The days blurred together in a rhythm of steel and sweat. Each morning, Elira woke to the sound of Kaelen moving through the house—the scrape of flint against stone, the soft hiss of water being poured, the measured footfalls that never seemed hurried or uncertain. He moved through the world with the patience of someone who had all the time in existence, and it grated against her nerves like sand in an open wound.
She was improving, though she'd sooner swallow her blade than admit it aloud. Her strikes were cleaner now, her footwork more deliberate. The wild fury that had once driven her every movement was being tempered into something sharper, more dangerous. Kaelen rarely praised her, but she had learned to read the subtle shifts in his expression—the faint softening around his eyes when she executed a perfect parry, the almost imperceptible nod when she held her stance without wavering.
It was on the sixth morning, when the mist still clung to the clearing like a shroud, that everything changed.
They had been sparring for nearly an hour, the practice swords cracking against each other in a steady rhythm. Elira's arms burned with fatigue, but she refused to yield. She launched another attack, feinting left before sweeping her blade toward his exposed side. Kaelen moved to block, but this time—for the first time—she was faster.
The wooden sword connected with his ribs, a solid hit that would have doubled over any normal opponent.
Kaelen didn't even flinch.
Elira froze, her breath catching in her throat. She had felt the impact, and heard the sharp crack of wood against flesh. But Kaelen stood there, unmoved, his storm-gray eyes fixed on her with that same infuriating calm.
"You landed a blow," he said quietly. "Well done."
"You didn't feel it," she whispered, the words barely audible. "You didn't feel anything."
Something flickered across his face—a shadow of old pain, quickly buried. "No," he admitted. "I didn't."
The practice sword slipped from her grip, clattering against the dirt. Elira stared at him, her mind racing. All this time, she had known intellectually what he was, what the curse had done to him. But knowing and understanding were different things entirely.
"Show me," she said, her voice suddenly fierce. "Prove it."
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Elira—"
"Prove it!" she snapped, her hands curling into fists. "You expect me to trust you, to believe your stories about curses and witches and immortality? Then show me. Show me what you are."
For a long moment, he didn't move. Then, slowly, he reached down and picked up his practice sword. Without warning, without hesitation, he drove the wooden point against his own palm, pressing until the skin should have broken, until blood should have welled.
Nothing happened.
He drew the blade across his forearm, a motion that should have left a long, shallow cut. The skin remained unmarred, perfect, as though the weapon had never touched him.
Elira's breath came in short, sharp gasps. "That's wood," she said, her voice shaking. "Maybe it only works with wood. Try—try something else."
Kaelen's expression was unreadable as he walked to the edge of the clearing, where his pack lay against a fallen log. He drew his real dagger—the curved blade she had seen the night the Hunters came—and returned to stand before her.
"Elira," he said softly, "you don't want to see this."
"I do," she insisted, though every instinct screamed at her to look away. "I need to know."
He held her gaze for a heartbeat longer, then nodded. In one fluid motion, he drew the blade across his palm.
The steel cut deep. Elira saw the flesh part, saw the bright bloom of blood well up from the wound. Her stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat.
But then—
The blood stopped flowing. The wound, deep and vicious, began to close before her eyes. Not slowly, not with the natural healing of days or weeks, but in seconds. The torn flesh knit back together, the skin sealing as though it had never been broken. Within moments, his palm was smooth and unmarked, the only evidence of the injury the smear of blood on his hand.
Elira stumbled backward, her legs suddenly weak. "Goddess," she breathed. "Gods above and below."
Kaelen wiped the blood on his trouser leg, his movements methodical, almost mechanical. "Now you know," he said quietly. "This is what I am. A man who cannot die, cannot truly be hurt. A man who will walk this world long after you and everyone you've ever known has turned to dust."
The weight of his words settled over the clearing like a funeral shroud. Elira sank to her knees, her mind reeling. She had seen death before—had caused it, even, in the desperate moments when survival demanded it. But this... this was something else entirely. This was the opposite of death, and somehow it seemed just as terrible.
"How?" she whispered. "How do you live with it?"
