The world was silent once more.
Too quiet.
The mirrored realm was gone replaced by endless twilight, where dawn and night bled together in soft waves of color. The stars pulsed like living hearts above, their light weaving slowly across the horizon.
Riven sat amidst the stillness, holding Lyra close. Her pulse flickered faintly against his chest fragile but steady, like a song only he could hear.
Her hair was silvery white now, and it shimmered in his arms as if catching light from another world.
"You shouldn't have done that," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "You nearly burned yourself away."
Her eyes fluttered open, soft and luminous and tired.
"You would have done the same for me," she murmured.
He smiled faintly, brushing his thumb along her jaw. "I already did."
The heavens declare His righteousness, And all the peoples have seen His glory.
They had lain down to rest amidst the ruins of the Dusk Realm, bits of shattered mirror glowing like constellations around them. The silence between them wasn't empty; it was thick with words unspoken.
She lifted her hand; the mark, which once burned bright, was now a faint, delicate silver thread across her palm.
"Your power…" he began.
"It's fading," she finished, a small smile pulling at her lips. "Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I can finally just… be."
He looked at her for a long moment at the way the soft light framed her, at the quiet courage behind her eyes. Then he leaned closer, resting his forehead against hers.
"You're more than what you were made for, Lyra. You always were."
Her breath caught, and she pressed her palm to his chest, right over his heart. "Then let me prove it."
The world seemed to hold still around them even the stars dimmed their light. His heart pounded beneath her hand, the silver veins beneath his skin pulsating in rhythm with hers.
Their eyes met, no words, no hesitation. Just recognition.
Two souls that had destroyed and remade worlds for each other.
The kiss was soft at first, almost hesitant, trembling with everything unsaid.
But as their divine energy entwined once more, light rippled through the air silver meeting white, warmth flooding the cold dawn.
The ground beneath them hummed, responding to their union. The very sky seemed to bend, as if the universe itself paused to watch.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, his hand cupping the back of her neck, tugging her closer until there was no space between them, just heat and heartbeat and light.
The world shone brighter.
"If this is what being human feels like," she whispered against his lips, "I never want to be anything else."
He smiled-not the warrior's smirk or the god's defiance, but something rare and unguarded. "Then don't be. Stay here. With me."
She rested her head against his chest, listening to the rhythm beneath the divine hum. "Do you think it's over?"
Riven looked up at the strange new sky the stars that had been dead now whispering again.
"No," he said quietly. "But for now… it's ours."
The dawn finally broke.
And for the first time in eons, the world was at peace: two divine hearts beating as one in a world reborn by love.
The light around them softened, casting their faces in shades of silver and rose. Riven let out a slow breath, almost as if he feared that loud breathing would shatter the fragile peace between them.
Lyra sat beside him, her hand still tangled in his. The pulse of their veins glowed faintly through their skin two rhythms merged into one. The eclipse had passed, yet its power still whispered beneath their flesh.
"Do you feel that?" she asked softly.
He nodded. "Like the world's still breathing through us."
She smiled faintly. "Maybe it's trying to thank us."
Riven's expression softened as he watched her: the faint curve of her lips, the way her eyes reflected the twilight. For a moment, he could almost forget the blood, the gods, the endless running. For a moment, they were just two souls beneath a new sky.
He reached up and brushed a strand of silver hair from her face.
"You know," he murmured, "you look like a star that decided to stay."
A faint flush highlighted her cheekbones. "You've never thought of me as a weapon, have you?
He shook his head. "No. I've seen you as a reason.
The silence that followed wasn't awkward; it was heavy with something rather sacred, something that needed no words.
Nothing?
A faint breeze carried scents of burnt earth and blooming starlilies flowers that only grew in the wake of divine battle. Lyra leaned back, resting against Riven's shoulder.
"I used to wonder what it meant to be real," she whispered. "To feel, to choose. Now, I think it means this. Being here. With you."
Riven turned his head slightly, his lips brushing her temple. "You've always been real to me."
Her hand rose to his chest, to the heartbeat beneath his glowing veins. "Even when I was made to end you?"
His voice was low, almost a vow. "Especially then."
Lyra's eyes fluttered shut. A tear- bright, and silver- slipped down her cheek. He caught it gently on his fingertip, and as it touched his skin, it shimmered like liquid starlight before fading into him.
The mark on her palm came alive again, pulsing softly with his heartbeat.
Something ancient stirred in the distance, not violent, but awakening. A spasm of starlight, like eyes half-opening.
Lyra noticed. "They're watching," she whispered.
Riven's arms tightened on her. "Then let them. The gods can have their heavens. We'll make our own."
They stayed there, two divine leftovers wrapped in mortal warmth, until the horizon started to bloom.
The dawn unfolded slowly, spilling across the sky in ribbons of gold and silver.
Lyra looked upwards, serene. "It's so beautiful.
Riven smiled and traced the faint light on her skin. "No," he said softly. "You are."
The world hummed-alive again, fragile, yet full of promise.
And for the first time in centuries, the god of dusk and the child of light simply lived.
A gentle twilight wind stirred through the ruins, whispering against the crystalline sand. Riven and Lyra sat in silence-the kind that only comes after surviving the impossible.
Riven leaned back on his palms, eyes tracing the newborn constellations that shimmered above them. "Do you think they're really stars?" he asked softly. "Or just fragments of everything we broke?"
Lyra smiled faintly, her voice a gentle murmur. "Maybe both. Creation is always born from ruin, isn't it?
He turned toward her, studying her face. The shine in her eyes reflected the starlight warm, fragile, and impossibly human. "You sound like you've already forgiven the world," he said.
"Maybe I have," she whispered. "Or maybe I'm just tired of hating what I was made for."
