Chapter 8
424 Words
It started with an explosion.
Not loud. Precise.
The Vale Tower’s eastern wing lit up in fire and static—servers gone, archives scorched, a message carved into glass walls:
“Your crown was borrowed. We’re taking it back.”
Aurelian barely made it out. Kairo found him just outside the perimeter, covered in ash, chest heaving.
“They moved faster than we predicted,” Aurelian gasped.
Kairo pulled him into a side alley—not gently, but with enough urgency to betray the fear he never showed.
“They want you dead now,” he said.
“Then they should’ve aimed better.”
Before either could plan, a drone swooped in, dropped something between them.
It was a photo.
Aurelian’s mother—years younger, holding a child who wasn’t him.
Beside her: Isolde.
“You never knew her name,” Kairo whispered.
“Because it was designed that way.”
Suddenly, the fire wasn’t just behind them. It was inside them.
Bloodlines twisted. Loyalties snapped.
Everything Aurelian thought he knew about his family—about himself—was rewritten in a single image.
Kairo didn’t speak.
He just reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the photo.
Then Aurelian’s jaw.
“Ready to become myth?” Kairo asked.
“Only if you become mine.”
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They found shelter in a forgotten district of the Lower Vale, where names didn’t matter and credits were traded in whispers. Kairo knew the owner—barely. Enough for a room, no questions.
Inside: peeling wallpaper, a single bed, two mugs, one bulb.
Aurelian touched the edge of the glass.
“Does this place even exist on the grid?”
“No.”
“That’s why it’s perfect.”
They were silence wrapped in skin. Exhaustion dulled their edges, but the ache never left. Not the ache of wounds—but of truths unraveling faster than their hearts could catch.
When Aurelian turned, Kairo was already watching him—like he’d been memorizing every breath for years.
“You saved me,” Aurelian said.
“That’s new.”
“No,” Kairo answered.
“You just finally noticed.”
Sleep didn’t come. Instead, stories filled the air like static.
Aurelian spoke of the woman in the photo. Of the child beside her. Of questions that clawed at him.
Kairo didn’t offer answers. He offered closeness.
A shoulder.
A quiet nod.
A hand threaded with his.
Then, sometime between moonlight and dream:
“If this is war,” Aurelian whispered,
“Let tonight be our ceasefire.”
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- Writer
