Chapter 4
The Midnight Citadel was quieter than usual. The echo of footsteps down its obsidian corridors seemed to stretch longer, linger heavier, as though even sound itself was weighed down by unseen hands. The air, usually a cold hush of night, now felt thicker—like an unsaid word caught in the throat of the world.
Mirelha stood before the great mirror in her chamber, her reflection a fractured thing. The silver filigree of the mirror's frame twisted into ancient shapes — constellations long forgotten, and symbols older than the Celestials themselves. She barely recognized the woman staring back at her.
Her hair, the color of midnight silk, flowed down her back in untamed waves. The dark lines beneath her eyes spoke of sleepless nights and battles waged not with swords, but with silence. Her halo—once a luminous thread of silver—now flickered, dimmed, a whisper of its former self.
But it wasn't the reflection of her own weariness that made her stomach coil.
It was the gown.
A gown not of her choosing.
A delicate thing of starlight and bone-white silk, adorned with patterns of interlocking threads—subtle, intricate—like a quiet homage to the cosmic order. It clung to her like a second skin, a symbol of purity, loyalty… and surrender.
Because tonight, Mirelha was not just an Angel of Death.
She was a bride.
Or at least, she was supposed to be.
The Celestials had spoken. They always spoke in riddles laced with the authority of ancient laws, but their meaning was clear this time.
A marriage.
A political binding.
Her hand in union with a Celestial Lord—chosen not by her heart but by the balance of threads, as if love were nothing but a formula to be solved.
The name of her betrothed echoed in her mind like a curse: Lord Caelum Thalos.
A name as cold and sharp as a blade.
He was a Celestial of high standing—stoic, strategic, unyielding. A man carved from marble and logic. A fitting match, the council had said, for an Angel of Death who had allowed her thread to intertwine with a Rider of Cataclysm.
A punishment dressed as a union.
A way to sever the forbidden bond between her and Dacre.
The Celestials believed marriage was a binding thread — stronger than love, more permanent than desire. They believed that if they wove her into a new pattern, the tangled thread she shared with Dacre would unravel, wither, and snap.
As if hearts were merely strings to be cut and retied.
Mirelha clenched her jaw, her fingers digging into the cold stone of her vanity.
Her reflection didn't flinch.
---
The hall of gathering loomed before her—an endless expanse of black stone and silver light, with constellations carved into the high-vaulted ceilings. The Celestials were already seated in their quiet judgment, draped in flowing robes of ethereal white, their halos glowing faintly above their heads like cold suns.
And at the center of them, like a statue of polished ice, stood Caelum Thalos.
His hair was the color of silvered frost, his eyes a shade of deep cobalt — unreadable, unfeeling. His face was carved from symmetry itself — sharp jawline, high cheekbones, an expression eternally frozen between indifference and duty.
He did not smile when he saw her.
Nor did she.
"Mirelha." His voice was a winter wind — soft, but biting. "You look… as they expected."
She felt the words more than heard them. They were not a compliment but an acknowledgment—like one might speak of a well-sharpened dagger or an unsheathed blade. Functional. Necessary.
Her wings tensed beneath her gown, feathers twitching with unspoken fury.
The Celestials rose in silent unison, their halos glowing in synchronized rhythm—a choir of light standing in solemn judgment.
Lord Vareth, the eldest among them, stepped forward. His presence was like a dying star — ancient, hollow, and heavy with gravity. His voice echoed through the chamber:
"Tonight marks the first step toward balance."
Balance.
That word again.
It wasn't love they sought. It was control.
Mirelha's fingers curled into fists at her sides, but she said nothing.
Her silence was a rebellion they couldn't yet punish.
---
And then came the binding words.
Ancient phrases spoken in the tongue of Celestials—a language older than stone, meant to weave their threads into a pattern of unity. The words dripped like liquid silver into the air, forming unseen bonds, tightening around her like an invisible noose.
But even as the ceremony unfolded, Mirelha's mind wandered.
Not to the groom standing beside her—silent, cold, and duty-bound—but to Dacre.
His touch like a storm held in human form. His voice, rough and low, like thunder before rain. The way his very presence ignited something wild within her—a fire no thread could sever.
She remembered the way he had looked at her the night before — the brief, stolen moment in the shadowed corridors of the Citadel. His hand had found hers in the dark, their fingers interlocking like threads that had chosen each other, despite the universe's protest.
"I will find you," he had whispered. "Even if the world tears at the seams."
And now, standing beside a man she did not love, beneath the judgment of the Celestials, Mirelha felt those words burning beneath her skin.
I will find you.
The final vow hovered in the air, waiting for her voice.
But she didn't speak.
She couldn't.
Because the thread between her and Dacre did not break.
It tightened.
As though, somewhere in the Citadel, far from this cold hall of forced vows, Dacre was holding onto the invisible line that bound them together — pulling it taut, refusing to let it snap.
And for the briefest moment, Mirelha thought she saw it — the faint shimmer of a thread, unseen by the Celestials, stretching between her and something far beyond the walls of this chamber.
A defiance too quiet to notice.
A rebellion too small to destroy.
But it was there.
And so, when Lord Vareth's voice echoed one final time—commanding her to speak her vow—Mirelha did something that no Celestial had ever expected.
She turned her head away from Caelum Thalos.
And looked toward the unseen thread.
Silent.
Unbroken.
---
Would you like the next chapter to follow Dacre—perhaps his reaction to the forced union—or continue with Mirelha's quiet rebellion against the Celestials? Let's build this tension and keep the threads of love and fate unraveling!