CHAPTER 9 – WHERE THE SUN BURNED US

It breathed. It howled. It scraped across stone like teeth.
And when it wanted to punish, it did not use fire.
It used the sun.

Xaros knelt in the sand, bound in heavy iron chains beside the one woman he could not forget—even now. His armor had been stripped. His blade taken. His name… almost gone from his lips.

But not hers.

Laziel sat beside him, wrists bruised and lips cracked from thirst. Her once-priestess robes were torn and faded, the red of her sash now nearly black with sand.

They had been here for three days.

No food. No water. No gods.

Only memory.

Weeks earlier, he had ridden into her city on a black warhorse, flame-touched banners slicing through wind. His army moved like a wave across the desert—merciless, silent, absolute.

She had stood on the steps of the temple—not in fear, but in defiance.
Laziel, the war priestess. Tactician of the fallen king.
Known for her visions.
Respected for her mind.

He remembered thinking: She should have run.

Instead, she looked him in the eye and said,

“You win too easily. It will make your death uninteresting.”

She had been taken prisoner, but not silenced.
In the interrogation tent, she disarmed him with a single sentence.

“You dream of red trees.”

He froze.

She smiled—soft, cruel, knowing. “So do I.”

From that moment, everything changed.

They began meeting in secret.

Between battles. Beneath moonlight. In language both tactical and tender.

They debated war strategies like lovers swapping poems.

And one night—beneath a blood-red moon—he reached for her hand.

She didn’t pull away.

“This ends badly,” she said.

“So do all good things.”

Their leaders found out.

Betrayal. Treason. Heretics.

Their punishment was not swift—but deliberate.

Chained together beneath the desert sun.
Their bodies left to the wind.
Their names struck from record.
Their love, condemned to ash.

Laziel leaned her head against his shoulder now, her skin burning under the heat.

Her voice was barely audible. “Do you think… we’ll be forgotten?”

He wanted to lie.
He didn’t.

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes.

Then smiled.

“Then let us remember each other.”

“In another life?”

“In every life.”

“Even if it ends like this again?”

“Especially if it ends like this.”

The sun dipped. Their shadows stretched long.
The chains between them creaked.

With her final breath, she whispered:

“Let us be cursed, then.”

“To meet again…”

“And again.”

“Until we get it right.”

A storm rose from the west.
The first in over fifty years.

And between their bodies, a red flower bloomed, wild and defiant—its petals curling against the wind like a memory refusing to fade.

Present Day.

Xander woke in a cold sweat, heart racing.
Sand in his mouth. Blood in his teeth.

His studio smelled like smoke.
But nothing had burned.

Lana shot upright in her bed, gasping.

She ran to the mirror.

On her wrist, faint and fading, were red marks.
Like shackles had once held her.

She stared at herself.

“It started with us.”

[END OF CHAPTER 9]