Chapter 4
1077 Words
The wind smelled of crushed lilies and something more—iron and fire.
Calla opened her eyes to sunlight that felt older than the stars. It spilled across endless fields of wildflowers, golden and blue and white. Her bare feet pressed into warm earth. Her hands were not her own—slender fingers dusted with flour, a silver ring hugging her middle knuckle.
And when she breathed, it was not just breath.
It was memory.
This is not a dream. This is you… before.
Her mind reeled.
She was still Calla, yet not—the soul inside her bones wearing a name she couldn’t pronounce, but one she somehow remembered hearing whispered in kisses and vows.
“Céleste,” said a deep, warm voice behind her.
She turned.
Ares stood beneath the shade of an olive tree, younger yet exactly the same—eyes bright with life, not yet dulled by centuries of curse. His hair was longer, tied at the nape of his neck. He wore black tunic robes embroidered in silver threads, sigils dancing like embers across his cuffs.
He looked at her like he’d already loved her a thousand times.
She took a step toward him. Her hands trembled.
“You…” Her voice cracked. “You’re…”
He smiled.
“In this time, we met as children of opposing bloodlines,” he said. “You were the daughter of the Moon House, born beneath the eclipse. And I, the last heir to the Devlin name, forged in war.”
She blinked. “We hated each other.”
“At first.”
A soft laugh escaped her lips—Céleste’s lips.
They were in Faeryn, a land of eternal twilight and old magics—a place long since buried beneath ash and curse. She could feel it in her bones. The way time didn’t move here like it did in the human world. The way seasons bled into each other like ink in water.
“I remember this place,” she whispered. “I remember hiding here… the day your father was killed.”
Ares’s smile faded.
He stepped closer, taking her hands in his. “The Blood Wars were raging. Our Houses stood on opposite sides. But you… you spared me.”
“You weren’t my enemy,” she said.
“You were a seer. The Moon’s chosen.”
“And you were…” she paused, looking into his silver eyes, “bound to something darker.”
His grip tightened.
“I never told you then,” he said, voice low. “But even before I saw you… I felt you. In dreams. In the wind. In the way time paused when I spoke your name.”
The air shimmered around them.
The memory deepened.
Suddenly, they were elsewhere—beneath a stone cathedral where candlelight danced on ancient murals. Their younger selves stood at the altar, hands clasped, a ritual between them. Blood and light.
The wedding.
“We were secret,” Céleste said. “The world would have torn us apart.”
“They tried,” Ares said bitterly.
The ground beneath the memory rippled.
Calla—Céleste—saw flashes.
A crown shattering in fire. A scream torn from her throat. Ares bleeding, chained, dragged into darkness by wraiths with hollow eyes.
The Devlin curse.
“They cursed your bloodline,” she whispered, horror blooming in her chest. “But they couldn’t curse me.”
Ares’s younger self looked up at her, eyes full of fury and fear. “They used you to do it.”
“No…”
“You bled into the hourglass. They forced you. Time fractured with your scream.”
Her knees buckled.
She saw it now—how her soul had been ripped from her body, flung across centuries like a shooting star. How Ares had searched, lifetime after lifetime, for the version of her that would remember. That would return.
“You’ve always come back,” he whispered in the vision. “But never soon enough.”
“Why?”
“Because I only get one chance before the Hollowed find us.”
The cathedral faded.
They stood once more in a field of black roses under a red moon.
Calla held his face in her hands. “Then tell me what I need to do. How do we break the curse?”
Ares swallowed hard.
“You die again. But this time… willingly.”
She gasped.
“No.”
“It’s the only way,” he said, voice cracking. “The curse was forged from stolen sacrifice. It can only be undone by one freely given. A soul for time.”
Her lips trembled.
“You can’t ask that of me.”
“I don’t. I beg.”
The wind howled.
Shadows swirled on the horizon.
The Hollowed were coming.
Time screamed.
Ares kissed her.
Not gently—but like a storm trying to anchor itself in the eye of chaos. It was grief and passion and rage. It was eternity and goodbye.
“Find me again,” he whispered into her lips. “And next time… remember sooner.”
The world collapsed.
Darkness swallowed her.
And Calla woke screaming.
—
She was back in her body, gasping, drenched in sweat on the cold stone ground of the Vale. Ares knelt beside her, silver eyes wide and terrified.
“You saw it,” he said. “You remembered.”
Calla shoved herself up, body trembling.
“You knew. All of it. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I couldn’t. The curse makes you forget every time.”
“And if I choose not to die?” she spat.
Ares’s jaw clenched. “Then time resets. You’ll forget again. I’ll lose you again. And the Hollowed will consume everything.”
She shook her head. “There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t. I’ve tried every one.”
Her heart was splintering.
He had waited through centuries for her. Fought through time to hold her once more. And now he stood here, asking her to die.
“I need time,” she whispered.
He nodded.
“You have until the Blood Moon rises. After that… the Hollowed breach the veil. And there’ll be no more time to bargain.”
They stared at each other—lovers, strangers, doomed souls.
Calla turned away.
But part of her already knew—
She had died for him before.
She might do it again.
- Writer
