The wind over the high cliffs of Elenshade carried with it the scent of salt and fire. Smoke from coastal hearths curled into the evening air, but it was not the smoke that filled Rael's lungs as he stood alone at the edge of a cliff. It was memory.
His hands, calloused and scarred, gripped the hilt of a plain dagger—the only possession he'd kept from his childhood. He turned it over slowly, the worn leather grip molded to the shape of his hand, as if it had been waiting. Like he had been. Like she had been.
Elira.
The name sent a thousand unsaid things into the dusk.
He hadn't planned on coming back. For years, he had buried his identity beneath false names, secret missions, lives lived in shadows—first as a soldier, then a mercenary, then as something darker. When the world thought Rael had perished in the fires that swallowed his family home, it was easier to let them believe it.
But not her.
Never her.
Flashback
Rain had poured the night the flames came. Elira, only twelve, had screamed until her voice bled trying to reach him.
But the fire answered first.
Their mother's voice had vanished beneath the crash of burning beams. Their father's blade had gleamed only once before being buried by a falling roof. Rael had shoved Elira through the side gate, wrapped in their father's traveling cloak.
"Run," he'd ordered. "Don't look back."
And she hadn't—not until dawn.
By then, the home was ash, and Rael was gone.
What Elira didn't know was that Rael hadn't died. He had been found—broken and burned—but breathing. A lone woman cloaked in crimson had pulled him from the edge and vanished with him into the wilderness.
She called herself Mirethe, and she taught him how to survive in a world that fed on weakness. Her teachings were brutal but just. She told him emotion was a gift, but not a weapon. That secrets were sometimes more powerful than blades.
That to protect someone, you sometimes had to vanish from their life.
Present
Rael tightened his grip on the dagger as footsteps crunched behind him.
Elira's voice came soft but sharp. "You said you'd never come back."
He didn't turn. "And yet here I am."
She stood beside him, arms crossed. The wind whipped her braid around her face. "You watched me mourn you. You watched the world burn, and you stayed away."
"I watched because I couldn't bear to interfere. I knew what my return would bring. I didn't want to pull you from your path."
"Then why now?" she asked, eyes glinting with unshed fire.
Rael hesitated.
"Elira," he said finally, "there are shadows older than Eredan-Mir. Whispers of a silence that moves beneath the world's skin. It was never about one enemy. And it was never about just you and Caelen."
"You knew Caelen?" she asked, stunned.
Rael looked away. "I followed him. For months. Not as an enemy. As a... guardian, of sorts. He's stronger than anyone realizes. But even strong hearts fracture. And he's already started to crack."
She stepped back. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Rael replied, turning to her now, "that Caelen is important. But he's not untouched. The curse he bears—it sings to something buried. Something deep. I don't know what it is, but if it wakes, it could drown him. And you."
Elira's chest tightened. "So that's why you returned?"
"No," Rael said, voice suddenly quieter. "I returned because I saw you walking toward something worse than death. I saw you losing your fire. I couldn't let that happen."
She stared at him for a long time. The brother she thought dead. The shadow in her dreams. The boy who had vanished and returned a man she no longer recognized.
And still—he was her blood.
Meanwhile, Caelen watched from the trees.
He hadn't meant to spy, but when Elira vanished from camp that morning, his instincts had whispered of something wrong. When he'd followed the trail, what he found wasn't danger.
It was something far worse.
Her. Smiling. Laughing—softly—with someone else.
A man who touched her shoulder like he belonged there.
Caelen didn't hear the words. He didn't need to. The shape of the scene was enough.
He turned before they saw him. And he didn't return to camp.
Back at the camp, that night
Elira noticed his absence immediately. The fire hadn't been rekindled. His bedroll hadn't been touched. And the Weeping Blade—which never left his side—was gone.
Panic surged in her.
"Caelen?" she called, heart thundering.
But only the wind answered.
Rael emerged from the trees a few minutes later, brows furrowed. "Where is he?"
"I don't know," Elira whispered, voice cracking. "I don't know—"
Rael's fists clenched. "Then he saw."
She turned sharply. "What did he see?"
"I don't know. But whatever he thinks he saw… he's wrong."
Elira stood silent for a long moment, realization dawning like a slow eclipse.
"He thinks I hid you from him."
"You did," Rael said. "But only because I made you promise."
A cold dread crept through her chest. "I have to find him."
Rael stepped aside. "Then go. But when you find him—tell him. Everything. Or you'll lose him, Elira. And this time, it won't be to death."
She grabbed her cloak and ran into the night, the stars spinning above, her heartbeat louder than any silence.
Far from the firelight, Caelen walked alone.
His thoughts were smoke.
He wasn't angry. Not yet.
Just… empty.
The kind of emptiness that comes when something small breaks. A thread. A gesture. A glance.
And when your heart whispers: This is how it begins.
But not all was lost.
Not yet.
In the dark, a voice stirred—not from the curse, but from memory. Elira's voice. The night she had once knelt beside him, broken, and said: We break together.
He stopped walking.
And waited.
For her to prove it.