Since diffusion through the cell membrane takes energy, it would be considered active transport.
She lifted her gaze upwards, but he didn't look away from her. There was a strange comfort to her stillness as though she anchored him, kept the chaos inside his veins from devouring him whole.
Wordlessly, he took her hand. Their fingers intertwined, and the faint light beneath their skins pulsed in time red-silver from his, white-gold from hers into a steady rhythm.
"It's strange," she said after a while. "I thought gods didn't have hearts. But when I'm near you…
The words trailed off, caught in the hush between them.
Riven leaned in a bit, his voice low. "When you're near me?
Her lips parted. "I feel it, the pulse. It's like. it's trying to remember something."
He smiled faintly. "Maybe it remembers love."
Lyra's eyes met his, the look in them soft, searching, disbelieving. "You think gods can love?"
Slowly, he exhaled, brushing his thumb across her knuckles. "If they can destroy everything, why not love something enough to save it?"
The words hung there, fragile and holy.
Then Lyra leaned forward, resting her head against his chest. The sound of his heartbeat strong, erratic, alive echoed in her ears like distant thunder.
She whispered, "When you say things like that, I forget you're a god."
He laughed softly. "That's good. I'm trying to forget too."
The warmth of her breath mingled with his. The light around them dimmed as the stars shifted above forming new constellations, ones neither of them had seen before.
"They're changing," Lyra said, watching the sky.
Riven followed her gaze. "No," he murmured. "They're remembering."
Truthful.
And then a humming noise.
The stars flickered once, all at once, as if something vast and ancient had just turned its attention toward them.
Riven's muscles tensed. "Did you feel that?"
Lyra nodded, the softness fading from her face. "The Vein. It's not done."
He rose slowly, scanning the horizon. The twilight wind carried a low vibration a call, deep and resonant, echoing from somewhere beyond the reborn world.
Lyra's voice shook. "Something's awakening… something older than the gods."
Riven drew her close, eyes darkening with resolve. "Then we face it together."
"Always." Her hand tightened around his.
It emerged in the Victorian era, and some of the important precursors were Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson.
The stars pulsed again, this time brighter.
And for an instant, it was as if the heavens aligned and wove a single sigil in the sky-the mark of the Eclipse Vein, shining like a heartbeat.
Lyra looked up at it, fear and wonder intertwined in her voice.
"Riven… I think it's calling your name."
The night breathed as if it were alive.
Riven and Lyra stood at the edge of the cliff where the new world began a sky stitched together by reborn stars, a land shimmering with veins of forgotten light. The air tasted of metal and memory.
Lyra stepped closer, strands of her silver hair catching in the wind. "Do you ever wonder," she said softly, "what we were before all this? Before the Vein rewrote us?"
Riven turned to her, his eyes filled with warmth and sorrow. "I've stopped wondering who I was. I'm more afraid of who I might become again."
She met his gaze, her voice trembling. "And if you lose yourself?"
He lifted his hand, brushing her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Then find me," he said. "Even if it means burning through heaven to do it."
The world around them seemed to come to a standstill. The stars dimmed, just for one heartbeat-as if they, too, were listening.
Warm-up
They walked through the ruins of what had once been the Temple of Silence: a skeletal structure now of glass and stone. Moonlight filtered through the shattered spires and cast fractured reflections across their faces.
Lyra stopped in front of a wall covered in strange symbols her handwriting, etched long ago in divine script. She ran her fingers over the markings. "This is… my prayer," she whispered. "To forget."
Riven stepped beside her. "You tried to erase yourself?"
She nodded slowly. "Love was forbidden among the divine. And so, I carved out every memory that tied me to you."
The silence between them grew thicker. Riven's voice was low, rough around the edges. "And yet here we are."
Lyra turned to him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. "Maybe the Vein wanted us to remember what even gods can't destroy.
No
He reached for her hand, their palms meeting-a faint hum rising where their skins touched. The world pulsed around them in rhythm with their joined heartbeats.
Riven whispered, "Every time I touch you, the Vein reacts."
"Maybe it's not reacting," she said, stepping closer until her breath mingled with his. "Maybe it's awakening."
He didn't move away. Their closeness felt dangerous, too divine, too human. The glow beneath their skin brightened, wrapping them in soft light.
Lyra put a hand over his heart. "It's stronger now."
Riven nodded, hardly breathing. "So are we."
The wind surged-carrying with it faint echoes of whispers, as if the stars themselves were murmuring their names.
Suddenly, the sigil above them flared to life. The earth shook, the symbols of the wall bursting into flames. A beam of light struck the ground before them, forming a gate of energy pulsating like a living heart.
She stepped back, shielding her eyes. "What is it?"
Riven's face hardened. "The threshold. The Vein's core is waking."
A form took shape in the entrance: great, amorphous, and very old. And a voice, low and reverberant, was heard by them all.
"Two who defied the order… two who loved across ruin… you have been seen.
Lyra clutched Riven's arm. "It's talking to us."
Riven's jaw clenched. "No," he said. "It's judging us."
SUM The light around them twisted violently. Riven pulled Lyra close, wrapping his arms around her as the energy roared. She whispered into his chest, her voice breaking, "If it takes us, promise me you won't let go." He pressed his forehead against hers. "I couldn't, even if I tried." It was a beam that engulfed them, light, heat, and memory in one blinding instant. And in that instant, Riven saw flashes: A war before time. A promise made in starlight. And Lyra, standing before him, whispering the words that began the end "We can rewrite eternity." reoreoreo The world was gone when the light faded. They stood upon a great, white plain endless and echoing, where the stars themselves seemed to rest. Lyra's hand slipped from his. Her eyes widened in horror. "Riven," she breathed, "look at your reflection." He turned, and saw his shadow splitting in two. One light, one dark. Both alive.