The world hangs in delicate suspension, a kingdom trapped mid-breath. Above them, the black book hovers like a silent guard, pulsing with a slow, living gold breathing in and out, like lungs drawing ragged breaths after centuries of suffocation. Elsbeth senses the thaw first: a subtle shaking in the air, a faint crack in the eternal silence, like ice splintering under the first touch of spring.
Time is clawing its way back, and when it fully awakens, the king will howl of dark sorcery, branding her a witch and him a demon.
The execution grounds, still locked with faces twisted in frozen glee will erupt into chaos, hungry for fresh blood. But in this stolen heartbeat, none of it touches them.
Luan kneels on the cold, unforgiving stone, his bells utterly silent. His painted face cracks with raw wonder and bone-deep terror, "I'm afraid," he whispers, his voice a fragile thing, unwarped by the curse's cruel contortions free, at last, but trembling on the edge of shattering.
"Afraid to close my eyes. It feels like an illusion. Like the second I blink, everything will vanish, and the bells will drag me back into the void, laughing all the while."
He lifts his gaze to the glowing book, its ethereal light bathing him. "Is this heaven's new punishment? To dangle this mercy, touch, a name in front of me, only to rip it away and leave me emptier than before?"
Elsbeth's heart twists, a sharp ache that steals her breath. She steps forward, her finger trembling as it presses against his painted lips, silencing the fear with a touch that ignites warmth in them both real, untainted, a miracle in the making. Soon, the world will stir, and such intimacy might summon the curse's vengeance anew, twisting it into agony.
But she seizes it anyway. She takes his hand, interlacing their fingers as if weaving their fates together, and pulls him into her arms. The hug is fierce, desperate, bruising centuries of isolation with its intensity. She holds him tight enough to feel his heartbeat stutter against hers, a rhythm long forgotten.
"It isn't punishment," she murmurs into the crook of his shoulder, her voice steady but laced with the tears she refuses to shed. "It's MERCY .
You're real, Luan. You exist. You speak—your words, not the curse's echoes."
She pulls back just enough to cradle his face, her thumbs brushing away the smudged paint like erasing years of torment. "And even when everything moves again, I will stay beside you. I promise."
They stand entwined, truly seen by each other, and in that raw vulnerability, by the indifferent world frozen around them. For this fleeting moment, they are whole.
The first ripples of thaw spread like cracks in a mirror: a distant banner stirs faintly, a bird's wing quivers mid-flutter, suspended feathers catching the hesitant light.
Elsbeth's pulse races, a drumbeat echoing the book's pulsing glow. Time is fracturing faster now. "Come," she urges, her voice a thread of steel wrapped in urgency.
She tightens her grip on his hand and leads him past Sir Rowen, the knight eternally poised in protective fury sword drawn, eyes blazing with unyielding loyalty, his form a statue of chivalric devotion amid the grounds' horror.
She leans close to his ear, her breath a ghost against his stilled skin. "Stand down when you wake," she breathes, planting the seed deep. "This is no sorcery. Follow the truth. You know where to find me."
Then she runs, pulling Luan with her, their footsteps echoing unnaturally loud in the suspended hush. The execution grounds recede behind them, crowds petrified in mid-cheer, their faces masks of bloodthirsty delight that now seem grotesque in stillness.
The path to the great market winds through Liveria's shadowed underbelly a labyrinth of narrow cobblestone lanes flanked by towering stone walls etched with faded wards against misfortune, Frozen vendors line the way, their carts laden with wilted herbs and tarnished trinkets, hands outstretched in eternal haggling. A child, mid-dash across a puddle, hangs in the air like a forgotten dream; nearby, a beggar's bowl tips precariously, coppers suspended in mid-spill, a stark reminder of the poverty gnawing at Liveria's edges while the court feasts on illusions.
Every frozen person they pass exposes a story of cruelty: guards stand with whips raised over terrified workers, and wealthy nobles walk by with their noses high, ignoring the poverty around them.
This is Liveria exposed a kingdom harsh and divided, that only pretended to be happy to hide its deep, internal decay. Running through this reality, hand in hand, feels like fighting not just the magic curse, but the spirit of the kingdom itself
Luan follows, his bells offering only the faintest, hesitant jingle, Sunlight spills across Elsbeth's black hair, transforming it into rivers of living silk that dance with every stride. Her fingers, warm and unyielding, lace through his, pulling him from the abyss one step at a time.
*A princess? No,* he thinks, the thought blooming like a forbidden flower in his chest.
