Ashuron's POV
Pain is the only thing I've known for three hundred years.
It's my constant companion. My oldest friend. The curse wrapped around my bones eats me alive every single second, and I can't die. I've tried. Gods know I've tried.
But today, something different cuts through the agony.
Light.
Real light. Not the fake, stolen glow the false Lightborn wear like cheap jewelry. This is pure starlight—the kind I haven't felt since before my brother betrayed me and the world burned down.
Through the haze of pain, I sense her approaching. Footsteps crunching on dead ground. A heartbeat racing with fear but pushing forward anyway. Brave or stupid—I can't tell which yet.
The chains tighten around my chest, and I scream. Can't help it. The curse loves when I have an audience. It performs for witnesses, showing them exactly how thoroughly I'm being destroyed.
Then she steps into the clearing, and my world stops.
She's glowing like a fallen star. Blood on her feet, tears on her face, dress torn and dirty. She looks half-dead herself. But her light—gods above and below—her light is the most beautiful thing I've seen in three centuries.
True Lightborn. Impossible. We killed them all.
I killed them all, according to the lies they tell.
"Hello?" Her voice is small and scared, but she doesn't run. Points for bravery. Negative points for survival instinct.
I force my head up, every muscle screaming in protest. My golden eyes lock onto hers—silver like moonlight on water. For a heartbeat, I forget how to breathe.
Then the curse reminds me it's still here, still hungry, still eating me from the inside out.
"Get away from me," I growl, putting every ounce of threat I can manage into my voice. "Unless you want to die, little girl."
She should run. Any sane person would run.
Instead, she steps closer. "You're hurt."
The absurdity makes me laugh, though it comes out broken and painful. "Brilliant observation. Now leave before the curse spreads to you."
But she's not listening. I can see it in her eyes—she's already made up her mind. There's something fierce burning under all that fear. Something that reminds me of who I used to be, back when I still believed heroes existed.
"I can help you," she says.
"No, you can't." My voice is getting weaker. The curse is flaring harder now, sensing fresh prey nearby. "I've been dying for three hundred years. A little girl with glowing hands isn't going to fix that."
She steps even closer, and I can smell her now—smoke and blood and something sweet underneath. Her light washes over me, and for the first time in centuries, the pain lessens. Just a fraction. Just enough to notice.
Impossible.
"You're not human," she whispers, her eyes widening.
Finally, she understands. My smile feels sharp and broken on my face. "Finally, she gets it. I'm the monster from your bedtime stories, little star. The big bad Prince of Shadows who supposedly destroyed the Lightborn. And if you're smart, you'll run before I destroy you too."
I watch the fear bloom in her expression. Good. She should be afraid. I'm dangerous even dying—maybe especially dying. A wounded predator is the deadliest kind.
But then she does something that shakes me to my core.
She kneels down in front of me and places her glowing hands on my chest.
Right over my heart. Right where the curse burns hottest.
"Don't—!" I start to shout, but it's too late.
Her light floods into me like a dam breaking.
The world explodes.
The chains shatter with a sound like thunder splitting the sky. Dark magic and bright light collide in a wave that throws her backward. The curse inside me screams—not my scream, but its own rage at being disrupted.
For the first time in three hundred years, the chains are gone.
For the first time in three hundred years, I can breathe.
I stare at my hands, watching the black veins that covered my skin fade to nothing. The constant agony that lived in my bones dims to a whisper. My power—my real power, not the broken scraps the curse left me—surges back like a flood.
I'm standing. Actually standing without the chains holding me down.
The girl is on the ground, gasping for air, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes.
She should be terrified. She just freed something very, very dangerous.
I move toward her, and my body remembers how to be a weapon. How to hunt. How to kill. Three centuries of torture haven't erased my training—they've sharpened it.
"What are you?" My voice comes out stronger now, filled with the power I thought I'd lost forever. I crouch down in front of her, close enough to see the gold flecks in her silver eyes. Close enough to smell the starlight in her blood.