Kaelen was silent for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy with the weight of decades. "You learn to carry it. Like a stone in your pocket, always there, always weighing you down. You learn to not look too closely at the faces around you, because you know they'll be gone in what feels like the blink of an eye. You learn to not love, not truly, because love is a cruelty when you know you'll outlive it."
He turned away, his silver hair catching the morning light. "The witch who cursed me... I've thought about her words every day since. 'You will live until your purpose is fulfilled,' she said. 'You will protect the Comet-born until the line is secured, until the Elixir is safe. Only then will death claim you.' At first, I searched for ways to break it. I threw myself into battles, sought out the most dangerous quests, even tried to find other witches who might undo what was done. But nothing worked. The curse held. It always held."
"And Lyra?" Elira asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "She was Comet-born like me?"
Kaelen's shoulders tensed, a visible stiffening of his entire frame. "Yes. I found her twenty years ago, though it feels like yesterday. She was singing in a market square, her voice bright and clear as a bell. I felt it the moment I heard her—the hum of the Elixir in her blood, calling to something deep within me. The curse recognized her before I even understood what she was."
He turned back to face Elira, and for the first time, she saw true anguish in his eyes. "She was so alive, Elira. So full of joy and light. She painted murals on the sides of buildings, gave coins to beggars, and laughed at the smallest things. And I... I tried to warn her. Tried to explain what she was, what was coming for her. But she wouldn't listen. She thought I was mad, or dangerous, or both."
"What happened to her?" Elira asked, though part of her didn't want to know.
"The Hunters found her first," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to something cold and dead. "By the time I tracked them to their fortress, they had already begun their work. They had built a device—a terrible machine of iron and crystal, designed to extract the Elixir from a living vessel. They believe that if they could separate the power from the person, they could control it, harness it for the King."
He closed his eyes, and Elira saw his hands curl into fists at his sides. "I broke into the fortress. Killed two dozen guards before they even knew I was there. But I was too late. I found her strapped to that machine, her body broken, her eyes... gods, her eyes were still alive. Still aware. She looked at me and tried to smile, tried to tell me it wasn't my fault. And then she died. The Elixir died with her, returning to the earth, to the stars, to wherever such power goes when its vessel is destroyed."
Tears tracked down Elira's cheeks, hot and unbidden. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry for me," Kaelen said harshly. "Be afraid for yourself. Because the King will never stop hunting you. He's spent his entire reign obsessed with the Elixir, convinced that it's the key to ultimate power, to immortality, to godhood. And he'll do anything—sacrifice anyone—to possess it."
He knelt before her, his storm-gray eyes boring into hers. "That's why you must learn. Not just to fight with a blade, but to control the power inside you. The Elixir is not a tool or a weapon. It's a living force, as old as the stars themselves. It chose you, just as it chose Lyra, just as it's chosen every Comet-born throughout history. And if you don't learn to master it, it will consume you from the inside out."
Elira wiped at her tears, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "Then teach me," she said, her voice steadying. "Teach me everything. I won't die like Lyra did. I won't let the King win."
Something shifted in Kaelen's expression—a spark of approval, or perhaps relief. "Good," he said simply. "Then we begin now."
—-------‐—--------------
The training changed after that morning. Kaelen pushed her harder, faster, driving her body to its limits and beyond. But more than that, he began teaching her about the Elixir itself—not as a distant, mystical concept, but as something real and tangible within her.
"Close your eyes," he instructed one afternoon, as they sat by the stream that ran behind the house. "Feel the water moving. Not with your ears or your skin, but deeper. Feel its life, its purpose."
Elira tried, squeezing her eyes shut and focusing all her attention on the babbling current. At first, there was nothing but the ordinary sounds of nature—water over stone, wind through leaves, the distant cry of a hawk. But then, slowly, she felt something else. A hum, faint and rhythmic, like a heartbeat or a breath. It pulsed in time with the water's flow, a living song that resonated somewhere deep in her chest.
"I feel it," she gasped, her eyes flying open. "It's like... like music, but not. Like the water is singing."
Kaelen nodded, a rare smile touching his lips. "That's the Elixir. The life-force that flows through all things. The Comet-born can sense it more clearly than others, can learn to manipulate it in small ways. That's what the King wants—the ability to bend that force to his will, to control life itself."
