Sleep came slowly that night. The wind outside whispered like restless spirits, brushing against the window, carrying fragments of voices Asher could almost understand.
When his eyes finally closed, the world shifted.
He stood in a hall made of glass and moonlight. Shadows stretched long across the marble floor, and every surface shimmered with silver veins that pulsed faintly — like they carried blood instead of light.
"Asher…"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
He turned sharply. A woman stood at the end of the corridor, her gown flowing like smoke, her hair a dark cascade streaked with white. Her eyes — violet like his own — glowed softly under the glass ceiling.
"Amara," Asher breathed.
She smiled, faint but sad. "So you remember."
Asher took a step forward. "You've been calling me in my dreams. Why?"
"Because you are the end I left behind," she said. "And the beginning I could never reach."
Her form flickered, the edges of her gown dissolving into mist. "The mark you bear… it isn't a blessing. It's a chain — one that binds your life to what I failed to protect."
"The locket?"
Amara nodded. "It was forged from my heart's blood. A fragment of me that endures in you. When I fell, the world decided my legacy should sleep… until the one who carried my blood awoke."
Asher's pulse quickened. "Lucian said the last time your blood stirred, kingdoms burned."
She smiled again, wistful. "He remembers the flames, not the reason."
"What reason?"
Her gaze dimmed. "Love. A love that the world could not understand. I gave my blood to protect him… and in return, I was cursed to watch from the veil between worlds."
The air grew colder. The moonlight cracked.
"Lucian was the one?" Asher whispered, the realization striking him like lightning.
Amara's figure trembled, her voice echoing softly now. "He was my first sin… and your destined salvation."
The glass floor beneath him shattered. Asher reached out, but her hand was already fading.
"Wait!" he shouted. "What do you mean? Why me?"
Her last words came like a sigh carried by the wind —
"Because you are the piece of him that still remembers me."
Then the dream collapsed into darkness.
Asher woke with a gasp, sitting upright in bed. Sweat clung to his skin, and the mark on his collarbone burned faintly, glowing beneath the moonlight.
The locket pulsed once — a single heartbeat — before going still.
From the doorway, a shadow stirred.
Lucian stood there silently, his expression unreadable, but his crimson eyes told another story. They glimmered with something fragile — guilt, pain… and recognition.
"Asher," he said quietly, "what did you see?"
Asher met his gaze, breath trembling. "Her. I saw her. And I think…" He hesitated. "I think she loved you."
Lucian didn't answer. He only looked away, the moonlight cutting sharp lines across his face.
"She wasn't supposed to remember," he murmured to himself. "Not like this."
To be continued....