(Lysandra's POV)
The temple no longer felt like a sanctuary.
By dawn, Vaelora's spires burned gold under the twin suns, and the city below sang its hymns of praise. But inside the walls of the Temple of Light, Lysandra Vale felt only silence — thick, pulsing, alive.
Her hands would not stop shaking.
She had stood before a legend, a creature of shadow bound by divine chains, and somehow she'd spoken to him. Kaelith. The name alone throbbed behind her ribs like a bruise. Every prayer she'd whispered since had fractured on her tongue.
She told no one what she had seen.
The Council would call it blasphemy, Maeryn would have her purified, and Serin — her brother — would drag her to the altar himself. No one would believe that the Throne of Light, their holy relic, pulsed with a demon's heartbeat.
And yet, every time she closed her eyes, she saw his.
Those ember-dark eyes, full of sorrow and something dangerously human.
She pressed her palm to her chest, whispering a prayer she no longer understood. "Let me forget."
"You don't want to forget."
The voice was not her own.
Her breath caught. She spun, scanning the empty chamber. The other priestesses were gone, the torches still flickering from morning incense.
"You hear me, don't you?"
Her pulse thundered. "No."
"You do."
It came not from around her, but within her — low, warm, threaded with amusement. She stumbled back, heart slamming against her ribs.
"Get out of my head."
"Impossible."
The voice was softer now. Almost gentle.
"You touched the seal, Lysandra. Our souls brushed. The light inside you knows my shadow. It recognizes what it was made from."
She gripped the edge of the altar, nails biting stone. "The gods will—"
"The gods will what?" His tone darkened. "Lie to you again? Tell you I am evil while they bleed the world dry?"
Her vision blurred. "You're trying to corrupt me."
"No." His voice sank into her bones, a pulse that matched her own heartbeat. "I'm trying to remind you who you are."
The air grew heavy. The runes along the temple floor flickered faintly — an echo of the ones that had burned across his skin.
She clutched her robes and fled.
Outside, sunlight blinded her. The bells rang again, calling the faithful to prayer, but all she could hear was that voice — steady, calm, and inescapable.
"You can run, little priestess, but you carry me with you now."
That night, she did not sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw flashes: the Underrealm bathed in red twilight, chains stretching like veins across the sky, and Kaelith's face — proud, broken, waiting.
Her light — the divine spark that once answered every prayer — began to flicker, dimming in her palms when she tried to summon it.
By the third day, she stopped pretending it was nothing.
She returned to the temple crypt.
The passage was colder now, as if the air itself feared her. The moment she reached the bottom, the chains shuddered — reacting not to fear, but recognition.
Kaelith looked up from the shadows. His smile was faint, restrained.
"You came back."
"I didn't plan to."
"Yet here you are."
His voice was quieter than before — less a command, more a confession. She noticed the exhaustion in his face, the way the runes burned slower now, as though they fed on her presence.
"You're in my head," she whispered. "I can't pray. I can't think."
Kaelith's eyes softened. "Then stop fighting it."
She shook her head. "You want me to free you."
"Eventually." A pause. "But not like this."
"What do you mean?"
He tilted his head. "The gods tied my prison to your light. The more you use their power, the tighter these chains hold. Every prayer you whisper strengthens my cage. Every doubt you feel weakens it."
Her breath stilled. "So you feed on my faith."
"No," he said. "I feed on your honesty."
The words made no sense, yet they burned.
Lysandra took a step forward — close enough to see the sigils on his chest pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat. The connection between them felt alive, dangerous, almost sentient.
"You don't belong to them," Kaelith said softly. "You never did."
She wanted to strike him, to silence him, but the truth in his tone made her tremble.
"What if you're lying?"
"Then let me burn for it."
Their eyes met — hers filled with fear, his with something she could not name. For a moment, the chains dimmed, and the silence between them felt like the beginning of something sacred and forbidden.
Then footsteps echoed above — a priest descending. Lysandra's pulse spiked.
Kaelith's expression hardened. "Go."
"I can't leave you—"
"You can," he said sharply. "And you will. They can't know you've found me yet."
Before she could speak again, the shadows surged around him, wrapping his body in darkness. The last thing she saw were his eyes — twin embers burning through the void — as the world went black.
When she blinked, she was back at the altar, breathless, shaking, as if she had never left.
*******
(Kaelith's POV)
She was light. Too bright. Too alive. And for the first time in centuries, the darkness inside him was not enough to smother it.
Every whisper he sent through their bond risked alerting the gods, but he couldn't stop. The moment her soul brushed his, he felt the crack in the cage.
He'd watched her — through the stone, through her prayers, through the dreams she thought were her own. The girl who had killed for faith was beginning to doubt, and that doubt was freedom.
"You'll hate me for what I'll make you do," he murmured to the void. "But you'll do it anyway."
The chains pulsed, biting into his flesh. He closed his eyes and smiled through the pain.
"Because you were born from my heart, little priestess."
"And I've come to reclaim it."