Year: 1734, Eldergrove Village
The air smelled of smoke and judgment.
Torches waved like angry stars in the night as pitchforks scraped against gravel and hate burned in the villagers' eyes. Eldergrove had always been a quiet place, nestled deep within the woods, far from the king's roads and watchful eyes. It was the kind of place where people still whispered of curses and old gods, where a rabbit's limp ear could mean death, and dreams were interpreted with knives.
Jess was born beneath a blood moon.
From her first breath, the midwife gasped and crossed herself. A babe with hair dark as raven's wings, lips the color of dried roses, and eyes too wise for infancy. The villagers said her mother died in childbirth because the girl drank her soul. They whispered when she passed, avoided her gaze, and dropped their gaze whenever she hummed songs that made flowers sway.
Troy was different in another way. A poor boy, raised by a tanner who drank more than he worked. His mother had died in winter's embrace, and he'd been left with little but silence and bruises. But he didn't cry. He just watched, calm and steady, like a wolf waiting for snow to end. The ravens followed him, and he fed them crumbs from his own hunger. The children mocked him—Crowboy, they said, Witch's Pet. But Troy never retaliated.
He was too busy watching her.
Jess.
The girl who walked barefoot into the woods and returned with mushrooms no one dared to eat. The girl who sang lullabies to dead animals before burying them beneath trees. The girl who once stood between him and a drunk man's cane, holding nothing but a broken candlestick.
He loved her long before he understood what love was.
And Jess?
She loved him the moment he sat beside her one rainy afternoon on the chapel steps and shared his bread without a word. No questions. No fear. Just silence and warmth.
In time, they found each other like roots weaving through stone. Two misfits. Two souls with no place in Eldergrove. And so, before Jess's seventeenth birthday and Troy's sixteenth, they fled.
Deep into the forest, where the air was damp and secrets hummed in the soil, they built a home.
A crooked cottage made of scavenged stone and bent wood. Curtains from stitched petals and deer hide. A fireplace that crackled with blue flame when Jess whispered to it. A library made of dreams and stolen parchment. Troy built the shelves. Jess filled them with symbols, stars, forgotten names. He carved charms; she enchanted them. He hunted; she cooked. He carved their names into the walls with a heart, and she laughed because it was terribly drawn.
They kissed under rainstorms and danced to windchimes made of bone and glass. They loved like the world had already ended and they were the last two alive.
But the world hadn't ended.
The villagers came for them in autumn, when the leaves bled red and gold. Someone had seen lights in the trees. Someone else had found herbs missing. A child had died of fever, and a grieving mother claimed Jess cursed her.
They came with fire.
They dragged Jess and Troy from their bed in the middle of the night. She fought with clawing nails, her voice hissing words older than language. He took a knife to the ribs trying to shield her. But they were two against dozens. It wasn't a trial. It wasn't even a spectacle.
It was punishment.
For loving in ways they did not understand. For living without fear. For finding peace.
A pyre was built in the village square. Where sermons were spoken and harvests blessed, now firewood was stacked. The preacher spat verses between prayers. A man struck Jess across the face. Someone else sneered, "The puppet follows the witch to hell."
But Troy didn't flinch.
He didn't speak.
He only watched Jess as they tied their wrists together with coarse rope. He found her eyes through the crowd—storm-gray, like smoke and secrets—and she smiled.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered.
"I'm not," he whispered back.
The flame was lit.
It was not fast. Smoke curled like a slow song, wrapping them in heat. Pain came—like white fangs, like lightning inside their skin. But even as flesh sizzled and rope began to melt, Jess pressed her forehead to his.
"I'll find you," she said, tears evaporating on her cheeks.
"And I'll be waiting," Troy said.
They closed their eyes.
The world faded in fire.
But their souls did not.
Somewhere between life and oblivion, a garden bloomed.
Not a garden of roses or lilies—but a celestial place of light and shadow, of stars dripping like dew from glass petals and constellations blooming in silence.
There, a throne of silver stood atop nothing. Upon it sat a woman cloaked in twilight and tenderness. Her crown was woven from threads of memory. Her hands glowed with the warmth of every love ever spoken—parental, platonic, passionate, and tragic.
She was Harp, the Goddess of Love.
And she was crying.
Not with sorrow.
But with reverence.
Before her floated two orbs of light—pale blue and pale violet—twin souls intertwined, dancing even in death.
Never had she seen such devotion. Such clarity in affection. Mortal love was so often fleeting, so often shadowed by selfishness or fear. But Jess and Troy… their bond was fireproof. It had been proven in flame.
"My children," Harp said softly. "You who dared to love in a loveless age… would you love again?"
The lights pulsed in unison.
She raised her hands.
"I can send you where love may yet thrive. A world unlike yours. A world reborn… broken… but new. There, you will not be feared for your hearts. But you must face danger. This world teeters on the edge of ruin."
The souls shimmered in answer.
"Then go," she whispered. "Go with all I am."
She stood, and with a final breath, Harp poured every last spark of her divinity into them. Her wings shattered into stardust. Her form dissolved like mist in moonlight. A single tear fell to the cosmic floor and burst into a constellation.
Requiem of Harp – Final Blessing of the Goddess of Love
And then… there was nothing.
Somewhere far ahead, in the year 2097…
The skies groan.
Gates rip the world apart. Cosmic horrors seep through cracks in time. Starborn battle for fame, for survival, for forgotten truths. Power is drawn not from bloodlines, but from the constellations who choose them—jealous gods who hunger for worship.
And in an abandoned subway station beneath New Venice…
Two teenagers awaken.
He gasps first—eyes wide, body wracked with phantom pain from a life he no longer lives. She rises next, coughing dust and memory.
They are naked, covered only by falling light.
"Jess?" he breathes.
"Troy?" she whispers.
Their fingers find each other again.
They're different. Bodies older than they remember. Power thrumming in their veins like a storm beneath skin.
Above them, the stars pulse.
The moon cracks.
And a message appears for them, inside a blue window that doesn't illuminate.
Two Have Returned. Bound by Requiem. Chosen by Love.