"I'm nobody!" She scrambles backward, her hands glowing defensively. "Just a servant! I was trying to help!"
"Liar." I grab her wrist before she can retreat further, and her light doesn't burn me. Doesn't hurt at all. It sinks into my skin like water into desert sand, and gods, it feels like coming home. "You're Lightborn. True Lightborn, not those fake pretenders wearing stolen magic."
I lean closer, breathing in her scent, trying to understand what I'm sensing. "But that's impossible. We killed all the true Lightborn three centuries ago. I watched them burn."
Her face crumples, and suddenly she looks so young. So hurt. "I'm the last one," she whispers, and her voice cracks like breaking glass. "They killed everyone else. My mother, my grandmother, everyone. I'm all that's left."
Something twists in my chest. Something I thought died along with my humanity.
Before I can stop myself, my hand shoots out and wraps around her throat. Not squeezing hard—just a threat. Just a reminder of what I am.
"Give me one reason," I say softly, dangerously, "why I shouldn't kill you right now. Your people imprisoned me. Tortured me. Left me to die slowly for three hundred years. Your people are the reason I'm cursed."
"My people are DEAD!" she shouts back, and suddenly there's fire in her eyes instead of fear. "Your people killed them! The false Lightborn killed them! Everyone keeps killing everyone, and I'm so TIRED of it! I just saved your life, you ungrateful—"
She stops talking because something impossible is happening.
A mark is burning itself onto her chest—right over her heart. White-hot and blinding, half light and half shadow, forming a symbol I know from legends older than kingdoms.
No. No, this can't be happening.
I release her throat and clutch my own chest as the same mark burns into my skin. The pain is different from the curse—this is pure, clean fire. This is magic rewriting reality itself.
When the burning stops, the mark glows faintly on both our chests. The exact mirror image.
And I can feel her. Not just her physical presence—I can feel her emotions, her fear, her confusion, her desperate hope. Like she's standing inside my soul.
From the shock on her face, she feels me too.
"No," I breathe, staring at her in horror. "No, this can't be happening. Not with you. Not with a Lightborn."
"What is it?" She's crying from the pain, tears streaming down her dirty face. "What's happening?"
I want to lie. I want to tell her it's nothing, that it'll fade, that she can walk away and forget this ever happened.
But soul-bonds don't lie.
"A soul-bond," I say, and the words taste like ashes. "An ancient binding that links two people together permanently. Their lives, their magic, their souls—all connected."
Her silver eyes go wide with horror that mirrors my own.
I laugh, but it sounds broken and bitter and completely insane. "You're not just any Lightborn. You're the prophesied one. The Daughter of the Fallen Light. The one who's supposed to either save the world or destroy it."
Behind us, hunting horns echo through the Wastes. Her hunters are getting closer.
I tilt my head, listening. Years of torture haven't dulled my predator's instincts. "Those men are hunting you."
"Yes."
"They want to kill you."
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Probably all of them."
I look at her—this impossible girl who saved me, who bound herself to me, who's either my salvation or my final curse. Then I smile. Not a kind smile. A dangerous one. The smile of something that's been caged for too long and just broke free.
"Perfect," I say. "I haven't killed anyone in three hundred years. I'm a bit out of practice."
I grab her hand, and shadows explode around us—my real shadows, my true power, dark and absolute. They swallow the world whole.
"Hold on, little star," I whisper in her ear as we dissolve into darkness. "If we're bound together, I might as well keep you alive. At least until I figure out how to break this cursed bond."
The shadows carry us away, and her fear-scent fills my nose. She's terrified of me, of what I am, of what she's done.
Good.
She should be.
Because the last person who touched me with kindness died screaming three hundred years ago, and I've learned that everyone who gets close to me ends up destroyed.
This girl just tied her soul to mine.
And I have no idea if I'm going to save her or ruin her.
Maybe both.