Two souls remember who they were,
Speak names that time could not deter.
Seal flesh to flesh beneath the flame,
And what was broken wakes the same.”
“I’ll find her.” My voice was steel, even as my humanity began to slip away into fur and bone. “I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care how many lives I have to wait. I’ll find her.”
“Then go, Caelen. And may the Gods have mercy on your soul.”
I hadn’t understood it then. But as I stand here now in the golden roar of the fire, with Lumi’s warmth against my side, and Micah’s blood cooling in the snow, the pieces lock together with a bittersweet snap.
I know the four truths now. The four debts that were owed to the Fates.
First, she chose to stay in the winter that once took her life.
Second, she chose not only me, but Rhûven.
Third, we consummated our bond beneath the god fire.
And fourth… the shadow fell a second time. I look back at Micah. My twin. The shadow that followed us from the cliff to the afterlife, and then followed Lumi through this one. He had to die by my hand, not out of vengeance, but because it was the only way to balance the scales.
The debt of the first fall has finally been paid in blood.
I blink, and the gray expanse of the past is gone. I’m back in the clearing, the golden fire flickering around us.
The god is still watching me.
“You chose the burden,” they say quietly. “You became the beast. The judge. The protector. And you waited.”
“For lifetimes,” I whisper.
“Yes.” The god’s gaze softens—a flicker of something that might be sympathy. “And when she returned to the cold... when the snow claimed her grief as it once claimed her life... the bond began to wake.”
Lumi’s hand finds mine, her fingers interlacing with mine, squeezing so tight I can feel the frantic pulse in her palm.
“But the prophecy has conditions,” the god continues. “She had to return to the cold willingly. Not as a victim of death, but as a seeker of truth. In search of something lost.”
“Anna,” Lumi breathes, her eyes wide as the pieces of her life finally click into the larger machine of fate.
“Yes. Your grief for the sister who shared your soul brought you back to the place where you lost it. And the one who coveted you—” The gods gaze flicks to Micah’s body. “—had to be ended. Not by the hand of a murderer seeking vengeance. But by the hand of a protector, choosing love over his own kin. A necessity born of a love that cannot lose her again.”
My throat tightens. I look at my hands—the hands that killed a brother I didn’t even know I had.
“Only then,” the god intones, “would your memories return. Only then would the bond be truly complete.”
Silence settles over the clearing, thick and heavy as the falling snow.
Lumi’s small voice breaks the quiet.
“What about him?” She gestures toward Micah’s body. “What...happens now?”
The god is quiet for a long moment, the light in their eyes pulsing.
“Therin made the same choice you did, Caelen.”
My blood runs cold.
