CHAPTER 3 - BETWEEN BLADE AND BREATH
977 Words
The river’s current dragged her under.
For a few seconds, Seraphina didn’t know if she was swimming or drowning. Water surged over her face, filled her ears, tugged at the heavy folds of her dress like unseen hands. But then her head broke through the surface again, and she gasped—gasped for life, for air, for the name she had not screamed aloud.
Caelum.
She clawed her way to the far bank, each stroke a cry of defiance. Her hands gripped mud and stone, and she hauled herself out, coughing, shivering, sobbing. When she rolled onto her back, the stars above her blurred with tears.
She sat up and turned toward the woods behind the river.
Silence.
Not even the clang of swords or the shout of commands. Just stillness.
She stared at the spot where she had last seen him—tall and unyielding, facing death without hesitation. Her protector. Her friend. The man who had watched her grow from a curious child into a woman with a kingdom on her shoulders.
The man who had loved her without ever saying the words.
She whispered his name again. This time, it trembled out of her lips like a vow.
“Caelum…”
A memory broke free from within her.
She was thirteen again, running barefoot through the castle corridors, her laughter echoing off polished walls. Her father’s advisors disapproved of her wildness, but she didn’t care. She had stolen a basket of bread from the kitchens to feed the injured dove she had found in the gardens. But she tripped at the courtyard steps, and the loaf scattered into crumbs.
A strong arm had caught her just before she hit the stone.
“You’re reckless,” the young knight had said.
Seraphina looked up, startled by the sharp gray eyes that studied her not with annoyance, but something quieter. She’d never seen him before. He wore no armor then, just a tunic and sword belt—but there was something solemn about him.
“I’m not,” she had argued, cheeks flushed. “I was helping someone.”
He glanced at the dove in her hands and offered the softest nod. “Next time, let someone watch your steps while you do it.”
And from that day, he did.
⸻
Back in the present, she rose to her feet.
She was soaked and alone. But something had shifted within her.
This was not the end.
It was the beginning of remembering.
She looked to the horizon. She would survive. For Caelum. For Elvencia. For everything that once was, and everything that could be again.
⸻
Far across the river, the forest grew silent once more.
Where Caelum had stood, now only blood remained.
His sword—heavy with history, etched with the crest of Elvencia—lay half-buried among the roots of an old olive tree. His final breath had carried her name, though no one had heard it. Not the enemy knight who fell with him. Not the wind that wept through the branches. Not even the stars.
But the earth remembered.
And the sword… waited.
Not for war.
Not for vengeance.
But for love.
And for the day someone would lift it once more.
Part 4: The Last Stand
A thousand years later…
The sun was warm on Ayra’s shoulders as she knelt in her parents’ garden, pulling weeds beside the edge of the stone wall.
It was a quiet Saturday afternoon in the sleepy Italian town of Rosavino, nestled at the base of forested hills and olive groves. The scent of rosemary and damp earth filled the air. Birds chattered lazily above. The soil was soft beneath her fingers. Peaceful. Ordinary.
Ayra didn’t know that today would change her life.
She’d only meant to fix the garden bed where her mother planned to plant tulips. But as she dug through a patch of stubborn weeds near the olive tree by the fence, her fingers struck something hard.
Stone?
She brushed the dirt aside with curiosity… until her hand scraped against cool, aged metal.
It wasn’t stone.
It was a hilt.
Her breath caught.
She dug faster, heart racing, until a long, moss-covered blade emerged from the ground, its edge dulled by time. The hilt bore a worn crest—barely visible, but strangely familiar. Something in her chest tightened.
“A sword?” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”
She reached for it.
The moment her skin touched the hilt, a cold current surged through her.
And the world collapsed.
⸻
Flashes.
Fire.
Smoke.
A woman with silver eyes, her face streaked with tears, running barefoot through a forest. A knight—tall, wounded, dying—his hand clenched around a sword, whispering a name. “Seraphina…”
Ayra fell back, her hands trembling. Her vision blurred, not from the sunlight—but from a grief that wasn’t hers.
“What… what is this?” she gasped, clutching her chest.
Then darkness took her.
She collapsed into the dirt beside the buried sword, unconscious.
⸻
Inside her mind, silence.
Then slowly, a dream bloomed.
Not of her world, but of one long forgotten.
She saw a castle burning.
She saw a princess with a silver pendant and a knight who never left her side.
She saw a sword fall into the soil.
And she felt it all—like she had lived it before.
Ayra, the girl from Rosavino, had never known battle. But her soul remembered loss.
And love.
⸻
Her parents found her minutes later, calling her name in panic. They lifted her into their arms, brushing away dirt and tears.
She stirred slowly, her lips parting with a word she didn’t understand. “Caelum…”
The sword lay beside her, glinting in the sun.
Forgotten for centuries.
Remembered by fate.
And ready to rise again.
- Writer
