The sky was bruised violet and gold, the sun a bloodred coin sinking behind the trees. Shadows stretched long across the ground, and the forest breathed like a living thing—slow, ancient, aware.
After long days and night of searching and fighting, they had found them. The last two gifted.
One was a child, Veyna, no older than fourteen, with eyes too wise for her age and silence that said she had seen too much. The other was older, a man marked by fire and grief, Tardyn, cloaked in smoke and secrets, who had a sword as long as a human. Both had been hiding in the ruins of a forgotten temple, warded by old magic barely holding against the pull of the darkness creeping in.
The reunion had been quiet. No cheers, no tears—just a shared look of understanding.
They were all that remained now.
That night under a sky filled with the shifting veil of stars, Jain and Lyra found a moment alone.
The others slept restlessly, some whispering prayers to gods who no longer answered, some thinking about the blackened stone where valac'turr would rise with the eclipse.
Jain sat on a flat stone near the edges of the ruins, the pulsing stone still warm in his palm. Lyra joined him, silent at first.
"You ever think about what comes after this?" She asked finally, eyes on the sky. Jain didn't answer right away. Then, softly, "Sometimes. But it always feels like a lie." She looked at him. "What if we survive? What if we end this?"
He met her gaze. "Then we find out what life means without the weight of the end hanging over us."
Lyra smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I wouldn't mind knowing what the feels like. Just once."
Silence again.
Then. without a word, she reached for his had. He let her. And when she leaned in, he didn't pull away. There was no desperation in it. No need to fill the silence with explanations. It was a moment between two people who had carried too much, lost too much—and still found something to hold onto.
They kissed under the moonlight, slow and searching, the world falling away until it was just two of them. Fingers trembling, breaths uneven, hearts raw.
Jain's hand moved to her cheek, brushing strands of wind-tangled hair behind her ear, his thumb lingering there like he couldn't quite believe she was real. Lyra leaned into touch, eyes half-lidded, breath catching as his lips found hers again—hungrier this time, deeper. She pressed closer, knees brushing his thighs, and the last of the cold seemed to vanish from the world.
When his hands slipped to her waist, she didn't stop him. Instead, she shifted, setting into his lap, their bodies aligned, breath to breath. Her Hads slid beneath the edges of his cloak, tracing the shape of his back, his shoulders, committing him to memory. There was urgency in it now—not desperate, but deliberate. A need to feel, to be felt. To anchor themselves in something that wasn't pain, or battle, or blood.
"Are you sure?" Jain whispered, forehead resting against hers, voice barely audible over the wind threading through the trees,
Lyra answering by kissing him again—fierce and tender all at once. "We don't get many chances," she said, breathless. "I want this. I want you."
His response wordless, a soft groan into her mouth as he pulled her closer, his hands slipping under her tunic, finding warm skin. Her breath hitched as he touched her—exploratory, reverent. She guided his tunic off, baring scars mapped like history across his chest. She kissed them, one by one, as if to rewrite the pain with her lips.
Their clothes fell away piece by piece, cast aside into the moss and leaves. The air was cool, but their bodies were fire—twined together like roots, like fate. Every kiss was a vow. Every touch a confession. She arched into him as he laid her down on the soft earth, the stars spinning above them, the moon a silver witness.
He moved with care, with aching tenderness, like she was something sacred. And she was to him; she always had been.
They made love beneath the shroud trees, surrounded by the hush of a world on the edges of ending. Time stretched, blurred—just them, just this. Her gasp, his groan, the shared rhythm of something eternal in a night that shouldn't had space for beauty but somehow did.
Afterward, they lay tangled in each other, the heat of their bodies keeping the cold at bay. Lyra traced the mark on his neck with her fingers, watching it flickers faintly.
"Tomorrow might take everything," she whispered.
"Then let it try," Jain murmured, pulling her closer. "Tonight, I have you."
And for a while, they stayed like that—silent, hearts steady, wrapped in the stillness before the storm.