1200s — On the Eve of the First Ending
The night the curse was born, the sky did not hold stars.
Clouds rolled over the moon like mourning cloth, casting Thornwick's valley in a darkness so complete that even the torches seemed afraid to burn. The air was thick with the iron scent of war—smoke from distant battlefields, echoes of dying men carried by the wind.
Yet in the heart of that night, beneath the shadow of the old gallows, two souls clung to each other as if the world itself meant to tear them apart.
Ariella's hands trembled where they gripped Kael's hands she had healed, hands she had learned by touch before she ever dared to look at his face. His breath was shallow, but his eyes, those storm-gray eyes never left hers.
"You were a stranger," she whispered, her voice breaking. "An enemy. And I still loved you."
Kael managed a faint smile, soft and impossibly tender for a man condemned at dawn. "In another life," he murmured, "maybe I could have earned you."
She pressed her forehead to his. "This is our life."
"No," he said, voice thickening with pain and certainty. "Ours is just beginning."
The wind shifted. A low, eerie whistle curled through the village square, as if the night itself leaned in to listen. The Seer's prophecy hovered between them like a blade:
"If your hearts join, the heavens will tremble."
Ariella had ignored it. Denied it. Loved him anyway.
And the heavens… were trembling now.
Kael cupped her cheek, thumb brushing away a tear. "Ariella, listen to me." His breath faltered. "What we've started… it won't end here."
She shook her head violently. "Don't speak like this—"
"Ari." His voice was suddenly fierce. "Nothing born of us dies with a sword."
Thunder cracked overhead.
Behind them, guards approached.
Ariella clutched him tighter, as if her hands alone could defy fate. "I won't survive this," she whispered. "Not without you."
And for a moment—just a moment—the world seemed to still.
Kael leaned close, his lips brushing her ear as he spoke the words that would follow them for centuries:
"Then we will meet again.And again.Until again."
As they tore him from her grasp, as her screams split the night, as the sky burst open with rain and rage—
A curse took root.
Not spoken by a witch.Not conjured by a ritual.But born in the very moment a love meant for eternity collided with a world determined to break it.
And so their souls were bound.
To find.To lose.To yearn.To suffer.
Lifetime after lifetime.
Until the stars themselves grew weary.