The fire in the tavern below cracked and whispered, but its warmth could not reach her. Liz curled deeper into the blanket upstairs, breath thin, chest tight. Sleep came not like a gentle tide but like a storm surge, sweeping her under without asking.

 

There was no beginning. Only sensation.

 

The stench of ash. The sting of heat. The silence after screaming.

 

Her eyes opened—

and she was no longer herself.

 

She floated weightless in the center of a ruined hall. Pillars split and toppled, banners eaten by fire, marble scorched black. On the dais where once a throne must have stood, flames crawled like serpents, devouring velvet.

 

Below lay two bodies.

 

A woman in a gown of pale green, her hair spread like dying petals. Her hands were still open, as if reaching for someone she would never touch again. Near her, a man dragged himself across the stone, skin blistered, blood streaking the floor. His lips shaped a single name before he went still.

 

Something moved in the wreckage.

 

“…Ae…li…”

 

A child’s voice. Thin, cracked.

 

A little girl, crawling through smoke and fire, blood trailing down her temple. Her small hands trembled as she reached toward the fallen woman.

 

And the name rose unbidden to Liz’s lips, a name that lived beneath her tongue as though waiting:

 

“Kaeyla…”

 

The voice she heard was not her own. High. Fragile. Shaken with grief.

 

“Mother… Father… Kaeyla…”

 

She looked down. Her hands were tiny. Glowing faintly, light crackling in the air around her like lightning trapped beneath skin.

 

Aelira.

 

Not a memory to watch—

a body to inhabit.

 

The golden cocoon of power around her faltered, guttering like a dying star. Her small frame sagged toward the ground, magic ebbing, leaving her weak. The other child—Kaeyla—stretched out one last trembling hand before slumping into sleep beside the dead.

 

Silence smothered the ruin.

 

And into that silence stepped a shadow.

 

“Princess Aelira,” said a voice—calm, clipped, iron-bound. “You must come with me. Now.”

 

She turned her head, and her breath caught.

 

Vaelen.

 

He was younger here, but unmistakable. Silver hair like cold flame, features carved into restraint, his long coat embroidered with constellations that shimmered in the firelight. He did not look at the corpses. He did not look at the ruin. He looked at her.

 

Her lips trembled. “I… I didn’t mean—”

 

His jaw tightened, a flicker of emotion breaking through his mask—anger, no, restraint. “Enough. Come.”

 

He stepped forward and lifted her. Not tenderly. Not cruelly. Carefully, as if carrying an ember that could burn through the world.

 

He did not glance back. Not at her parents, not at Kaeyla, not at the burning hall.

 

This was the moment she vanished. The moment the world would one day say she died.

 

And the world would forget her.

 

⸻

 

When she opened her eyes again, heat had bled out of the air. She lay in a chamber lined with bookshelves and star-maps, gold trim gleaming faintly in the lamplight. It was beautiful, precise—yet cold. The silence had weight.

 

Her fingers curled in the silk sheets.

 

“You’re finally awake.”

 

The voice was not Vaelen’s. It was younger—smooth, exact, a little too careful.

 

She turned her head.

 

A boy stood beside the bed. Perhaps fourteen, silver hair falling neatly to his ears. His posture was rigid, one hand near the hilt of the longsword strapped across his back. His tunic was dark, fitted clean, his expression unreadable.

 

But his eyes—pale, colorless, like frost over still water—were too old for his age. They watched her without warmth, without cruelty, without anything.

 

“Stay here,” he said. His tone was measured, practiced. “I’ll inform the Master.”

 

Her throat tightened. “W-wait. Who are you?”

 

He paused, gaze flicking back down at her.

 

“Yuan,” he said. “My master calls me Yuan.”

 

The name landed in her like thunder.

 

Yuan. The general she had seen drenched in blood, summoning rivers into blades. The man who executed with a single motion and no hesitation. And here he was—a boy. The storm still sleeping beneath his skin.

 

Her small hands trembled. “What are you doing here?”

 

He didn’t answer. His lips pressed thin, eyes flat.

 

Silence.

 

She pressed, soft but insistent, “Why won’t you tell me?”

 

Yuan exhaled, quiet and sharp. Then, with a motion so clean it cut the air, he drew his sword. The cold blade hovered just at her throat—not in violence, not in rage. In warning.

 

“To kill you,” he said flatly. “If you lose control again. That was my order.”

 

Her breath seized. The lamp beside the bed crackled.

 

His hand didn’t waver. No cruelty. No bravado. Just certainly.

 

He slid the sword back into its sheath. “You haven’t,” he added. “So, you’re alive.”

 

A tray sat on the table. He brought it over and set it down with care that felt out of place after such words—bread, broth, steam curling faintly upward. He nudged it closer.

 

“Eat. You’ve slept two days.”

 

Her gaze flicked between the food and his face. His features were sharp, controlled, carved too carefully for someone his age. His beauty startled her—harsh, dangerous, like a blade polished until it shone brighter than silver.

 

And from somewhere she couldn’t control, the words slipped out.

 

“You’re too beautiful to kill someone.”

 

Yuan twitched. A flicker. Color touched the skin at his collar. He turned his face away quickly, setting the spoon down harder than he meant to.

 

“Eat,” he said again, sharper, almost flustered. “Don’t say foolish things.”

 

But her lips curved, small and trembling. The ache in her chest didn’t vanish, but it shifted.

 

She lifted the spoon. She ate.

 

And for a moment, the room was not warm. But it was no longer winter.