The roses no longer bloomed red.
They bled in black.
They grew from the cracks between marble tiles, from the seams of soldiers' armor, from the mouths of priests who dared to speak Rheya's name without reverence.
The air itself carried the scent of mourning iron, soil, and something sweetly spoiled.
The second bloom had awakened something deeper than power.
It had awakened a memory.
But not the right kind.
The garden remembered her now as queen.
But not as Rheya.
And worst of all… neither did she.
The Mirror Room had once been built to reflect sunlight into the winter chambers a kind of engineered grace.
Now, it reflected ghosts.
Rheya stood in the center, surrounded by a hundred silvered panels. The air shimmered, warped by the heat of her pulse. The mirrors did not agree on who she was.
In one, she wore the crown of thorns Elira had forged to seal the Gate her face ageless, terrible, holy.
In another, she was the girl who had once laughed in a library tower, ink staining her fingertips, Kael's frost clinging to her skin.
And in yet another… she had no face at all. Only light. Only the suggestion of wings unfurling in flame.
But in the center mirror the one that did not shimmer or shift she saw a girl crying.
No crown.
No curse.
Just a girl.
That reflection whispered,
"You're not lost. You're just blooming in the dark."
Rheya reached out to touch the glass.
Her fingers went straight through.
The mirror rippled and when she pulled her hand back, it was coated in frost.
Kael's frost.
The first touch she had ever trusted.
Her breath hitched. The mirrors began to hum, vibrating like tuning forks struck by memory. One by one, her reflections turned to face her their eyes burning white.
And then they spoke, in unison:
"He remembers you. Do you remember him?"
The frost spread across her hand like a question she didn't know how to answer.
Far below, in the dark belly of the palace, Kael pressed his own hand against cold stone.
The frost responded to his oldest companion, his oldest curse. It parted for him like breath on glass, revealing a narrow passage sealed in time and neglect.
He followed it.
The air was heavy with the scent of mineral and rot. His torchlight trembled against carvings of vines that once symbolized devotion but now looked more like veins. At the passage's end stood a door made of petrified wood, etched with runes that bled light when he looked too long.
Inside waited silence. And roots.
A tree grew in the heart of the crypt or what was left of one. Its branches were bone-white, its veins full of frozen blood. From its trunk hung a thousand shards of ice like wind chimes, each one whispering faintly as he passed.
And in the center of that impossible thing, caught in the roots, was a golden book. Small. Innocent-looking. Alive.
Kael reached for it.
The instant his fingers brushed its cover, agony split through his skull. The ice screamed. The roots shuddered. The world fell away.
Kael found himself standing in a garden unburned.
Sunlight. Birds. Roses red and bright as wounds freshly opened.
And there Elira. Not the chained phantom he'd glimpsed through the Gate, but a woman of flesh and warmth. Her eyes were sharp as broken light. Her hands were stained with soil, not blood.
"You love her," she said, as though it were a sin.
He did not deny it. "I do."
"Then you must become her mirror," Elira said softly. "Not her savior."
Kael frowned. "What does that mean?"
Her gaze pierced him ancient, weary. "The Gate feeds on memory as much as blood. It remembers only what she forgets. The more she blooms, the less she remains herself. The world is rewriting her story, petal by petal."
"And if I don't stop it?"
Elira's expression wavered regret flickering like sunlight through leaves.
"Then she will bloom a third time. And there will be no Rheya left to love."
Kael's throat tightened. "Then tell me how to stop it."
Elira leaned close, her breath like winter wind.
"Find the first memory she ever lost. The one she gave up willingly."
And just before the vision shattered, she whispered:
"She will not remember your name. But she will remember your song."
Then she was gone.
The garden burned to ash.
Kael woke gasping, frost pouring from his mouth.
Above ground, Rheya stood on her balcony overlooking the city.
But the city no longer looked back.
The bells tolled for her coronation again, and again, and again but no one remembered when the first one had rung. The priests knelt and wept at her feet, but none of them could say her name correctly.
L
"Rhenna," they whispered.
"Reina."
"Reia."
Each syllable wrong, each vowel a wound.
Even the statues had changed. The old gods were gone, their faces reshaped to resemble hers. The garden below glowed with her sigil frost entwined with flame.
Rheya turned to Lady Mirca, who stood serene in her white robes, her eyes dark as unbroken stone.
"What's happening to them?" Rheya asked. "To me?"
Mirca smiled with that careful, knowing smile that never reached her eyes.
"They are remembering what has always been true. You are not who you were. You are what the Gate has made you."
Rheya's pulse quickened. "But I don't want this."
"Want?" Mirca tilted her head. "Want is for mortals. You are becoming a myth."
Rheya's voice cracked. "Then tell me who I am."
Mirca's lips parted reverently, cruel.
"Who do you want to be?"
The frost-root bindings in the crypt burned with ancient sigils of prison and protection both.
Kael raised his hand and spoke a word no living tongue had uttered in centuries.
The frost shattered.
Light poured through the cracks like blood through veins, igniting the runes on his skin markings he had carried since birth, marks he had thought were curses but now recognized as keys.
He ran.
The tunnels screamed around him, collapsing, sealing themselves as he passed. The air thickened with the scent of roses turned sour. When he finally reached the surface, the sky was black with petals. The moon glowed red.
He could feel her pulse, her pain calling him north, to the temple above the Gate.
If he could reach her before the third bloom…
Before she forgot him completely…
There might still be time.
The temple was a wound in marble.
A place of prayer once, now repurposed for worship of a living god.
Rheya walked the aisle alone, her dress whispering like leaves through ash. The altar was alive veins of gold running through its surface, petals opening and closing in time with her breath.
On the altar rested two things:
A blade of obsidian, blacker than grief.
And a crown woven from living roses.
Lady Mirca approached with measured grace. Her voice carried through the empty hall like a hymn sung underwater.
"One will crown you," she said. "The other will end you. Either way, you become a legend."
Rheya looked down at the offerings. Her hands trembled.
The blade's edge shimmered with frost his frost.
The crown's thorns pulsed faintly, each tipped with gold. They whispered to her, promises in blood.
"Choose," Mirca urged.
Rheya hesitated.
And then a whisper brushed against her ear.
Low. Familiar. Impossible.
"Dance with me, Rheya."
Kael's voice.
Her breath caught. The torches around the temple guttered and flared, their flames turning blue.
Mirca stepped back, eyes narrowing. "Who..."
But Rheya didn't hear her.
She was already falling into the sound into memory.
For an instant, the hall became the tower again. The scent of ink. The warmth of his hand on her waist. The laughter she thought she'd forgotten forever.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"I remember…" she said.
The Gate beneath the temple trembled, chains groaning as though in protest.
And from the obsidian blade, a drop of blood fell not hers. His.
The floor cracked open.
Light poured through, not golden but black like ink swallowing the world. The temple walls twisted, roots erupting through stone, petals raining from the ceiling.
Mirca fell to her knees, eyes wide. "No… not yet..."
But Rheya barely heard her. The Gate was calling. The third bloom stirred within her, pulsing in time with her heart.
Power and pain surged as one.
She could see the garden's memories flicker through her mind every life it had taken, every god it had devoured.
And within that storm, Kael's voice again:
"If you must bloom, bloom for the truth not the throne."
Her fingers brushed both blade and crown.
The choice hung there, trembling queen or martyr, love or oblivion.
And then the world went still.
The roses stopped breathing.
The air turned to glass.
Even the Gate held its breath.
Because this time…
The bloom waited.