Brother by blood Lover by memory

CHAPTER2

Ten years had passed since the babies opened their eyes in the Solaris Palace. But the world they lived in now was nothing like the one they had left behind.

That old world had been made of concrete and fluorescent lights. Airplanes streaked across its skies. Students worked night shifts in diners and warehouses. It was a world of grease traps, bus screens, and plane crashes. In that world, a boy named Kael had been a prince only by blood—his family's kingdom had crumbled before he was born, leaving him with nothing but a faded ring and an empty title. He washed dishes for minimum wage. He loved a girl named Ariana, who stacked boxes in a cold warehouse.

Both of them died young. Both of them woke up here.

Here, in the Solaris Kingdom, there were no airplanes. No diners. No warehouses. Here, marble palaces rose toward golden skies. Servants bowed. Kings and queens wore real crowns. And the two lost souls from the modern world had been reborn as true royalty: Princess Aries and Prince Kaelen.

They did not remember their old lives. Not a single memory remained. But something deeper than memory had followed them across death.

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Princess Aries was now sixteen. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders, and a small scar still sat above her left eyebrow—though no one could explain how a royal infant had gotten it. She was sharp, restless, and secretly sad. At night, she dreamed of strange things: a ceiling that buzzed with unnatural light, a room full of cardboard boxes, a boy with black hair and tired eyes. She woke up with tears on her face and a name stuck in her throat: Kael. She had never heard that name in the Solaris Kingdom. She did not know why it burned.

Prince Kaelen was seventeen. Black hair, pale blue eyes, a quiet that made servants whisper. He spent hours in the royal archives, reading about the fallen kingdoms of the old world—not the fantasy kingdoms of Solaris, but the strange, machine-filled world that historians called the Before. He didn't know why he was obsessed. He only knew that when he read about plane crashes and rooftop falls, his chest ached like an old wound.

Brother and sister shared the same palace, the same dining table, the same hallways. They were polite strangers. Aries thought Kaelen was cold. Kaelen thought Aries was too loud. Neither felt the invisible thread pulling between them.

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Three weeks ago, Kaelen found a file that changed everything.

It was buried deep in the archives, written in a language that matched none of the Solaris kingdoms. The file described a criminal from the Before world: Marcus Vane. According to the text, Marcus Vane had a brother who was killed by the guards of a fallen royal family. That family's last living son was a young man named Kael—a prince without a throne, working as a dishwasher. Marcus Vane had hunted him down. On a rooftop, seven stories above a modern city, Marcus had pushed the boy to his death.

Kaelen's hands shook as he read. He had never been to that rooftop. He had never fallen. But his body remembered. His scars remembered. He could almost feel the wind tearing past his ears, the ground rushing up.

He decided to find Marcus Vane.

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The trail led to a ruined temple on the eastern edge of the Solaris Kingdom. Marcus Vane had not been reborn as a noble. He had come back as a beggar, old and broken, hiding among the ruins.

Kaelen rode out at midnight with two guards. The temple was dark, choked with vines. Inside, an old man sat alone by a dying fire. His hair was gray. His hands were wrinkled. But when he looked up and saw Kaelen, his eyes went wide with terror.

"You," Marcus whispered. "You're dead."

Kaelen knelt before him. "I'm very much alive. Tell me what you did."

Marcus laughed—a dry, broken sound. "In the old world, I pushed a boy off a building. A prince with no throne. He worked in a diner. He loved a girl who stacked boxes. I killed him because his family killed my brother." He stared at Kaelen's face. "But you're not him. You're just a ghost wearing his soul."

"Who was the girl?" Kaelen asked. His voice came out strange. Hoarse.

"Her name was Ariana. She died in a metal bird that fell from the sky. The boy loved her. And now..." Marcus leaned closer, his breath sour. "Now you're both here, aren't you? In this pretty palace. And you don't even know her."

Kaelen's heart stopped. "Know who?"

But Marcus only smiled. "You'll find out. Or maybe you won't. That would be funnier."

Kaelen had the old man arrested. But as he rode back to the palace, the name Ariana echoed in his skull. He had never heard it before. But it felt like home.

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Across the palace, Aries stood on her balcony, unable to sleep. The moon hung low. A cold wind carried whispers she couldn't understand. She pressed her hand to her chest and whispered into the night: Ariana.

She didn't know why she said it. But the name tasted like a promise she had made a long time ago, in a world that no longer existed.

Inside his chambers, Kaelen heard nothing. But his heart clenched at the exact same moment. Two strangers. Two siblings. Two lovers who had died holding onto each other.

The thread pulled tighter.

The story was far from over.

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