(22 Years Ago → Present Day)
Maela didn't stop running until her legs gave out.
She collapsed in a thicket of bluebark trees, the infant still clutched tight to her chest. Blood streaked her arms — not her own — and her heart pounded like thunder inside her ribs.
Behind her, the sky still burned.
The once-mighty kingdom of Larethien was crumbling in ash and silence.
But the child in her arms… she slept.
As if the world hadn't just ended.
Maela wept — for the king and queen who had entrusted her with everything, for the royal guards who bled to keep her path open, for the golden cradle they had left behind. But most of all, she wept for the girl who would grow up never knowing any of it.
—
It was Lysira who found her that night, cloaked in starlight beneath the whispering oaks.
"This road leads to nowhere," the priestess said, her voice soft but certain.
Maela looked up, eyes hollow. "Then nowhere is where we'll live."
And so they did.
With Lysira's help, Maela and the child vanished deep into the far reaches of the realm — into a sleepy town tucked between mountains and rivers, known only as Irendale.
It wasn't on most maps. And that's why it was perfect.
There were no palaces here. No magic. No crowns.
Only wildflowers, old songs, and sun-dappled mornings.
—
Aeris Valerien grew up barefoot in fields and meadows, her curls wild and windswept, her eyes always turned toward the sky. She chased wind through tall grass, raced dragonflies through apple orchards, and made every bird her friend.
Her laugh was the kind that made people pause — a sound that stitched warmth into the bones of anyone who heard it.
No one in Irendale knew who she was. They only knew her as Maela's girl — bright-eyed, clever, and too beautiful for a town so small.
The baker always gave her extra loaves.
The stable master saved the ripest apples for her pockets.
The weaver taught her old lullabies in secret, swearing they were songs of protection.
And Maela, growing older by the year, watched her like she held a piece of the stars.
Aeris was her light. Her joy. Her reason.
But Maela never spoke of the past — not once. Not of the palace, the fire, or the crown. And Aeris never asked.
Because why would she?
The world was full of wonder. And magic? That was just myth and bedtime fancy.
—
Still, Aeris dreamed.
Not every night. But often enough.
She dreamed of silver crowns and falling stars. Of hands reaching through smoke. Of wings made of light, flaring open in the dark.
But in the mornings, she pushed the dreams away.
Because Maela needed her to be normal.
And normal was what she tried to be.
—
Until she was seventeen.
It was spring — soft and fragrant, the orchard trees heavy with pink blossom. Aeris had climbed higher than usual, chasing a baby bird's nest. Her fingers were slick with dew as she reached for a branch that bent too easily beneath her weight.
She slipped.
The world tilted.
She should have fallen. Should have broken something.
But instead…
She floated — breathless and weightless, suspended for the length of a heartbeat.
And then she landed lightly, barefoot in the grass.
No one saw.
She said nothing.
That night, she stared at her hands for hours. As if they might glow.
They didn't.
So she told herself it was nothing. Just luck. Just coincidence. Maybe she was imagining things. She had to be.
And yet — from that night forward, the dreams returned more vividly. More… urgently.
Fire. Crowns. Blood.
She stopped singing the lullabies.
She stopped sleeping soundly.
And Maela, though she never asked, began watching her with a quiet, unreadable ache in her eyes.
—
At the summer solstice festival, the village green came alive with ribbons, music, and the scent of honeyed bread. Aeris twirled barefoot with a circle of girls her age, their dresses catching the breeze like flower petals.
Laughter rang in the dusk, and someone started clapping to the beat of the drums.
Aeris's wild curls caught the last of the golden light as she spun, her smile bright enough to rival the lanterns overhead.
A few boys from the far end of the square paused their game of stones and sticks, their attention drawn like moths to flame. One nudged the other, whispering something, then quickly looked away when she caught his eye.
She laughed again, not unkindly.
The other girls giggled, tugging her back into the rhythm of the dance — but Aeris's cheeks were already flushed, her heart light and unaware of how many eyes followed her now.
Time passed. Aeris grew into the kind of beauty that made people hush when she walked by. She read every book the village elder owned, learned to cook like a fire-souled goddess, and memorized the patterns of the stars in every season.
But her life, for all its quiet beauty, felt slightly askew. As if the world knew a truth she didn't.
She would stare into the orchard, heart thrumming with a need she didn't have a name for.
A need for more.
She couldn't explain it. And she didn't dare speak it aloud.
Not when Maela smiled so easily now. Not when their cottage was full of herbs and humming, when the chickens clucked at her feet and the sky always seemed soft.
This life — this peace — was a gift.
And gifts were meant to be cherished.
Even if something inside her whispered that it wasn't meant to last.
—
On her twenty-second birthday, Maela braided wildflowers into her hair and kissed her forehead at dawn. Aeris laughed, spun through the meadow, and thought she might finally be able to ignore the dreams.
That maybe, just maybe, the road to nowhere had become enough.
She didn't know that the stars were already shifting.
That shadows were on the move.
That fate — old, watching, and patient — had already begun to turn its gaze back toward her.
But that was a truth for another day.
For now, she danced barefoot through the orchard with sunlight in her eyes…
...unaware that everything was about to burn.