Three heartbeats. One curse. A city where magic is bartered like coin—
and a girl who does not yet know that her fate will ignite tonight.
Salt. Cinnamon.
The first breath Elena takes in Lysoria burns sharp on her tongue, sweet enough to ache.
She steps into Market Row as though crossing into another world.
Lanterns drift above the stalls like pale jellyfish of fire, scattering golden ripples over slick cobblestones. Merchants shout in overlapping tongues—sharp, sing-song, coaxing.
Spices bite the air. Candied fruits glow faintly in silverleaf wrappers. Somewhere, a lute strings itself into a crooked tune.
Elena halts. Gray-blue eyes sweep the chaos, the shimmer, the pulse that beats like a second heart.
She presses a hand to her shawl, steadying herself. This was the city her father once described by firelight—a place where magic was lived, bartered, squandered.
He had made it sound like wonder. Standing here, she feels the absence of him sharper than ever, as if wonder itself demands a witness she no longer has.
Her gaze searches, hungry.
A baker's flame leaps too high, then shrinks.
A merchant weighs herbs with trembling fingers.
Silk shifts from crimson to indigo, threads humming with trapped spellwork.
Observation anchors her. If she can see enough, perhaps the hollow ache won't swallow her.
"Lady traveler! Sweet as memory itself!"
A vendor thrusts spun sugar toward her—glowing strands scented with metal.
Her lips almost curve. Magic, trapped in candy. Her father would have laughed, called it waste. She nearly answers him—before memory turns heavy, and she swallows it down.
Deeper into the market artery.
Children tear past, chasing a runaway charm that bursts into sparks.
A fishmonger slaps down a catch that still glimmers with light.
A seamstress claps, and illusions of gowns twirl above her stall.
A man in spectacles lifts a vial of starlight. "It banishes nightmares," he promises.
She lingers. Tempted. Then shakes her head. She doesn't believe promises anymore.
Everywhere she turns, life vibrates with more than blood and breath. It thrums with magic.
But beneath the marvel—an undercurrent.
A pulse. Too steady. Too deliberate.
The hush comes before she understands.
Laughter falters. The lute stumbles. The air thickens—then tears.
Wind spirals down the row, sharp enough to cut. Shawls snap. Papers wheel high. Lanterns sway. Shadows drag in the wrong direction.
The scent of roasted almonds twists to acrid smoke.
A scream.
Light fractures above the square.
A golden-white sphere cracks like glass—shards raining fire.
She should run. Everyone else runs.
But she is pinned. Frozen by the sense that this collapse… is looking for her.
Heat sears her wrist.
She gasps, clutching it. Fabric scorches. She yanks her sleeve back—
and watches a sigil brand itself into her skin.
Sun and crescent moon, stitched together with fire.
It pulses once. Twice.
A rhythm not her own.
"No…" The word claws out of her throat.
Bodies surge past, but she feels none of them.
Air tastes of copper and dust.
Her pulse falters, dragged into step with the burning mark.
Her father's voice ghosts across memory:
Some bindings never break, Lena. Once chosen, the heart remembers forever.
The sphere above implodes inward, pulling her breath with it.
Dust erupts. Stalls collapse, wood splintering like bone.
Elena drops to her knees, coughing, the mark blazing hotter with each ragged draw of air.
The world contracts to the thrum at her wrist.
Shadows crawl across cobblestones where no light should allow them. Darker than dusk. Sharper than flame.
They move with intent.
Not tricks of dust.
Watching her.
Reaching.
She scrapes back, nails tearing against stone—
but the mark flares brighter, veins of light threading up her arm, answering the pull.
Her chest tightens with an old fear. Not born of this moment.
The fear of losing.
Of watching someone vanish beyond reach.
Of being left with silence.
She is ten again. Standing in a snow-bound yard. Clutching her father's empty coat.
The grief cracks open—raw, merciless.
Dust chokes her.
Vision blurs.
Market Row dissolves into storm. Shadow and light colliding.
The cries of merchants—gone.
Children's laughter—gone.
Only a humming silence pressing against her skull.
I could vanish here, she thinks. And no one would know. No one would remember.
The thought cuts deeper than the fire on her wrist.
Her last clear breath rattles shallow.
No hand steadies her.
No voice calls her name.
Loneliness claws harder than the magic.
And it is loneliness that breaks her.
She collapses onto the cobblestones, the sigil burning like a brand—
—and the shadows close in.
Dust swallows the world.
Then it parts.
A figure steps through the grit, sure-footed while the rest scatter.
Sunlight clings to him where there should be none. Dark hair, neatly parted. A clean jaw. Eyes the color of morning over the sea—steady, searching only for her.
He doesn't seize. He offers.
A hand. Palm up. Fingers relaxed.
A quiet promise that lands in her chest like warmth after frost.