, but with the eerie green light of the Nāgavanshi rites.
The High Priest's scream rose over the chaos.
"You will unmake the world!"
Aryan's arm wrapped around her waist.
"That's the plan."
And together, they stepped into the fire.
The fire did not consume them.
It parted.
The green flames curled back like bowing courtiers, revealing a narrow path carved of onyx and bone, leading into the temple's heart — a place older than the kingdom, older than the first sun that had warmed its stones.
Alira's bare feet touched the black floor, and the air changed. No longer the acrid reek of smoke and fear — here it was damp, metallic, alive, as though the walls themselves breathed.
Aryan's grip on her tightened. His golden eyes scanned the shadows. "It's waking," he said.
She knew what he meant. The prophecy was not just words on ancient parchment — it was a living thing, sleeping for centuries in the temple's root. If the High Priest had been right, then what they were about to do would break time itself.
Behind them, steel rang and men screamed. Ahead, a sound like scales shifting against stone rose from the dark.
A great shape emerged, larger than the temple columns — a serpent of obsidian and gold, its eyes like molten suns. It bowed its massive head, and when it spoke, the air quivered.
"The lovers come to bind the ages."
Aryan looked at Alira, something unspoken trembling between them.
"This is the point of no return."
Her lips curved — not in fear, but in defiance. "Then let's not return."
They stepped forward, and the serpent opened its jaws, revealing a tunnel of light that pulsed like a living heart.
They entered.
The light swallowed them whole — not harsh like the sun, but warm, pulsing, as if each throb were the heartbeat of the world itself. Their bodies felt both weightless and impossibly heavy, every step stretching into eternity, every breath tasting of iron and rain.
Alira's hand found Aryan's, fingers lacing with a grip that felt carved into fate itself. The tunnel twisted, not in curves, but in moments — flashes of battles long past, kingdoms unborn, rivers flowing backward into the mouths of their springs.
They saw themselves, too — over and over. In one vision, they were crowned in gold and crowned in ash, a thousand years apart. In another, she was a queen of glass towers, and he was a shadow in the ocean deep. Every time they found each other. Every time it ended in fire.
The voice of the great serpent whispered through the light:
"You will love each other until the end of all things — and you will be the end of all things."
They emerged into a vast chamber beneath the roots of the world. Black stone walls pulsed faintly, veins of green fire crawling through them like living rivers. In the center, an altar of coiled serpent-bone rose toward the ceiling, where a single shard of crystal hung, suspended, dripping molten light.
Aryan's breath was ragged. "The Heart of Time."
Alira stepped forward, her bare feet leaving no sound on the stone. "One touch," she said softly, "and we tear the thread."
From the darkness around them, shadows stirred — figures cloaked in shifting scales, eyes like suns drowned in deep water. The Nāgavanshi ancestors. Their voices layered into a single, terrible harmony.
"If you bind your souls here, the past will unravel. The future will burn. All that was, all that will be — rewritten in your image."
Aryan turned to her, his gaze steady despite the enormity of the choice. "We could have peace. We could have a home. No more hiding."
She smiled faintly, but her eyes held the weight of lifetimes. "Or we could undo the world just to hold each other in every one of them."
He hesitated for a single breath — then placed his hand over hers on the altar.
The crystal flared.
Somewhere far above, the temple's ruins dissolved into green fire. Armies froze mid-battle, their arrows suspended in air like beads of amber. The sky cracked, spilling starlight where clouds should be.
And as the first strand of time's thread snapped, Alira leaned into him and whispered — not a prayer, but a promise.
"If the world must burn, let it burn beautifully."
The serpent's roar became the sound of oceans folding into themselves, mountains exhaling dust, and the two of them vanished into the endless, unwritten dawn.