Aster was gone.
The moment I opened my eyes, I knew.
The air was different still, heavy, hollow.
His blade was missing. His cloak. The chair where he always sat stood empty, its shadow stretching long across the cold floor.
The mark on my chest pulsed weakly like a heart that had lost its rhythm.
I reached out with my senses, searching for his presence through the lingering threads of our bond. Nothing. Only static and silence.
Then the door shattered inward.
Seren stood in the doorway, his white coat streaked with ash. His eyes were sharp as glass. "He's gone to the Council."
I stared. "Why?"
"To confess."
"What?"
"To protect you," Seren said bitterly. "The Council believes the merging of timelines is your doing. They plan to erase you before it spreads further. He went to beg for your life."
The floor tilted beneath me. "No"
"He's offering his oath to them. His life-bond. If they accept, he'll be bound as your warden until death."
"Then why does that sound like dying?"
Seren's gaze darkened. "Because it is. A Starless Oath burns the soul it's sworn with. Once invoked, he won't live past sunrise."
The room spun. "Where are they?"
"The Sanctum." Seren's voice softened. "But if you go there now, they'll kill you both."
I didn't answer.
I was already running.
The Sanctum was built beneath the old cathedral a place where gods were once buried and kings crowned. The walls glowed faintly, lined with celestial sigils that thrummed with power older than language.
At the center of the chamber stood Aster kneeling, head bowed, a circle of golden fire surrounding him. The Council watched from above like distant stars, their expressions unreadable.
"I, Aster Kael, son of no lineage, commander of the Seventh Division," he said, voice steady, "swear the Starless Oath. My soul for his life. My light for his shadow."
"Stop!"
The word tore out of me before I could think.
Every head turned.
Aster's eyes widened shock, fear, relief all at once. "Erian you can't"
But I crossed the barrier before he could finish, the wards hissing as I forced them open.
"You think I'll let you die for me?"
"This is the only way!" he shouted. "They'll destroy you otherwise"
"Then let them try!" I stepped closer, the mark blazing gold. "I'm not the same as before. I can protect myself and you."
The eldest Councilor rose. "You dare interrupt a sacred rite?"
"Yes," I said. "Because your rites are built on lies."
The chamber trembled as light flared from my hands visions flooding the walls, memories the gods had buried.
The truth.
The Black Sun wasn't a curse it was a gift. A fragment of divinity given to mortals so they could choose their own fate. The Council twisted that gift into fear, binding every vessel that followed.
I saw their faces pale as the illusion unfolded the first god, Cael, kneeling not in defiance, but in love. And Aster beside him. Always beside him.
The truth shattered the silence.
Aster's voice broke. "Erian what did you do?"
"I remembered everything."
The circle around him cracked, light splintering like glass. I reached for his hand. "Come with me."
He hesitated. "If I go, the world burns."
"If you stay, you die."
He looked up at me then and I saw it. The same love that had destroyed heaven once before.
He took my hand.
The circle collapsed in a storm of gold.
The Council shouted spells that died before they could form. The Sanctum split apart as we ran light chasing us through corridors that no longer obeyed gravity.
By the time we reached the surface, the sky was wrong again.
No stars. No sun. Only gold fire bleeding across the heavens.
Aster's breathing was ragged. "You shouldn't have done that."
"I wasn't going to lose you again."
He smiled tired, beautiful, doomed. "Then you'd better find a way to save us both."
I looked up. The world trembled. The sky, once blue, was now molten.
And in that endless light, a voice whispered the god's voice, inside my mind.
"Break the oath. End the cycle. Free the stars."
That night, as the world burned above us, I swore a new promise.
If the heavens demanded his life, then I would burn the heavens themselves.