Ashuron's POV
"Absolutely not."
I pace across the broken hall, my shadows churning with fury. Through the bond, I feel Liora's determination burning like a star going supernova, and it terrifies me.
"You don't get to decide this," she says quietly, but there's steel in her voice. "It's my life. My choice."
"Your life is connected to mine now!" I spin to face her, and I know my eyes are blazing gold. "If you die, I go back to that cursed prison. Back to three hundred years of agony. You'd condemn me to that?"
The ghosts around us watch silently. Waiting. Hoping.
"I'd be saving hundreds of souls," Liora argues, gesturing at the spirits. "Including children who've been trapped here suffering for three centuries. How can I walk away from that?"
"Easily. You put one foot in front of the other and leave."
"Is that what you'd do?" She steps closer, her silver eyes challenging me. "If you could save your people by sacrificing yourself, would you walk away?"
The question hits like a dagger between my ribs. Because she already knows the answer. She can feel it through the bond—the truth I've been hiding even from myself.
I'd die for my people in a heartbeat. I almost did, three hundred years ago.
"That's different," I say, but the words sound weak.
"How?"
"Because I've already lived three centuries! I've had my time! You're twenty-three years old, and you've spent most of it hiding and suffering. You deserve to actually live before you—"
I stop talking because my voice is shaking. Because I sound desperate. Because somewhere in the last few hours, this girl went from being a tool for revenge to being something I can't afford to lose.
Liora's expression softens. Through the bond, I feel her surprise. Her confusion. And something else—something warm that makes my dead heart want to beat again.
"You care about me," she whispers. "You actually care."
"Don't be ridiculous." I turn away, but it's too late. She already felt the truth.
"Ashuron." She touches my arm, and her light flows into me automatically, soothing the constant ache I've lived with for so long. "Tell me the real story. Not the version I was taught. I need to understand what actually happened three hundred years ago."
I close my eyes. "You won't like it."
"I don't like anything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours. Tell me anyway."
So I do.
I tell her about the prophecy—how the seers predicted that light and shadow would unite, creating a new race of beings more powerful than either alone. How our kingdoms prepared for the union, celebrating the future instead of fearing it.
I tell her about meeting her ancestor in the Starfall Gardens the night before the massacre. How the Lightborn crown princess was kind and brilliant and beautiful. How we talked for hours about the future our peoples would build together.
"I was supposed to marry her," I admit. "The soul-bond would have activated between us, merging our kingdoms peacefully. But my brother Malachar couldn't stand it."
"Why not?"
"Because he wanted the throne." The old bitterness floods back. "He was always second. Always in my shadow. The prophecy didn't choose him—it chose me. So he made a deal with corrupt human mages and false Lightborn nobles who wanted power they hadn't earned."
Through the bond, Liora feels my pain as I describe the betrayal. How Malachar cursed me with living darkness. How the conspirators slaughtered the true Lightborn royal family. How they installed puppet rulers with stolen magic and rewrote history to make me the villain.
"The crown princess was pregnant when they killed her," I continue, my voice rough. "But her handmaid escaped with the unborn child. That baby survived in secret, had children of their own, and thirteen generations later—"
"I was born," Liora finishes. Her hand is still on my arm, and I can feel her processing everything. Feel her world shifting.
"You're the last true descendant of the Lightborn royal line." I finally meet her eyes. "That's why the soul-bond activated. That's why you can see the ghosts. That's why the prophecy chose you."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then: "Everything I was taught was a lie."
"Yes."
"The false Lightborn—the ones I served, the ones who took me in—they murdered my family."
"Yes."
"And you've been suffering for three centuries because you tried to stop them."
"I didn't try hard enough." The guilt crashes over me like it always does. "I was too slow. Too trusting. I didn't see the betrayal coming until it was too late."
"That's not your fault." Liora's voice is fierce. "You were betrayed by people you loved. That's not weakness—that's trust. There's a difference."
Through the bond, I feel her certainty. She actually believes that. She doesn't blame me.
Something breaks inside my chest. Something that's been frozen for three hundred years.
