Kael didn't sleep.
The stone beneath him leached the heat from his bones, but the cold couldn't steal what burned beneath his skin,the mark, and the memory of her, Seris, No Lyra.
He couldn't forget. No matter how many years the empire stole from him, no matter how many names they forced on her, she would always be Lyra to him. And the way she'd looked at him, like a door in her soul had cracked open, told him she remembered even if she didn't understand it yet.
Kael leaned his head back against the wall. The chains groaned.He thought of the last night before everything shattered.
She had curled against his chest, her breath warm at his throat, whispering a dream of running away, somewhere far, somewhere free. She'd laughed softly as he promised to build a cottage with his bare hands, to plant her favorite flowers beneath the windows. Flame-petaled thryla, soft as silk.
He never found the seeds, he never found her.
Until now.
Above the dungeon, Seris couldn't sleep either.
She paced her chambers like a ghost in armor, her boots striking the marble with rhythmic unease. She had removed the breastplate, but the weight of duty pressed heavier than steel. The fire flickered low in the hearth. The wind outside clawed at the windowpanes.
She had seen ghosts before, on the battlefield, in the faces of the condemned, but never like this.
Never one who knew her true name, Lyra.
She hadn't heard that name since the fall of the Vale. Since the day her life was stolen and rewritten by fire and command. They told hers he'd been a child, rescued from a burning village, found alone among the ruins.
But Kael's voice… it hadn't belonged to a stranger. It had known her like no one else ever had.
Why had he survived? Why had he come back now?
And why did her heart ache like it was trying to remember something her mind refused to recall?
She left her quarters before dawn. The guards didn't stop her, they never did. No one dared question the Crown's blade.Down the cold stairwell, past the silence of chained prisoners.
To him, he was awake, of course. She hated how calm he looked when she entered, like he had been expecting her. Like she still belonged to him.
"You're not supposed to be alive," she said, quietly.
Kael tilted his head. "Neither are you." She crossed her arms. "Don't try to twist this into some forgotten love story."
His voice was low. "It was never forgotten, Seris. You just buried it."
She flinched, he saw it. She turned away, as if that could hide the storm behind her eyes. "You are a prisoner of the Crown," she said. "You led a rebellion. You burned cities."
"I fought for freedom," Kael snapped. "For you, for us, and they turned you into their sword."
A breath shuddered through her. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know you liked honey on fresh bread. I know you cried when that hawk you raised flew away. I know you never stopped looking over your shoulder, even when you smiled."
She turned back slowly. "You've spent years building that lie, haven't you? Crafting this… fantasy of who I was."
Kael rose shakily to his feet. The chains dragged.
"It's not a fantasy if it's the truth."
She looked at the glyph on his chest again. It pulsed faintly now, like something ancient had begun to stir.
"Where did you get that mark?" she asked.
He didn't speak right away. "It appeared the night they took you."
Her brow furrowed.
"I woke in the ruins. Covered in ash and blood. The glyph burned itself into me. I thought it was grief, magic answering heartbreak. I didn't understand then."
"And now?"
"Now I think it's fate refusing to let us be lost."
She hated how his words made something inside her tremble. She turned on her heel.
"You'll rot here, Kael, the past won't save you."
"But it might save you."
She paused at the door, jaw clenched. Then, without looking back, she left.
Seris climbed the stairs without feeling her legs move. Her armor weighed heavier with each step, not from iron, but from the thick, unspoken ache blooming inside her chest, the torches on the walls blurred at the edges of her vision, their light too sharp against the sudden dampness rising in her eyes.
She hated this. Hated the way her body betrayed her with trembling hands and a pounding heart. Hated how a single voice, a voice buried for so long, had unraveled her carefully constructed walls.
"You are Seris Valen," she whispered to herself as she reached the upper corridor. "You are the Crown's blade. Nothing more."
And yet... in the deepest hollow of her soul, something stirred, a child's memory, bruised but not broken, clawing its way to the surface.
A hand reaching for hers in the smoke, a voice calling her Lyra, desperate and fierce, lips brushing her forehead as the world collapsed.
Seris leaned her forehead against the cold stone of the wall, fighting the memories. Fighting herself.
Below, in the dungeon, Kael sat back down against the wall, his shackled hands falling heavily into his lap. He could feel the ripple of her pain through the very air. A bond like that couldn't be erased by new names or stolen years.
He closed his eyes, breathing through the agony and the hope gnawing at his chest.
She's still in there.I will find her. No matter the chains. No matter the years. And when he does, the empire that had stolen their lives would burn.
That night, she dreamt again, of fire, of a boy with storm-dark eyes holding her hand as they ran through the trees.
Of promises made beneath a full moon.
Of a kiss that tasted like forever.
Kael heard her scream from the dungeon, and he smiled, not because he wanted her in pain, but because memories, once awakened, were like fire in dry grass.
And Seris was starting to burn.
FLASHBACK — Ten Years Ago
They were just two village youths then, hiding from the storm beneath the wooden bridge. She had mud on her cheek. He had a stolen bottle of sweet wine and a grin too wide for his face.
"I'll marry you one day," Kael said.
She rolled her eyes. "You're a disaster."
"And you're in love with me." She shoved him, he kissed her.
And for a moment, the whole world disappeared.