"A soul radiant enough to fight for me, cry for me and name me."
With every heartbeat, he feels the pieces of his broken self fitting back together; the true man, buried beneath centuries of forced joking, is finally emerging under her light. The curse's heavy weight lifts painfully slow, like thick chains dissolving in the sunlight, he feels the movement of hope, vivid and terrifying.
She laughs then, a sudden burst of brightness that cuts through the tension like a blade through fog. "Luan, look!" She points upward, her voice laced with wonder.
Birds hang in the sky like scattered jewels, their wings motionless and graceful. Below, the edges of the market are frozen solid: a baker's hands are dusted in flour, stopped mid-clap; a storyteller is frozen mid-sentence, their lips parted on a tale that will never end; and a pair of lovers are locked in an embrace that stops time, their happiness trapped, like a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
He doesn't glance at the birds. He watches her, her eyes alight with defiant joy, her laughter a balm on wounds he'd forgotten how to feel.
"She is my sun," the realization crashes over him, warm and perilous, flooding his veins with a heat that both heals and burns. And with it surges a memory, raw and vivid, from centuries past when envy was his only companion in the shadows.
Lowenred's Inn The Silver Griffin :
The air stinks of sour beer, pipe smoke, and the sweat of adventurers who have just fought battles with desert beasts. Luan, danced wildly on an unsteady table in the dim light, his forced, sad jumps drawing only weak applause from the crowd.
But tonight, his dancing failed; the loud talking overshadows him whispers of Icarus, the legendary fool whose tragic story is a warning across all lands.
The scarred mercenary, face a map of battles lost and won, slams his tankard down, commanding the room. "Ye know Icarus, lads? Son of Daedalus, the clever bastard who built wings from feathers and wax to flee that cursed labyrinth isle.
Father warns him clear: 'Don't fly too low, or the sea will soak your wings and pull you down. Don't fly too high, or the sun will melt the wax and send you falling.'
But the boy, drunk on the feeling of freedom, completely ignored him. He soared straight for the sun. The wax melted like blood, the feathers scattered like broken dreams and splash, he plunged into the icy sea, killed by his own arrogance."
The tavern burst into cold, harsh laughter, clinking their mugs together in a fake cheer for Icarus's mistake. Someone spat onto the sawdust floor. "That fool earned what he got," they said. "Arrogance like that always leads to ruin in the sea."
Luan leaps down from the table, his bells jingling like mocking laughter, and slips into the darkness, his heart a storm of silent desire.
What must it have felt like, he wonders, the thought a dagger in his chest, to be so truly alive? To feel the sun's fierce kiss on your skin, the sky rushing past like a lover's breath, the ocean below calling like a siren? To break free, even if just for a moment?
Envy tears at him, sharp and unrelenting. The curse has chained him to the ground, forcing him to never fly, survive only in scraps of twisted jokes, never daring to reach the heights. Icarus fell, yes, but he flew.
He touched what was forbidden, he tasted the fire of liberty.
Later, under a cold, indifferent moon, Luan wanders Lowenred's fog-shrouded streets alone, bells muffled beneath his tattered cloak to avoid drawing the night watch's ire. Whispers follow him like ghosts: a washerwoman hisses to her kin, "Icarus was a fool, bloated with pride. His own father begged him stay the middle path, heed the warnings yet he didn't listen, and the sea claimed him."
But Luan shakes his head inwardly, No, he thinks, the defiance a spark in his hollow chest.
"He laughed as he fell I know it. Because falling only comes after you've soared, after you've shattered the chains and reached for something divine."
Icarus broke the rules, embraced the burn, and in that final plunge, he "won". Even death couldn't steal his victory. "He flew past the sun, into legend. And I... I rot here, envying a ghost."
"Luan!"
Elsbeth's voice slices through the memory like sunlight piercing storm clouds. She stands at the mouth of a narrow alley, her hand firm on his arm, shaking him back to the present. Worry and wonder war in her eyes, wide and luminous.
Behind her, the world awakens in earnest: a banner snaps sharply, a bird cries out in confusion, a distant shout swells into coherence. The book's glow intensifies, a urgent heartbeat urging them onward.
He blinks, the past dissolving into her bright, living face the sun that has pulled him from envy's grave, offering a chance to fly at last.
His fingers tighten around hers, anchoring him. Very softly, so only she and the thawing wind can hear, he whispers:
"If you are the sun, then I will gladly become Icarus."