"Why?" I ask roughly. "Why don't you hate me? Your stories painted me as the monster who killed your people."
"Because stories lie." She steps closer, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her silver eyes. "But bonds don't. I can feel you, Ashuron. Your pain. Your guilt. Your loneliness. You're not a monster. You're just someone who's been hurt for way too long."
I want to pull her closer. Want to hold onto this moment, this feeling of being understood for the first time in centuries.
But the ghost child interrupts, her voice small and sad. "Will you help us? Please?"
Liora turns to face the spirits, and I feel her resolve hardening through the bond.
"There has to be another way," I say desperately. "Some way to free them without you dying."
"The vision was clear—"
"Visions can be wrong!" I grab her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. "I've spent three hundred years dying slowly. I know what death looks like, Liora. I won't watch you walk into it willingly."
"Then help me find another way." Her eyes are pleading. "Help me understand the Lost Star Court. Help me figure out how to save them without losing myself."
Before I can answer, a sound echoes through the ruins. A hunting horn.
We both freeze.
"That's impossible," I breathe. "The curse should have stopped them at the gates."
"Unless someone broke the curse," Liora whispers.
Through my shadows, I sense them. Hunters moving through Starfall. Dozens of them. And leading them, radiating stolen power—
"Celeste," we say together.
The ghost child's eyes go wide with fear. "She's using dark magic. Magic that shouldn't exist. She's burning through her own life force to break the curse."
"Why?" Liora demands. "Why would she sacrifice herself just to get to me?"
I know why. Through centuries of watching betrayal and jealousy, I recognize the pattern.
"Because she can't let you win," I say grimly. "Can't let you be the prophesied one, the special one, the one everyone will remember. She'd rather drag you both to death than let you shine brighter than her."
The hunting horn blows again, closer now.
"We need to run," Liora says.
"There's nowhere left to run." I look around the hall, calculating options. "This is the heart of Starfall. The deepest sanctuary. If they've reached this far—"
The doors explode inward.
Celeste stands in the entrance, surrounded by hunters. But she looks wrong. Her skin is cracking like porcelain, light bleeding through the cracks. She's burning herself alive from the inside out with stolen power.
"Hello, little sister," she says, and her voice sounds hollow. Dead. "Did you really think you could hide from me forever?"
Behind her, someone else steps into view. Tall, beautiful, with silver-black hair and eyes like liquid darkness.
"Hello, brother," he says, and his smile is poisonous. "Did you miss me?"
Malachar. The brother who cursed me. The architect of three centuries of suffering.
He's here.
Through the bond, I feel Liora's fear spike. But underneath it—rage. Pure, burning rage.
"You," she says to Malachar, her voice shaking. "You killed my family. You destroyed my people."
"I created a new order," he says smoothly. "One where I hold the power instead of watching you insects inherit the heavens."
"Then let me show you what this insect can do."
Liora's power explodes outward—not wild this time, but focused. Controlled. Her light doesn't just glow; it burns with the fury of a dying star.
The ghosts around us start glowing too, feeding her their trapped energy. Hundreds of souls, all channeling through one living conduit.
Malachar's smile falters. "That's impossible. She hasn't claimed the throne yet. She shouldn't be able to—"
"I don't need the throne to destroy you," Liora says, and her voice echoes with the voices of the dead. "I am the daughter of the fallen light. I am the heir to Starfall. And I will not let you hurt anyone else I love."
The word 'love' hits me through the bond like a shockwave.
She loves me. After one day. After learning the truth. After everything.
She loves me.
And that's when I realize—if Malachar kills her, I'll lose more than my freedom. I'll lose the first person in three hundred years who made me feel alive.
I step up beside Liora, my shadows rising to meet her light.
"You want to fight?" I ask Malachar, my voice deadly calm. "Let me show you what three hundred years of rage looks like, brother."
Our powers explode together—light and shadow, perfectly balanced, perfectly unified.
The battle for Starfall begins.
And in the chaos, none of us notice the Lost Star Court opening beneath our feet, responding to the combined power of its true heirs.
The throne is waking up.
And it's hungry.