The flames remembered.
They always did.
Kael stood at the heart of the banquet hall, the crown of Eonir digging into his brow like a blade. His half-brother Varyn raised a goblet of wine, its contents dark as a fresh bruise.
"To the brother I admire," Varyn said, his voice slick with venom, "and the king we deserve."
Laughter slithered through the hall. Kael's knuckles whitened around his own untouched chalice.
Lira's fingers brushed his shoulder. His betrothed leaned close, her braids threaded with silver moonlight. Her perfume—night-blooming jasmine—clung to him like a requiem.
"When the stars fall," she whispered.
Their childhood code. Run.
Before he could speak, the doors exploded.
Guards flooded in, armor clattering like a thousand broken promises. Varyn's goblet shattered, staining the floor crimson.
"Kael of Eonir," his brother spat, "you murdered our father with temporal poison."
The words were a dagger. Kael spun to Lira.
"Lira—"
She stepped back, her eyes frost.
Chains clamped his wrists, reeking of rust and juniper—his father's ghost trapped in the metal.
"Strength isn't in the arm, boy," the old king had once laughed, watching Kael struggle with a training sword. "It's in the heart."
Now that heart pounded as they dragged him into the cold.
The pyre loomed in the courtyard, birch logs stacked like the ribs of a forgotten god.
Varyn gripped the torch, its flame casting shadows that danced like devils.
"Last words, brother?"
Kael's gaze cut through the crowd.
Lira stood apart, fists clenched. Blood dripped from her palms. A single tear glinted on her cheek.
Why?
The torch fell.
Fire is a patient thief.
It stole his boots first, leather curling like dead leaves. Then his skin, blistering and blackening, the stench of burning hair thick as guilt.
This is how it ends?
Agony hollowed his lungs—until something stirred in the ashes of his soul.
Time fractured.
Flames recoiled, slithering backward into his palm. Lira's tear hung mid-air, frozen.
A voice rasped through the smoke, ancient and starved:
"They carved their lies into your bones. Now carve yours into time."
Kael's heart stuttered.
Muscle wove over charred bone, blue veins glowing like trapped lightning.
The pyre's flames shrank, crystallizing into a shard of black glass in his grip—jagged, humming, alive.
He collapsed naked, cobblestones biting his knees.
A guard lunged, sword raised.
I don't want to kill you.
But his body moved.
The shard slashed.
The blade disintegrated into rust. The guard's face sagged, wrinkles devouring his skin. Hair whitened. Eyes clouded.
He crumbled to dust, a scream trapped in his throat.
Kael stared at his hand—veins blackened, nails splintered.
"What… am I?"
In the clocktower's shadow, Gideon exhaled chrono-smoke, the embers of his pipe glowing like dying stars.
"Ah, little prince," he murmured. "Time is a knife. Will you wield it… or let it gut you?"
The wind carried his words over the pyre's ashes.
Kael didn't look back.
He'd died a brother.
He woke… a thief.