Her dream bleeds
Rheya no longer dreamed like mortals.
Her sleep was a cathedral of whispers.
Every night, she drifted through the Gate's reflection a mirror of memory and mourning, where the stars bled light instead of warmth. There, she saw Elira's chains glowing gold beneath the soil. She saw Kael's eyes behind walls of frost, open but unseeing. And somewhere deeper, she saw herself, standing barefoot in a garden of ash, her veins glowing silver-gold like molten vines.
"Wake," a voice told her. "The third root is growing."
When she opened her eyes, the room had changed.
Petals covered the walls black, white, and red, pulsing faintly. Her reflection in the mirror flickered between girl and queen, between Rheya and something far older. The silver flower along her arm had spread to her collarbone, reaching like a hand toward her heart.
She had thought the Second Bloom would be the end of it.
But this was something else.
This was becoming.
And somewhere, she could feel Kael's heart slowing each beat a little fainter, as though his life was being measured out in hers.
The crypt beneath the palace was silent as snowfall.
Chains of ice bound Kael to the wall, frost biting deep into his wrists. His breath hung in the air like mist. The guards above had long stopped visiting; they were afraid. He could feel the fear in the stones, the dread in the frost. The world was holding its breath.
He didn't dream anymore. But sometimes, he heard her.
A voice through the ice.
A heartbeat through the cold.
And then one night, he saw a crack forming in the wall. Thin as a thread, glowing faintly blue. He leaned closer.
A whisper came through.
"She doesn't remember you, but she still dreams of your hands."
Kael froze.
The voice wasn't hers. It was softer. Sadder.
"Elira," he said, barely breathing.
A pause. Then:
"Yes."
He pressed his palm against the ice. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because I failed the same way you will. Because love made me a prisoner."
He clenched his jaw. "Then help me free her."
"You can't free what's already choosing its chains," Elira said. "But you can remind her what she's forgotten."
Her whisper faded. The frost glowed brighter for a heartbeat and then the wall cracked wider, spilling a line of light across the stone floor.
Kael didn't hesitate.
He began to dig.
Rheya stood at the Gate again.
Its light had changed darker now, beating like a heart too long denied rest. The woman inside it Elira's ghost, or what remained of her watched from behind the lattice of gold and thorn.
"Why am I changing?" Rheya demanded. "Why can't I stop it?"
Elira smiled faintly. "Because you were born from my undoing. My curse planted in new soil."
Rheya's voice cracked. "Then take it back."
"I can't."
Elira's chains rattled. "But I can tell you what it wants."
Rheya hesitated. "What does it want?"
Elira's eyes gleamed like dying suns. "It wants to bloom again fully this time. Three roots for three realms: life, death, and memory."
"And if it does?"
Elira tilted her head. "Then there will be no more difference between them."
Rheya stepped back. "That's the end of everything."
"Or the beginning of something new," Elira said softly. "We are flowers of contradiction, child. We only grow when we are broken."
Kael's escape was not clean.
The frost he shattered screamed like a wounded beast. The guards above fell to their knees as the air turned to knives. He did not mean to kill them, but he did. He was frost and frost spares no one.
When he reached the surface, dawn was breaking, though the sky bled red instead of gold.
The city was wilting. Vines of silver and bone coiled up the palace walls, breathing like lungs. People whispered Rheya's name like a prayer and a curse all at once.
He stumbled through the streets, half ghost, half storm. His body was failing him his heart slowing, his blood thin as ice but his resolve burned hotter than ever.
He had failed to protect her once.
He would not fail again.
At the edge of the garden, the stranger waited.
No longer cloaked. No longer pretending. His eyes glowed faintly, two suns bleeding into dusk.
"You shouldn't have come," he said.
Kael drew his blade. "Who are you?"
The stranger smiled thinly. "You already know."
Kael's breath hitched. "You're..."
"Elira's brother," he said simply. "The first guardian. The one she betrayed."
Kael's grip tightened. "You lied to us."
"I guided you," the stranger said. "To her. To the Gate. To the truth."
"Why?" Kael demanded. "Why her?"
The stranger's gaze softened. "Because only she could finish what my sister began. Only she could end it."
Kael stepped closer, fury trembling in his hands. "You made her a weapon."
"I made her a choice."
The words rang like steel. And then the stranger's eyes darkened.
"She will either seal the Gate and kill the dead or open it and kill the living."
Rheya stood in her chamber, surrounded by silence. The petals along the walls had begun to whisper. Her reflection no longer matched her. Her skin shimmered between flesh and light.
She could feel the Gate pulsing inside her veins now. She was the bridge Elira's echo reborn.
And somewhere deep beneath the palace, the roots stirred. The same roots that drank Kael's blood when he shattered the crypt. The same roots that fed on the corpses of old kings.
They were moving toward her.
She went to the window and saw the massive tendrils of gold and bone, crawling up from the ground like serpents. The city below was screaming. The sky burned.
And in the heart of it all, she saw him.
Kael.
Walking through the ruin.
Unbroken.
Her breath caught. Her heart faltered. Something within her something fragile and buried cracked open.
For the first time since the Second Bloom, she remembered his name.
"Kael," she whispered.
And the Gate shuddered.
He found her in the throne room, surrounded by light. The floor was cracked marble; the throne itself was alive, blooming with thorns and ice.
She turned as he entered, power rippling off her in waves.
"Don't come closer," she warned. "I can't control it."
He ignored her. "Then don't try to."
The frost recoiled from her heat as he reached for her hand. For a heartbeat, they were both man and monster, flame and frost, mortal and myth. The world held its breath.
"You remember me," he whispered.
Tears burned her cheeks. "Not everything. Just… how it felt."
He smiled small, raw, and real. "That's enough."
But the Gate didn't agree.
It screamed a sound that shook the walls, split the floor, tore the air apart. Elira's voice thundered from within it.
"She cannot love and rule both!"
Rheya staggered, clutching her chest. "Kael...run!"
He shook his head. "No more running."
He wrapped his arms around her and for the first time, the frost didn't fight the flame. It fused.
The ground beneath them split wide open. Light poured out, swallowing the room whole.
When the light faded, the world had changed.
The Gate was gone.
The palace is gone.
The city is a skeleton of frost and vine.
And in the center of what remained stood the Tree.
It was enormous branches of gold and silver twisting into the clouds, its roots glowing beneath the cracked earth. At its base lay two figures, entwined: one of ice, one of light.
Rheya opened her eyes first. Her body was different now softer, colder, stronger. The flower on her arm was gone; in its place, a sigil shaped like a blooming rose, half frost, half flame.
Kael stirred beside her. His eyes were pale silver now, veins faintly luminous.
"What happened?" she whispered.
He smiled faintly. "You did."
Around them, the world breathed again. The dead were silent. The living, untouched. The balance is restored for now.
But in the roots of the great tree, something stirred.
A heartbeat not their own.
Far below, where even light couldn't reach, the old voice murmured again. Not Elira's. Not Kael's.
Something new.
"The Third Root is not the last."
A small, human pushed through the soil.
A child's voice laughed softly.
"Mother."
Rheya froze. Her pulse stumbled.
She turned to Kael. "Did you hear that?"
But he was staring at the tree eyes wide, horror dawning in his expression.
Because etched into the bark, glowing faintly, were three words:
Bloom. Break. Begin.