Neither Hector nor Victoria spoke.
Not at first.
They simply stood there in the throne hall, unmoving. The chamber had gone still, like a breath drawn and never released. The grand velvet banners didn't sway. The golden flames of the chandeliers froze in mid-flicker. The distant calls of courtiers and clinking boots beyond the high archways cut off, like sound itself had turned its head away.
Then came the light.
It wasn't blinding. It was soft. Warm. A radiant shimmer that rose up from the marble floor like mist, wrapping around them slowly, layer by layer, until it formed a dome of faintly glowing light. It didn't burn or sear — it cradled.
All eyes vanished.
The Empress, the guards, the servants — gone.
Only the two of them remained.
Hector turned slowly to face Victoria fully.
Victoria's expression didn't change. She didn't step back.
Neither did he.
Words formed in the air, unseen and unheard, but unmistakably present — written in the silence between their two hearts.
"Legacy Potential: unlocked.
Should they be reborn together, and remember the song… this link may evolve into a deeper binding. Not of fate, but of choice."
The words were not commands. They were truths. Observations written by something older than language.
Victoria's eyes slowly widened.
"…Did you hear it too?" she whispered.
Hector nodded. "I didn't hear it. I knew it."
She stepped closer, cautiously, like any movement might shatter the illusion.
"I thought… maybe I made it up. Maybe I was crazy."
"You're not."
He looked up at the light above them. It shimmered like a memory, not a material thing. And within it — images flickered. Hints. Half-scenes.
A spiral of wind, made of glass.
A humming void with a mouthless face.
A surface of water hanging in the air.
Flickers of gods they had met before birth. Of dreams that shaped them.
"I remember everything," Hector said softly.
Victoria nodded. "So do I."
They were silent again.
Then they laughed. Softly.
It wasn't humor. It was release.
For years they had been burdened with knowing too much, being too much. They had remembered truths no child should hold, spoken with voices not their own. And now… they were not alone.
"I hated it sometimes," Victoria said. "Being so many people. Seeing versions of myself break, die, fade… and then walking around with all of them still inside me."
"I know," Hector said. "For me… it was never about me. It was always about the others. The ones no one remembered. The ones who died before they got to live. I remembered all of them, but I never felt like I had a self of my own."
She looked at him.
"You do," she said. "Even if you're made of a thousand lives… you still hum the same way."
He smiled.
"And you still reflect the same way."
They sat down in the middle of the dome. The floor no longer felt cold. It felt like earth. Like soil before planting.
Victoria looked at her hands. "My magic… it's Becoming. I shift into versions of myself that never were, but might've been. It's like walking sideways through time."
"I know. I've seen it."
Hector raised his hand. "Mine is soulweave. I take in the lives of the forgotten, and I use the echo of their existence to shape who I become."
"I've felt it," she said. "I think that's why I could always hum along. You were remembering the lives I never lived, and I was becoming the ones you never saw."
They were quiet again.
And then Victoria said, "I don't want to forget this."
"You won't," Hector answered. "Neither will I. Not again."
"But when we're outside this dome… the world will feel heavier. Our memories will blur. It's already happened to me once."
"I know. That's why we'll need a tether."
She raised an eyebrow. "A spell?"
"A memory."
He closed his eyes, then began to hum.
It wasn't a melody. It wasn't even beautiful.
It was the hum. The one no one had ever sung to them.
The one they had always heard.
Victoria joined in.
Their voices weren't in harmony — but they didn't clash. They met somewhere in between, raw and real, like echoes in a cavern too old to have a name.
The dome pulsed.
Light drew inward, coalescing into a fine thread of energy that wrapped once around both of their wrists, then vanished.
Neither noticed it happen.
They were too busy singing.
Too busy remembering.
And then, just as quietly as it had arrived, the light withdrew. The dome faded. The sounds of the palace returned.
Seraphine blinked.
The guards shifted.
No time had passed.
But something had changed.
Something none of them could name.
And the Empress did not like that.
Not at all.