The sky was burning the day I realized I had chosen the wrong person.
Ash drifted through the air like snow, falling softly over the capital's ruins. Fires howled below. Screams echoed through the marble halls where once there was music. The once-proud white stone walls of the royal palace were now scorched and blackened, crumbling under the weight of everything we'd lost.
And I—Elira Vane, daughter of a minor noble, healer-in-training, and fool in love—stood in the center of it all. Still clutching the memory of a hand I should never have held. Still believing, up until the very last breath, that love could save a kingdom.
It couldn't.
The Girl I Was
I wasn't born for war. I was born for gardens, quiet prayers, and sunlight on parchment. My mother wanted me to be a temple scribe. My father, a diplomat. I wanted to help people—to heal them, speak with spirits, and read the stars.
But fate is never so kind.
When I was fifteen, the king was assassinated and the kingdom of Solis fractured. Monsters from the Deadlands began crossing the border. Cities fell. Villages vanished. And in the chaos, a boy rose—a boy with golden hair, a silver sword, and a voice that could command the wind.
Kael Ardyn.
They called him the Hero of Solis. The gods' chosen. The light in the dark.
And I—naive, hopeful, foolish—fell in love with him the way children fall in love with stars. From afar. Completely. Without knowing how easily stars burn.
He smiled at me once at the palace gardens. Told me I looked like a vision from a story. I remember that moment more clearly than the day my mother died. It was the moment everything changed. The moment I decided who I would stand beside when the war came.
And when he took my hand for the first time, I believed I had chosen rightly.
The Boy in the Shadows
Where there is light, there must be shadow. And Kael's shadow was a boy named Aeren Drican.
He was everything Kael was not—quiet where Kael was loud, thoughtful where Kael was impulsive. He didn't wear shining armor. He wore deep blue and gray, always half in the corner of my vision. Observing. Listening. Never speaking unless asked.
He was Kael's closest friend. His strategist. His blade in the dark.
And, perhaps, the only person who truly understood what the war would cost.
I never knew what Aeren thought of me. He rarely looked at me directly. But once, just once, he pulled me aside after a Council meeting.
"If everything falls apart," he said, "don't trust the light too blindly."
I didn't understand him then. I do now.
The Day the World Burned
It was raining ash the day Kael turned on the Council.
I had been standing beside him, as always. Loyal. Certain. Blind.
The elders tried to strip him of his command. Said he had gone too far—using forbidden relics, ordering secret raids, taking lives without trial. He didn't deny it. He only said, "I did what had to be done."
And then, without warning, he struck.
The palace guard fell first. Then the mages. Then the Council itself.
By the time I realized what was happening, Kael had become something else—something more than a hero. Something darker. His sword gleamed red instead of silver. His eyes were no longer gold, but a molten, blazing orange.
And beside him, watching silently, stood Aeren.
He didn't raise a hand to stop Kael. He didn't help him either.
He looked at me, and I knew—he had given up long ago.
Kael turned to me and reached out his hand.
"Come with me," he said. "We can still fix this. Together."
Behind him, the world was burning.
Behind me, the survivors screamed.
And Aeren, from across the bloodied hall, whispered just loud enough for me to hear:
"If you choose him again... there won't be a third chance."
I didn't know what he meant. I didn't care.
I took Kael's hand.
And in doing so, I doomed us all.
The Reset
They say time is linear. That once lived, a moment is set forever.
They're wrong.
The night Kael crowned himself king over the ashes, a rift opened in the sky. The stars fell. The earth cracked.
And I woke up.
In my bed. In the healer's wing of the royal academy.
Sixteen again.
A week before Kael's knighting ceremony.
A month before the Council's fall.
Two months before the end of the world.
My body was younger. My hair was longer. The scar on my wrist—from the day the palace exploded—was gone.
But my memories were not.
I remembered everything.
Kael's rise. Aeren's silence. My choice.
And the fire that swallowed us all.
The Second Chance
Kael still smiled at me when we met again in the garden that morning. He handed me a flower—just like before. Told me I was beautiful—just like before.
And my heart twisted.
He wasn't a monster. Not yet.
But I had seen the road he walked.
And somewhere, beyond the library tower, I knew Aeren was watching again. Waiting. Wondering what I would do this time.
So here I am, writing this in the healer's dormitory, staring at a world that hasn't broken yet. Holding a flower from a boy I
once loved.
I don't know what I'll choose. I don't know who I'll become.
But I know one thing:
She chose the wrong hero.