(Sitara & Vivaan — two hearts splintering across time)
Sitara
The candle flame dances like it's mocking her. Flickering in rhythm with her heartbeat — fast, unsteady, furious.
She sits in her chamber, cloaked in the kind of silence that scratches at the walls. The ink on her fingers has dried and cracked. So has the sixth letter.
All six lie in a neat, accusing stack beside her. Their words feel sharp, useless.
One was a warning.
One a confession.
One a memory.
One a plea.
One a promise.
And the last — rage, dressed up as poetry.
"You make me want to burn things just to feel what you felt when you touched the flame."
But none of them were enough.
None of them were right.
She stares at the seventh parchment. Her fingers hover, trembling. She thinks of his voice — too soft when it should have broken. Of his eyes — too kind when they should have hated. Of the way he said her name like it belonged to him.
And maybe, in some forgotten lifetime, it did.
"Vivaan," she whispers, just to feel it break on her tongue.
And then she writes. Again.
Vivaan,
I don't know who I am without you. And that terrifies me more than what I'm becoming.
I should hate you for choosing the fire. But I still dream of the way your hand found mine, even in the dark.
If you knew what they made me into… would you still choose me?
If I become the Shadow — will you still see the girl who once laughed with you in the orchard?
Her handshakes. She doesn't sign it.
She stares at the letter for a long time, the words throbbing like a wound. Then, slowly, she touches the edge to the flame.
It curls. Blackens. Dies.
Just like the others.
Only ash remains.
She stands. The candle gutters, its flame shrinking to a whisper. The room holds its breath.
Then —
She leans close to the dying flame and whispers, not like a lover but like a curse:
"I hope you see me when you sleep. I hope it hurts."
Vivaan
He does.
The moment sleep claims him, she is there. But not the Sitara he knows.
Something older. Something heavier. Something holy and wrong all at once.
He's standing in the center of a field slick with blood. The sky above is a shade of violet that aches to look at. The stars weep downward in long silver streaks.
Across from him — Sitara.
Her dress is regal, black edged in silver flame. Her crown is a thing of shadows, and it moves — writhes — when he looks too long. Her eyes meet his. Not angry. Not cruel. But older than time.
SITARA (calm, heavy)
"You always hesitate. And I always bleed for it."
VIVAAN (choked)
"I don't want to lose you."
SITARA
"You already have."
He looks down. His hands tremble around the hilt of a blade.
Silver. Familiar.
He doesn't remember drawing it. Doesn't want to.
Blood drips from its tip.
Her hand is pressed to her side. Crimson blossoms beneath her fingers.
VIVAAN (a whisper)
"What did I do?"
SITARA (fading)
"What you always do. You chose the world instead of me."
Lightning splits the sky behind her, tearing the dream open.
And in that single flash, he sees fragments:
Sitara as a child, screaming beside a fallen body — her mother?
A queen kneeling before a shadowed altar.
Himself — older, scarred, in chains.
Sitara, sobbing in a smoke-filled throne room.
Their hands, reaching across a chasm — never touching.
He steps forward. Reaches for her.
This time — he hesitates.
And she falls.
Vivaan (Waking)
He jolts awake, breath catching like a blade in his throat.
The fire beside him is dead. The air is cold.
His hands — clean.
But they still feel heavy.
As if the blade lingers in his bones.
He presses a fist to his mouth to keep from screaming. Tears track silently down his cheeks.
"Sitara," he whispers into the dark.
Not as a name.
As an apology.
A prayer.
A wound.
And somehow, miles away, he knows:
She heard him.
Final Beat — Sitara (Far Away)
She wakes before the dawn.
Tears already stain her cheeks. No reason. No dream she remembers. Only a name —
Vivaan —
Whispering through her mind like smoke.
And this time, it doesn't ache.
This time, it terrifies her.
"Some names aren't meant to be forgotten.
Some names come back like ghosts.
And some — like his — never really leave."