## CHAPTER 5: _"Between the Fire and the Flame"_
The road ahead was not a road — it was a thread of shadow winding between grief and frost. Arien and Lysia walked side by side, saying little. The path wound through a grove of skeletal trees, their branches bare, each one whispering old names the world had forgotten.
They reached a clearing by midday, the sun weak and silver, more reflection than warmth. In the center stood a ruined stone altar — ancient, moss-choked, and cracked in two.
> "This place feels... wrong," Lysia said.
> "It's a death ground," Arien replied. "They used to sacrifice Moondamned here."
> "How do you know that?"
He didn't answer. His silence said more than words.
Lysia stepped forward. Her fingers grazed the stone. A chill, deeper than winter, poured through her bones. She closed her eyes.
Screams echoed.
Blood on stone.
Children taken.
Mothers burned.
> "They erased us," she whispered. "And they thought time would keep us buried."
> "Time forgot," Arien said. "But curses remember."
He turned to her. "Lysia… what are we going to do?"
> "Not fall in love."
They both laughed. It sounded like broken glass.
---
They made camp beneath a crumbling arch that night. Arien conjured a small flame with runes he barely understood. Lysia watched him, her eyes hollow but glittering.
> "Where did you learn that?"
> "Books. Trial. Error. Mostly pain."
> "You weren't born with magic?"
> "No. But I was born with a hole in my chest. Magic fills it. Sometimes."
> "I was born with too much of it. I had to kill the sky just to sleep."
Arien looked at her. Not in awe. In understanding.
> "The world punished you for being real," he said.
> "And you for being empty."
> "So we're just... two mistakes?"
She shook her head. "We're the warnings."
---
Lysia dreamed again.
This time, of a crown being forced onto her head.
Of a throne made of bone.
Of Arien, kneeling in front of her, blood leaking from his mouth.
> "Don't love me," her dream-self said. "Please."
> "Too late," he whispered.
She woke with her hands clenched into fists.
He was already awake, watching her.
> "You cry in your sleep," he said softly.
> "You don't sleep at all."
> "Can't. I don't breathe, remember?"
She reached for him — stopped herself — and instead touched the hilt of her dagger.
> "If I lose control," she said, "kill me first."
> "No."
> "Swear it."
> "No."
The fire cracked between them.
They sat in silence until dawn.
---
The next village was already burning.
They saw the smoke hours before they arrived. Ash curled into the sky like black feathers. As they approached, the stench of scorched wood and blood grew thick. Screams had long since faded. Only ruin remained.
> "This wasn't raiders," Arien said. "This was surgical."
> "Royal army."
He nodded.
They stepped through the remains — charred homes, shattered wells, scattered bones. A woman's hand clutched a child's slipper. Lysia turned away, her breath shallow.
> "Why would they do this?"
> "To smoke you out," Arien whispered. "They know you're awake."
She stood amid the ruin like a flame wrapped in snow. Her pendant pulsed. Her magic surged.
> "They want fear," she said. "Let's give them something else."
> "Like what?"
> "Fire."
---
They found survivors — barely alive, hidden in a cellar. Children. A priest. An old hunter with no eye.
> "We saw her," the hunter whispered. "The girl in the ice. She walked through the fire. Didn't burn."
Lysia knelt beside him.
> "I'm not your savior," she said.
> "You're still all we've got."
She felt the weight of his words settle on her bones.
She wasn't ready for this.
But fate didn't ask permission.
---
That night, they held a funeral for the dead.
Lysia stood in the center of the ashes and raised her arms. Her voice was wind. Her words, spell. Her magic wrapped around the names of the fallen and etched them into the sky.
Arien watched her — not like a prince. Like a man who had never seen something so human.
> "You're not a curse," he said. "You're a cathedral burning."
She turned to him.
> "Then why do I still want to destroy everything I touch?"
He stepped closer.
> "Because you were taught to survive. Not to feel."
> "And what about you?"
> "I was never taught anything."
She placed her hand over his chest.
No heartbeat.
No heat.
Only him.
> "You feel like winter," she said.
> "You feel like war."
She didn't move her hand.
Neither did he.
And for a moment — one long, impossible moment — they were just two people under a broken sky.
Not enemies.
Not curses.
Not fate's victims.
Just Arien.
And Lysia.
> "If I love you," she whispered, "I'll kill you."
> "Then let's not call it love."
> "What then?"
> "Call it fire. Call it hunger. Call it whatever keeps us alive."
The stars blinked above them.
And below, the dead whispered.
The war was coming.
And so were they.