They felt it before they saw it.
The air twisted. The wind turned warm and tasted of honeyed blood. The earth cracked, not with quake but with desire. Lian rose from his crouch, sword drawn, eyes locked on the sky. Sylis clutched the old starmap like a shield. Kael muttered a prayer he didn't believe in.
"He's not just watching anymore," Sylis said, voice low.
"He's coming."
Then lightning cracked.
But it wasn't lightning.
It was Xarion.
Descending.
Half-divine, half-danger, wrapped in gold-threaded shadows. His bare chest shimmered like molten obsidian, and his eyes are those of gods, those eyes ate the horizon. The storm parted for him. Reality bent.
He landed without sound. Just heat.
Aure stood behind the others now, mark glowing faintly, barely breathing.
And then Xarion smiled.
"You mortals," he said, stepping forward. "You kissed my flame, didn't you?"
"We didn't just kiss," Kael snarled. "We bound."
"Aww," Xarion crooned, tilting his head. "And you thought that would matter?"
He reached out not toward Aure.
Toward Lian.
"You. You're the one he dreamt of. He was even screaming for you in the dark. Do you want to know how often he said your name when he was under me in another life?"
Lian didn't flinch. He stepped in close.
"You can haunt our past," he growled, "but he chose me in this one."
A beat of silence.
Then Xarion licked his bottom lip.
"So let's test that, shall we?"
---
Trial by Temptation
Xarion doesn't fight with blades.
He fights with truth. With touch. With whispers in sleep and dreams soaked in sweat.
He invades each of them, not with violence but with visions.
Kael, chained to a bed of roses that bite. Xarion watching him beg.
Sylis, offered knowledge too dangerous to exist, wrapped in a kiss that rewrites him.
Lian, standing at the edge of a cliff, forced to watch a dream of Aure choosing Xarion over and over… each time slower.
And Aure?
Caught between.
The past that worshipped him.
The present that bleeds for him.
Their sigils splits. One half gold, one half red. Torn.
---
Xarion offers one chance:
"I won't kill your lovers, Aure. I'll do worse."
"I'll show you what we were.
I'll make them watch what you still crave."