Darkness didn’t come all at once.

It crept in slowly, like smoke slipping under a door, until light no longer meant anything.

Lyriel stood in the dead garden, where roses hadn’t bloomed in years, and the ground was so dry it cracked beneath her feet like a muffled scream. The wind was quiet—barely there—but it carried the scent of burned memories.

Her hands were bloody—not from a wound, but from holding a black rose for too long. Its thorns had sunk deeper with every passing moment. Her gaze was fixed on something beyond the fog, as if she was searching for answers she never truly wanted.

“Did you think if you didn’t look into the dark, it wouldn’t notice you?”

The voice came from behind. A voice she hadn’t heard in months—yet knew better than her own heartbeat.

Slowly, she turned.

Kael stood among the shadows, his cloak darker than any night that could be forgotten. His face was calm, almost gentle, but in his eyes... there was nothing left of the man she once knew.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.

“And you still haven’t learned,” he replied, “that what should be rarely matters.”

They took a single step toward each other.
Just one.
But the air between them seemed to tremble.

Lyriel remembered her dreams—the ones that haunted her for weeks.
Corridors drowning in blood.
A clock that turned backwards.
Whispers in a language she never learned.
And his shadow.
Always… his shadow.

“Why did you come back?” she asked.

Kael looked at her like he knew the answer but refused to say it aloud.

“Because even when the world turned its back on me… you never truly did.”

“I hated you.”

“I know.”

“But I loved you even more,” she added, and her voice cracked like porcelain hurled against stone.

Silence fell between them.
Not the uneasy kind—
But the kind that only exists between two souls torn apart by fate.

Lyriel took a step back.
The rose in her hand began to wither, its petals falling one by one, and with them… something else.
As if her very soul was unraveling.

“This has already happened, hasn’t it?” she asked suddenly.

“This moment… this conversation.
Is it a dream?
The future?
A memory?”

Kael stepped closer.
He touched her cheek with a hand that felt warm—too warm, as if it were burning.

“This is the end, Lyriel.
You’re just the only one who doesn’t want to see it.”

“And what if I can still change it?”

He smiled sadly.

“Then you’ll pay a price that can’t be undone.”

Above them, the sky began to crack—like a mirror hurled against a marble floor.
Through its fractures seeped something black and thick, as if the night itself had decided to descend upon the earth.

Lyriel looked up.
Then at Kael.
And for the first time, she wasn’t sure if he was her ending… or her only chance to escape it.

She closed her eyes.

And then—everything disappeared.

                                                                                           ***

Lyriel woke with a sharp inhale.
Her skin was cold, the sheets damp with sweat, her heart pounding like a war drum.
She tried to recall the details, but as always, the dream began to fade.

Only one image remained:
A black rose.
A shadowed figure in a cloak.
And a voice:

“It’s already happened.”