The cliffs of Elaria were shrouded in mist, as though the sea itself had exhaled a sigh of sorrow over the jagged rocks below. Waves crashed with a hollow insistence, and the wind carried a salt-laden chill that whispered through the stone battlements of the crumbling castle. Lyrielle stood at the edge, her dark hair tangled by the wind, fingers clutching the railing like a lifeline. She was young, barely sixteen, but the harsh lessons of the kingdom had etched an early knowledge of loss into her heart.
The world had always felt as though it were slipping—perpetually just beyond reach, drenched in shadow and longing. Yet, it was here, on this cliff, that she first glimpsed a light that made the gloom bearable: Seloria.
Seloria appeared from the swirling mist like a vision wrought of moonlight. Pale as alabaster, with hair that shimmered silver in the pale sun, she moved with a grace that seemed almost otherworldly. Lyrielle's breath caught. There was a quiet inevitability in her gaze, a sense that the world had paused for her arrival.
"Lyrielle," Seloria called, her voice carrying across the void, soft yet insistent, like a song remembered from a dream.
Lyrielle's lips parted instinctively. "Seloria," she whispered, as if speaking the name aloud could anchor her heart to the earth. The air between them trembled with unspoken words, the quiet weight of a bond yet unnamed but already indelible.
The two girls had met in the garden of the northern towers only weeks before, but Lyrielle already felt as though Seloria had always existed within the hidden chambers of her soul. Each glance, each small smile, had taken root like ivy around her heart. And yet, even in the sweetness of this realization, there lingered an indefinable shadow, as if the wind carried a warning she could not yet decipher.
"You came," Lyrielle said, stepping closer. Her voice was trembling, a fragile thread stretched between awe and yearning.
"I promised," Seloria replied, holding out her hand. The gesture was simple, yet it carried an intimacy that made Lyrielle's pulse thunder in her chest. Their fingers met, and the moment felt like the world itself had exhaled, leaving only the quiet cadence of their joined hearts.
For a long while, they said nothing. The sea roared below, waves like mourning cries, and the mist wound around the cliff like a protective shroud. Lyrielle felt the full weight of the moment: the inevitability of sorrow lurking somewhere beyond the horizon, the knowledge that beauty and love were often transient. Yet she did not want to think of endings. Not yet.
Seloria tilted her head, eyes catching the light in a way that made them shimmer like frozen stars. "Do you ever wonder, Lyrielle," she murmured, "if the world remembers those it forgets? If it mourns as we do?"
Lyrielle hesitated, the words trembling on her tongue. "I… I think it must. Otherwise, what is memory but an echo in emptiness?"
Seloria's smile was faint, wistful. "Then let us be remembered, even if only by each other, even if only in whispers and shadows."
The wind tugged at them both, and Lyrielle felt as though she had been pulled into a current she could not resist. Her heart surged with something she could not name—a mixture of fear, longing, and an inexplicable joy that made the world shimmer despite its muted grief.
And so, on the cliffs of Elaria, beneath the brooding sky and the eternal cry of the sea, two souls met for the first time in a way that would shape their lives forever. A bond had been formed, delicate as moonlight, yet unbreakable as stone.
As the mist curled around them, Lyrielle understood something she could not yet speak aloud: love, like the sea, was vast and relentless, capable of lifting them to heights unimaginable, or drowning them in depths unspeakable. And already, her heart whispered a silent vow: to hold Seloria in every shadow, every dream, until the world itself ceased to exist.