"Can I do that?" Elira asked. "Control it?"
"In time, perhaps. But control is the wrong word. The Elixir cannot truly be controlled, only... guided. Like a river can be channeled but never truly stopped. You must learn to work with it, not against it."
They spent hours by the stream, Kaelen teaching her to feel the hum of different things—the ancient oak tree whose roots ran deep into the earth, the hawk circling overhead, even the stones beneath their feet. Everything had its own song, its own frequency. And gradually, Elira learned to distinguish between them, to read the world in a way she never had before.
But as her control grew, so too did her awareness of something darker. At night, lying on her cot, she could feel a distant wrongness—a cold, flat note that jarred against the natural harmony of the forest. It was faint but growing stronger, like a distant storm approaching.
"What is that?" she asked Kaelen one evening, as they sat by the fire. "That cold feeling. Like something's watching us."
His expression darkened. "The King has resources we don't fully understand. Ancient artifacts, forbidden magics. It's possible he's found a way to track the Elixir's signature." He stared into the flames, his jaw tight. "We may need to move soon. This place has been safe, but nowhere stays safe forever."
"Where would we go?"
"North," he said. "To the mountains. There's a place there, an old sanctuary built by the first Comet-born, before kingdoms and kings. If anywhere is safe, it would be there."
Elira pulled her knees to her chest, watching the firelight dance across his silver hair. "Why do you do this?" she asked suddenly. "I know about the curse, about your purpose. But there has to be more to it than just an obligation. You could hide, live quietly somewhere. Why fight?"
Kaelen was silent for a long time, his gaze distant. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, almost vulnerable. "Because I'm tired of watching people die. Tired of carrying their ghosts. Lyra was the last in a long line of failures, but she was... different. And when she died, something broke inside me. I swore I would never let it happen again. That if I found another Comet-born, I would do whatever it took to protect them. Even if it meant defying the curse itself."
He turned to look at her, and in his eyes, she saw not the immortal warrior or the cursed soldier, but simply a man—lonely, weary, desperate for redemption. "You remind me of her," he admitted. "That same fire, that same stubborn refusal to yield. It terrifies me, because I know what that fire can lead to. But it also gives me hope. Because if anyone can survive what's coming, it's someone who burns that bright."
Elira's throat tightened. Without thinking, she reached out and took his hand—the same hand she had watched heal impossibly just hours before. His skin was warm, solid, real despite the curse that made him something more than human.
"I won't die," she said firmly. "Not like Lyra. Not like the others. I promise you that."
Kaelen's fingers closed around hers, gentle but certain. "Then I promise you this—I will stand between you and death for as long as I draw breath. And given that I cannot stop drawing breath, that's a promise I can keep."
Despite everything—the danger, the fear, the weight of an ancient power pulsing in her veins—Elira felt herself smile. It was a small thing, fragile as a candle flame in a storm. But it was real.
They sat together in companionable silence, hands joined, as the fire burned low and the stars wheeled overhead. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new dangers. The King's forces were drawing closer, guided by whatever dark magic he had uncovered. The sanctuary in the mountains was still weeks of hard travel away, through terrain that grew more treacherous with every mile.
But tonight, in this moment, Elira felt something she hadn't experienced since the market, since her old life had been ripped away.
Safety. Not the kind that came from walls or weapons, but the kind that came from knowing someone stood beside you. Someone who had seen the worst the world had to offer and still chose to fight. Someone who carried the weight of years like armor and still found room for hope.
"Kaelen?" she said softly.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For saving me. For teaching me. For... everything."
He squeezed her hand gently. "Thank you," he replied, "for giving me a reason to keep going. For eighty years, I've walked this world alone. It's good to have company again, even if that company insists on trying to stab me during training."
Elira laughed, surprised by the sound. "You deserved it. You're insufferably calm."
"I've had a lot of practice."
They fell silent again, but it was a comfortable quiet now, filled with unspoken understanding. The night deepened around them, and somewhere in the distance, an owl called out—a pure, clear note in the darkness.
And for the first time since the comet had blazed across the sky on the night of her birth, marking her for a destiny she never wanted, Elira felt ready to face whatever came next.
Because she wasn't alone anymore.
And neither was he.