Chapter – Liora's Final Day
"Kael… promise me. Even if I fade... you'll remember me smiling."
He promised her.
And he kept it. For a thousand years.
Even if it hurt more every time he did.
The wind was gentle that morning.
Kael woke to birdsong and the quiet murmur of Aiva's soft giggling. The three-year-old was chasing butterflies barefoot, her wild black curls bouncing like feathers in the wind.
Liora stood in the doorway, flour on her cheek, smiling at her family.
"Breakfast is ready," she called. "Unless butterflies are more filling?"
Kael wrapped his arms around Aiva and swung her into the air. The child squealed with joy.
"Nothing is sweeter than your bread," he said, kissing Liora on the forehead.
"Flatterer," she whispered, brushing hair from his face. "You're late for the clinic."
The Perfect Day That Never Should've Ended
Kael was a healer in the village of Orialis, known for curing illness with strange herbs and an even stranger gentleness that made others trust him.
He had found peace here—after years of wandering, of guilt, of trying to forget a war he'd once fought.
Liora had been the first to look at him and not see scars.
And Aiva… Aiva was hope in human form.
She was born during a spring storm. The midwife said no baby should've survived the fever. But she did. Liora said it was because Kael whispered to the rain to spare her.
He never denied it.
The Sky Turned ReD
That day, the peace shattered.
A horn sounded.
Then another.
The nearby kingdom had fallen—driven mad by power. The soldiers weren't conquerors. They were butchers. They came to silence the healers, burn the wise, and make fear sacred.
Kael ran home.
The house was already burning.
Liora's Last Stand
He found her in the wreckage, clutching Aiva—both coughing, choking. Smoke and screams filled the sky.
He fought. He cut down three soldiers before they fled.
He held Aiva. She was limp.
"She's gone," Liora whispered, blood in her mouth. "But you're here. That's enough."
"No." His hands glowed with a magic he'd long hidden. "No. I won't let you go."
"Kael," she coughed, her eyes soft even in death, "It's okay. Let go."
"I can't. I won't."
He screamed to the sky, to anything that would hear.
"TAKE ME INSTEAD!"
And something did.
The Curse is Cast
A being made of smoke and starlight appeared.
It had no face—only a voice that sounded like all the people Kael had ever lost.
"You would give up everything to carry their pain?"
"Yes!"
"Then carry it forever."
The world went silent.
Kael blinked—and Liora's body turned to ash in his arms.
Aiva's tiny hands dissolved like dust.
And from that day on, he never aged.
He never forgot.
He never healed.
Memory in the Present
1,000 years later, Kael sits by a riverbank with Ren sleeping nearby.
He pulls out Liora's ribbon and whispers into the darkness:
"I remember the way you smelled of honey and rosemary.
I remember how your fingers fit into mine.
I remember Aiva's laugh.
I remember the day I broke time just to hold you again.
And I remember…
that I failed you anyway."
The river flows past, cold and uncaring.
But Kael stays still.
Because memory is all he has left.
End of Chapter