Kael's POV
There is a scent that never fades.
Not from your clothes. Not from your hands. Not even from your soul.
The scent of betrayal.
Even after all these years, I still remember how it clung to my skin like smoke. The night she looked me in the eyes and handed my family over to the Crescent Assembly.
I remember her name.
Lira.
Her laughter used to melt winter. Her fingers used to trace my scars like they were sacred. She once said my fire made her feel safe.
And then she gave that fire to those who sought to extinguish it.
She didn't kill them with her hands. She didn't need to. She just gave them what they needed: names. Coordinates. Secrets of the Bone Lineage.
They burned alive in the end—my brothers, my uncle, the only people left who knew the ancient rites. But she never watched them die. She walked away before the screams started.
And yet, sometimes… I still dream of her voice.
---
That memory haunted me as I watched Elowen from the tree line.
She sat near the stream, unmoving, gazing into the water like it held her whole truth. And for a moment—just a moment—I saw the outline of something around her. A shimmer. Like a second skin.
Or a spirit trying to break through.
I shouldn't care. I shouldn't let her get close. Not after what happened with Lira. Not after everything I've buried.
But Elowen is—
Different.
She's chaos in bare feet. Fire in silence. A contradiction wrapped in forest scars and starlight. And when I touched her sigil, I didn't just feel magic.
I felt… familiarity.
As if my bones knew her before my mind did.
And that terrified me more than anything.
---
I returned to the old watchtower before dawn.
It was the last place no one dared to go. Not since the flames. Not since the glyphs on the stones bled for three days straight. Here, the Crescent Assembly lost dozens of their own in the rebellion. The air still pulsed with residual energy.
I walked past burnt timbers and fallen sigils, stepping over moss-covered bones without flinching.
I'd buried the last of the royal archives here. If I wanted answers, they would be in the ashes.
The book I sought was bound in sinew and shadowsteel. Older than the Crescent War. Older than Lira. It carried the records of blood rites—marriages, betrayals, curses, and bonds made under the Red Moon.
I sat cross-legged in the center of the tower, laid the book in my lap, and began to read.
---
The fire was still inside me. It never truly left, just dimmed with each death I witnessed. Each vow I broke. Each time I turned away from the truth because it hurt more than lying.
But this book…
It forced truth back into my hands.
I turned page after page, scanning the names of every marked child born under the blood eclipses. Names of those who carried the sigil. Names who were hunted. Names who were lost.
Then—
I stopped.
My throat dried instantly.
There it was.
Her name.
Elowen Veyra Thorne.
Born under the Red Bloom Eclipse. Marked by the Flamebone Lineage. Status: Hidden.
The date...
Twenty years ago.
My hand shook.
No. No, this couldn't be right.
She would've been a child.
I flipped back, reading the margins, looking for errors.
But the ink was ancient. Pressed with blood and magic. This wasn't a recent record—it had been etched long before she came into her power. Someone had known she would awaken. Someone had hidden her in plain sight.
But who?
And why?
The next line, written in the old tongue, caught my eye:
> "Ash does not forget flame. What is buried in bone shall always rise."
I slammed the book shut, heart pounding. Dust rose into the stale air, but it couldn't choke what I felt.
She wasn't just awakening.
She had been placed.
She was chosen.
And worst of all… she had the same middle name.
Veyra.
Just like the woman who burned the world once.
Just like the one who swore to return.
---
I stood quickly, pacing the ruined floorboards. My pulse thundered in my ears. The threads were aligning too perfectly. The sigil. The bone flame. Her voice in the old tongue.
And the look in her eyes when she saw her own reflection.
She knows something is wrong. But she doesn't know what she's becoming.
Not yet.
And I—
I was falling for her.
Despite everything. Despite the warnings. Despite the blood soaked between the pages of this cursed book.
I was beginning to care again.
And that scared me more than anything.
Because love had betrayed me once.
And this time, if the legends were true, it wouldn't just destroy me.
It would burn everything.
---
I left the tower before the light could reach the treetops. Elowen was still by the stream, curled in sleep. Her brow furrowed in dreams. Her body curled in defense.
I wanted to reach for her.
I didn't.
Instead, I whispered a protection glyph over the moss near her feet and stepped away, back into the forest.
Back into the blood that binds us both.
---
But even as I moved, the words on that old page rang louder than my thoughts.
Her name.
Elowen.
Written down before she could speak.
Etched in blood before she could choose.
And now... that blood was calling her back.
But even as my feet moved through the forest, something inside me remained still.
A war.
A war between the man I had become—and the boy I once was. The boy who once believed in fate. In bonds. In love that could survive fire.
That boy had died the night Lira smiled and signed the Assembly's decree.
And yet… Elowen stirred something in him. In me.
The way she looked at the world, like it was both her enemy and her home. The way she fought, not for power, but to keep something of herself unbroken. Even when she burned—she burned with grief, not greed.
And it terrified me.
Because if she is Veyra reborn…
If she is the fire that once ended kings…
Then what does that make me?
A guardian? A witness? A fool bound to repeat the same tragic song?
Or worse—was I just another ash-coated chapter in a book she was destined to outgrow?
I reached into my coat and pulled out the old book again. My fingers hovered over her name.
Elowen Veyra Thorne.
Even the ink felt alive.
I should warn her.
I should tell her everything: about the prophecy, the war, the way her soul might already be claimed by something older than memory.
But when I imagined her eyes—wide, defiant, trembling with too much hope—I hesitated.
Because once I tell her the truth…
There's no going back.
And I'm not sure if I'm ready to lose her—
Not again.
Not like before.