The door opened, and four figures entered. Even in memory, their presence changed the air itself. Kaelen moved with that controlled power I knew so well, but here his edges were softer, his smile genuine. Flynn prowled with the same predatory grace but without the rage that now defined him. Thane's sorrow hadn't yet carved those lines into his face. And Elias? The memory-Elias looked younger somehow, though his physical form was identical. Less weighted by prophecy.
They surrounded Pandora with easy intimacy, and she bloomed under their attention. Kaelen's fingers traced patterns on her bare shoulder that made her shiver. Flynn pressedkisses to her palm, each one a promise. Thane crowned her with flowers that never wilted. Memory-Elias sang prophecies of children who would bridge worlds, who would be both mortal and divine, who would heal the ancient rift between earth and sky.
"She loved us." Present-Elias's voice carried infinite loss. "Not the idea of us. Not our power. Us. She knew our flaws, our failures, our fears, and loved us not despite them but because of them. Because she saw who we could be together."
"What happened?" Though I knew. The books had told me. But I needed to hear it from him.
The vision darkened, colors bleeding out like water from a broken cup. Pandora stood in what I recognized as the Sanctorum, though it looked different—newer, rawer, without centuries of absorbed power. Four figures knelt before her in chains that hadn't yet learned to burn. And she wept.
Not gentle tears. Body-shaking sobs that made her whole form convulse. Her tears fell like rain, and where they hit stone, they crystallized, turning to gems that sang with sorrow.
"Please," she begged, and her voice in memory had the same tone mine did when I thought I was alone. "Please forgive me. They have my sister. They have Alexis. She's seven years old. Seven. They'll kill her if I don't—if I don't?—"
"We know," memory-Kaelen said, and even bound, even betrayed, his voice held gentleness. "We understand."
"No!" Pandora fell to her knees, hands pressed against the proto-Gate. "You don't understand. This isn't just binding. They've changed the ritual. You won't just be imprisoned. You'll be aware. Every moment, every second, for as long as the binding holds. Centuries of consciousness without form, without touch, without—" She broke off, choking on her horror.
"We'll survive," memory-Flynn said, though his voice already carried the edge of madness that would define him. "We're harder to kill than they think."
"I don't want you to survive. I want you to live. I want—" She pressed her forehead to the Gate, and her tears came faster. "I want the children we talked about. The garden you promised to plant for me. The songs you were going to teach me. The hunts under moonlight. The quiet evenings by the fire. I want the life we planned."
"That life is gone," memory-Thane said gently. "But perhaps, someday, someone will come who can choose differently. Who can break what you're being forced to build."
Pandora looked up at them through the Gate, and prophecy fell from her lips in a voice not entirely her own:
"She will come. Last of my line but first of something new. She will carry your fire in her veins, your song in her dreams, your strength in her bones, your wisdom in her heart. She will be the key that chooses to open rather than lock. The daughter who chooses love over duty, connection over isolation, truth over comfortable lies. She will be what I couldn't be, strong enough to pay the price of freedom."
The vision shattered like glass, and I stood again in the impossible garden with present-Elias, my cheeks wet with tears I didn't remember crying.
"That's you," he said simply. "The prophecy she spoke in her despair. You're what she saw when she looked into the future and begged for redemption."
"I'm not strong enough?—"
"You're stronger than she was. You've already chosen to question, to learn, to see us as more than monsters. You've let us into your blood, your dreams, your heart. Things she never had the chance to do."
He moved closer, and the garden moved with him, reality bending around his presence. When he raised his hand to my face, his fingers felt like sunlight, warm but insubstantial.
"The Council knows the prophecy. That's why they've kept you isolated, why they've trained you in nothing but obedience. They're trying to cage you the same way they caged us. But prophecies are tricky things. The more you try to prevent them, the more inevitable they become."
"They'll kill me if they know I've learned the truth."
"They'll try." His turquoise eyes held mine, and in them I saw a thousand futures branching like lightning. "But you're not alone anymore. You have us. You have the truth. And soon, you'll have to choose what to do with both."
The garden began to fade at the edges, dawn pulling at the borders of sleep. But before I woke fully, Elias pressed something into my hand—not physical but more real than flesh.
"A gift," he said as his form grew translucent. "Phoenix fire. Not the burning kind, but the kind that brings rebirth. When the moment comes—and you'll know it when it does—remember that endings are just beginnings wearing masks. Death is just transformation too proud to admit it's change."
I woke to find my pillow soaked with tears.
But more than that, I woke to find matching tears on my cheeks, crystallizing even as I watched, turning to tiny gems that caught the morning light. They sang with a sorrow that wasn't entirely mine. Pandora's grief echoing through bloodlines, finally finding release.
I picked up one of the crystal tears, holding it up to the light. Through its faceted surface, I could see the truth of everything, the Gate, the princes, myself. All of us trapped by choices made in fear, bound by love turned weapon.
But also, if I looked carefully, I could see possibility. Futures where chains became connections. Where prisons becamedoorways. Where the daughter succeeded where the mother had failed.
I closed my fist around the crystal tear, feeling it pulse with warmth that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with hope.
Phoenix fire indeed. The kind that burned away lies to make room for truth.
