The silence between them was not empty.
It pulsed.
It breathed.
The cavern around Aryan and the girl shimmered faintly, as if reacting to the ancient pact spoken without words. Her fingers still touched his chest where his Flame Seed pulsed beneath skin and bone — and though neither of them moved, the air between them twisted like smoke caught in starlight.
"I don't know your name," she whispered. Her voice carried something fragile. Not fear. Not hesitation. Something deeper.
"But I dreamed you," she continued, gaze never leaving his. "I saw you walk through fire and scream her name… Lirael Yue."
The sound of her name in this girl's mouth made his heart thunder — not with rage, but with a haunting ache. As if the name itself had been waiting in the dark to be spoken aloud.
Aryan stepped back, slowly. The flame in his palm dimmed, then vanished.
"You shouldn't know that name," he said, voice low. "Unless..."
Unless something deeper tied her to the past. To her.
"I don't remember everything," she admitted. "But when I touched this place, when I heard your voice… it was like something opened. Something old."
She turned slightly, revealing the mark on the back of her neck — a faint crescent glowing with soft silver, shaped like a waning moon pierced by a single flame.
Aryan's breath caught.
That mark… He had seen it once. Long ago, on the night he first kissed Lirael under falling petals. She had drawn it on his palm with a smile, saying it was their vow. A symbol of moon and fire. Of eternity.
But this girl… had it carved into her flesh, as though it had always been hers.
Before he could speak, the cavern shuddered again.
A deep pulse echoed from the walls, not just sound but a memory pressing in.
The roots hanging from the ceiling trembled.
And then a voice — ancient, feminine, and sorrowful — rippled through the stone itself.
"He has returned. The flame awakens. The pact calls. The wound bleeds."
Aryan snapped into motion, pulling the girl behind him. "Who's there?!"
The walls cracked slightly, and a glowing glyph emerged on the stone — a circle of runes written in both fire and moonlight.
The girl clutched his sleeve. "That voice… I heard it in my dreams."
Aryan's jaw clenched.
He looked at the glyph and recognized the language — not of this world, not of the sect's teachings — but the True Tongue of Flamekind, a lost dialect only known to the Sovereigns of his past life.
It read:
> When moonfire touches immortal flame, the gate shall open — and the past shall walk again.
He turned to her.
"You're not just someone who dreamed of me," he said, eyes narrowing. "You're someone fate has chained to me."
She looked up, blinking. "Is that a bad thing?"
Aryan didn't answer.
Because somewhere deep beneath the stone, something old had awakened.
And now… it was watching them both.
---
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He thought the shadows were behind him. But now the flame has drawn eyes that do not blink, and whispers that speak in forgotten names. As the girl's memories bleed into the present, a question burns bright
—
What exactly did Lirael Yue do… to be remembered through another's soul?