The rain did not stop.
It came in waves, flooding the streets, filling every gutter, every rooftop. The city seemed to breathe through it, alive yet drowning.
Aiden stood beneath the archway of an abandoned church. His clothes clung to his skin, his breath turning to mist in the cold.
Each drop of rain that touched him shimmered faintly before vanishing into his skin, leaving behind fragments of light and whispers that were not his own.
He closed his eyes and listened.
At first it was chaos, voices overlapping, crying, pleading.
Then they began to form words.
Forgive me.
Don't forget me.
Please, let me see him one last time.
It was the rain speaking.
Every drop carried a memory of someone lost to divine judgment.
Elias stood a few steps away, his sword drawn though no enemy could be seen. The air itself felt charged, alive with invisible movement.
"They're not attacking," Aiden said softly.
"They don't need to," Elias replied. "This storm isn't meant to kill. It's meant to remember."
Aiden looked at him. "Remember what?"
Elias's gaze flickered toward the sky. "Everything the heavens tried to erase."
Suddenly, the world around them began to shift.
The rain turned gold.
The ground beneath their feet cracked, revealing reflections of another world beneath the puddles.
Aiden stepped closer to one, peering into it. His heart stopped.
In the reflection, he saw himself in armor again, standing beside Elias in a ruined cathedral.
He was holding Elias's hand, whispering something that was lost to the sound of thunder.
Then, as lightning struck, he saw it: the blade in Elias's hand, and the moment it pierced through his heart.
The memory rippled through him like fire.
He stumbled back, clutching his chest.
"Aiden!" Elias caught him before he fell, holding him tight.
"I saw it," Aiden gasped. "You killed me."
Elias didn't deny it. His grip only tightened.
"I told you before. I had no choice. They used me. They made me believe ending your life would save your soul from damnation."
Aiden looked up at him, his voice breaking.
"And did it?"
Elias's eyes filled with something that looked almost like pain.
"No. It damned us both instead."
The rain poured harder, and now the reflections moved on their own.
A thousand versions of them, across lifetimes, across different ages.
Aiden saw himself as a warrior, a scholar, a peasant, a singer, always meeting the same man with silver eyes.
And in every life, it ended in blood and tears.
"Why do we keep finding each other," Aiden whispered, "if it always ends like this?"
"Because the soul does not obey Heaven," Elias said softly. "It remembers who it loves, no matter how many times it's punished for it."
The rain began to glow brighter, and in the sky, a voice thundered like distant bells.
"The Flame has awakened. The Forsaken walks again."
Elias raised his sword toward the heavens.
"Let them come," he growled. "I will not let them take him again."
But before he could move, Aiden reached for his hand.
"Stop."
Elias turned to him, surprised.
"If we fight now, they'll only send more. They'll keep hunting us until nothing is left. But what if we show them something they can't understand?"
"And what would that be?" Elias asked.
Aiden smiled faintly, rain running down his face like tears.
"Love that doesn't end in war."
Elias looked at him for a long time. Then he lowered his sword.
The rain softened. The wind eased. For the first time in days, silence touched the world.
But high above the clouds, unseen by both, the sorrow-born entity stirred once more.
It watched them, silent and still.
And in its faceless form, a single tear fell not of grief, but of longing.
The rain remembered their love.
And the heavens began to tremble again.