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In the desert of Agharna, where bones outnumbered birds and sand sang the lullabies of buried queens, a girl sat cross-legged before a dying fire.
Her name was Siyara.
She did not remember the name she once held when stars bent to her voice.
She did not remember the throne of embers that had kissed her spine.
She did not remember the oath.
But her hands…
Her hands remembered everything.
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Ash kept finding her. It clung beneath her fingernails even when she hadn't touched fire. It settled in her braid, in her boots, in the folds of her clothes. Dust was common in the Agharna Wastes — but this was different.
This ash was warm.
Alive.
Like it recognized her.
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That morning, as the desert winds howled, she awoke with the taste of burnt myrrh in her mouth and words not her own on her lips:
> "When fire forgets its name, even gods tremble."
She had whispered it without knowing why. Then she'd coughed — and what came out wasn't just breath.
It was smoke.
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Siyara wasn't a witch. She wasn't a noble.
She was the orphan of a sand caravan, raised by exiles and healers who traded herbs for secrets.
They called her strange. Lucky. Touched.
But now?
Now even the eldest in the caravan — Maari, the bone-healer — refused to look her in the eyes.
"You saw something, girl," Maari muttered that day, her voice lined with dread. "I see it burning in your pupils like a brand. Whose dream did you walk through this time?"
"I don't know," Siyara whispered.
Maari snatched her wrist. Turned it palm up.
Ash bloomed there — right from her skin. A mark. A sigil. A memory.
Maari recoiled as if burned.
"That's not your ash," the healer hissed. "That belongs to something older. Something cursed."
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That night, Siyara returned to the cliffs alone.
She stood beneath the moon — the first moon, pale and flickering — and held her palms open to the sky.
The ash glowed softly in her skin.
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time, she saw him.
Not clearly. Not entirely. But his soul.
Dark eyes under a crown. A blade in his grip. Blood trailing down his cheek.
And a name that rang inside her bones like thunder on sacred stone:
> Kaelren.
She fell to her knees.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
And far, far away, in the northern capital where the stars no longer shone, Prince Rhaelor gasped awake from a sleep he did not remember falling into.
His hand gripped his chest. His pulse raced.
And on his mirror, drawn by no hand…
…a mark of ash appeared.
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End of Chapter 5
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