The beings faded like smoke, leaving only the acrid scent of cosmic authority and the terrible weight of limited time pressing against Cael's consciousness. He stood alone in the courtyard,understanding that their love had become a countdown to mutual destruction, that every moment of happiness they stole made the eventual price higher.
Seventeen days to love someone completely before losing them forever. The cruel mathematics of cosmic law turned affection into weapon, intimacy into countdown timer, hope into the cruelest torture imaginable.
Returning to the clinic, Cael attempted to mask his cosmic distress, but Damian noticed immediately. The healer's supernatural sensitivity to emotional undercurrents made him impossible to deceive, especially now that their souls had intertwined at the most fundamental level.
“You're different today,” Damian observed quietly, setting aside his morning preparations to focus entirely on Cael's transformed presence. “Cold, but not like before. This feels like fear.”
The accuracy of the assessment cut through Cael's defenses like a blade through silk. Of course Damian could sense the terror radiating from him—their soulbond made emotional concealment impossible, created transparency between them that was both gift and curse.
“Everything's fine,” Cael lied, the words tasting like ash on his tongue. “Just adjusting to mortality. It's more complicated than I expected.”
Damian's expression shifted to something between concern and skepticism, his enhanced senses clearly detecting the deception even if he couldn't identify its specific nature. “Since when do you lie to me?”
Since telling the truth would destroy what little happiness we have left.
Cael thought desperately, but couldn't bring himself to speak the words aloud. Instead, he deflected with attempted normalcy, watching Damian chop herbs with methodical care, listening tohis unconscious humming, memorizing the domestic rituals that made mortality precious.
Every moment felt simultaneously too good to be real and too fragile to last. The knowledge of the Wardens' ultimatum poisoned every interaction, turning simple gestures into potential final memories. When Damian laughed at some private thought, the sound hit Cael like revelation and heartbreak combined—beautiful beyond description and doomed beyond salvation.
“Tell me about your day,” Cael said, desperate to fill the growing silence with something other than dread. “What patients are you expecting? What healing work needs to be done?”
Damian paused in his herb preparation, clearly sensing the forced quality of the conversation but choosing to play along. “Mrs. Chen is coming back for another treatment on her time-burns. That young man with the soul-fracture needs follow-up care. And there's always the usual stream of people who can't afford legitimate healing.”
As Damian spoke, Cael found himself cataloguing details with desperate intensity. The way morning light caught the planes of the healer's face, casting shadows that changed with each gesture. The particular cadence of his voice when he talked about his work, carrying notes of compassion that had first attracted cosmic attention. The unconscious grace with which he moved through his domain, every motion speaking of years spent navigating the world through senses other than sight.
When Damian leaned in for their morning kiss, Cael flinched involuntarily. Not from repulsion but from paralyzing fear that made his throat close with panic. If he loved this man more than he already did, if their connection deepened beyond its current impossible intensity, the cosmic backlash would destroy Damian completely.
The thought hit him like revelation and nightmare combined: every moment of happiness they stole made the eventual price higher. Every kiss, every touch, every whispered declaration of love was adding fuel to the fire that would eventually consume them both.
“What's wrong?” Damian asked, his voice gentle but concerned as he registered Cael's withdrawal. “Did I do something?”
“No,” Cael said quickly, hating himself for the hurt that flickered across Damian's features. “You're perfect. You're absolutely perfect, and that's the problem.”
Before Damian could ask for clarification, Cael forced himself to close the distance between them, to press their lips together with desperate hunger that carried undertones of farewell. The kiss tasted of salt and sorrow, of love that was being simultaneously celebrated and mourned.
When they broke apart, both men were breathing hard, but the tension between them had only intensified rather than dissolving. The distance they'd worked so hard to bridge was returning—not from absence this time, but from the dread of impending loss that colored every interaction with prophetic shadows.
“Cael,” Damian said softly, his hands coming up to frame the cosmic entity's face with gentle reverence. “Whatever's happening, whatever you're afraid of—we face it together. That was the deal, remember?”
The words should have been comforting, but they only made Cael's guilt more unbearable. How could he tell this generous, trusting man that their love was a countdown to mutual destruction? How could he explain that every moment they spent together was bringing them closer to cosmic erasure?
They moved through their morning routine with careful politeness, each trying to protect the other from fears thatcouldn't be spoken aloud. The intimacy they'd achieved felt suddenly fragile, a soap bubble that might burst if either breathed too hard. Both men felt it, neither knew how to fight it, and the growing tension made every gesture feel rehearsed rather than natural.
Desperate for guidance or perhaps just escape from the weight of impossible choices, Cael left the clinic as soon as Damian's first patient arrived. The healer looked after him with obvious concern, but Cael couldn't bear to meet his eyes.
He made his way to the Ruins of the Veiled Gate through streets that bent around his presence like reality itself was trying to accommodate something that no longer fit within normal parameters. Vendors called out their wares in voices that echoed strangely, and children playing in alleyways fell silent as he passed, their innocent awareness registering something fundamentally wrong about his transformed nature.
The ancient stones pulsed with residual power that recognized him despite his changed state, their crystalline surfaces reflecting not his physical form but the cosmic truth of what he'd become. In those reflections, fragments of possible futures played like prophetic films, most showing variations of loss, separation, or mutual destruction.
One vision stopped him cold: himself standing alone in a field of ash where Varos once thrived, Damian's laughter echoing as memory rather than reality. In the vision, his eyes had returned to their original void-black, and his expression carried the terrible emptiness of someone who'd loved completely and lost everything.
Another showed Damian aging rapidly, his mortal frame consumed by proximity to cosmic forces too large for human comprehension. The healer's face twisted with agony as temporal energies ate away at his life force, his final words lost in screams that echoed across dimensions.
A third depicted both of them simply ceasing to exist, their love deemed too dangerous for reality to contain. No dramatic death, no final words or gestures—just erasure so complete that the universe forgot they'd ever drawn breath.
Cael wept silently before the prophetic stones, his tears falling like liquid starlight onto the ancient ground. Each drop carried the weight of cosmic sorrow, grief for futures that might have been if love and law could coexist rather than warring for dominance.
“This world cannot hold both Death and Love in the same vessel,” he whispered to the indifferent ruins, his voice breaking on words that tasted like defeat. “The cosmic order was built on separation, on distance, on the clean division between ending and continuing. And I am too selfish to let go of what I've found.”
