The palace slept beneath its shroud of moonlight. Its halls were hushed but alive - the walls themselves whispered with the voices of past centuries. In the distance, the faint hymn of the celestial choir could still be heard, the sound that mortals mistook for the sigh of the wind.
Within, Seraphyne moved like a phantom through corridors of crystals and shadow. Each step she took echoed softly against eternity. She had not called a mortal into the palace for generations, yet her thoughts could not silence the memory of the woman with the storm-lit eyes.
Lyssara. A name she had once sworn never to speak again - and yet, it now pulsed like a heartbeat within her.
The Library of Glass lay in the heart of the palace - a sanctuary of knowledge gathered from mortal and celestial realms alike. The shelves rose like cathedrals. carved from transparent stone; scrolls shimmered faintly with the glow of preserved starlight. Here were the histories of Elarion, the prophecies of the old priests, and forbidden texts of the celestial Veil.
Seraphyne stood before a vast tome, its pages alive with constellations. Her fingers traced the delicate ink, where symbols shifted like the phrases of the moon. The words told a cycle - ' The Soul of The Queen', bound to a mortal reflection, destined to return through lifetimes until the immortals heart could break and mend anew.
A curse disguised as divine order.
She closed the book and exhaled, her breath stirring motes of light that drifted like fireflies.
"Even the stars conspire to remind me," she murmured.
The Sound of footsteps broke her solitude, She turned - and there, hesitant but unafraid, stood Lyssara. The mortal woman's dark cloak shimmered faintly with dew; she must have crossed the Veil under the cover of night. Her eyes held no fear of the queen's ethereal glow, only a quiet determination.
"You summoned me," Lyssara said. "I didn't think the Eternal Queen called for anyone."
Seraphyne's lips curved faintly. "I do not. Not anymore.:
"Then why me?"
The queen's gaze softened, luminous and sorrowful. "Because when i look at you. I remember what it felt like to be alive."
Lyssara stepped closer. The moonlight from the glass ceiling washed over her face - soft, mortal, impossibly familiar. "You speak as though you've forgotten."
"I have," Serahpyne said. "And yet... you are undoing centuries of silence with every word you speak."
They stood among the glass shelves surrounded by starlit reflections - countless versions of themselves flickering in the mirrored surfaces. Seraphyne reached for a book, her hand trembling slightly.
"Do you believe in souls, Lyssara?"
"I believe in echoes," she said. "Some loves never fade. They just... find new shapes."
The queen's gaze lifted, sharp and searching. "You've dreamt of me before, haven't you?"
Lyssara hesitated. Then slowly, she nodded. " I see your face when I sleep. Always the same eyes, the same sorrow. But you never speak to me."
Seraphyne closed the distance between them. "Because I cannot," she whispered. "Until now."
Their hands met - a fleeting touch, gentle and shattering. The glass beneath their feet hummed, and light spilled outward like a heartbeat. For a moment, it was as though the heavens themselves leaned closer to listen.
"If this is a dream," Lyssara said, "Then let it never end."
"Dreams always end,"Seraphyne replied softly. "It is waking that we must fear."
Outside, unseen by either woman, the High Inquisitor walked the palace corridors, his cloak trailing like a shadow. In his hand he carried a fragment of broken glass - torn from a forbidden mirror, still pulsing faintly with celestial light.
" She breaks her own bindings," he whispered to the night. "And when she does, the world will fall with her."
That night, in the Library of Glass, two souls found each other again - not by prophecy, but by ache. The stars themselves burned brighter, as if remembering a promise long forgotten.
And for the first time in an age, the Eternal Queen wept.