The river outside Eldoria moved as if it possessed intent.
Moonlight slid across its surface in broken shards, turning the water into a living mirror that reflected not just the sky, but something deeper something watching. King Aldric stood at the edge of the riverbank long after his guards had withdrawn, his cloak heavy on his shoulders, his crown forgotten in his chambers. He had ruled for years, won wars, passed judgments that decided the lives of thousands, yet tonight his heart beat like that of a man awaiting a verdict.
That was when the river parted.
She emerged without sound, her bare feet touching stone as though gravity itself hesitated to claim her. Pale silver hair flowed down her back, drifting like mist caught in moonlight, and her eyes were calm in a way that unsettled Aldric more than any threat ever had.
"I am Seris," she said.
Not an introduction. A fact.
Aldric knew, without knowing how, that the river had always been hers and that meeting her had never been his choice. Love struck him not like desire, but like surrender. He did not ask where she came from. He did not ask what she was. He only asked her to stay.
Their marriage was quiet, almost secretive, as though the world itself was not meant to witness it. On the night they became bound, Seris spoke a single condition, her voice as steady as the river's flow.
"You will never question what I do," she said. "Not with your voice. Not with your heart."
Aldric hesitated only long enough to doom himself.
"I swear it," he said.
The first child was born beneath a red dusk. Aldric held his son with trembling hands, overwhelmed by a joy so fierce it almost hurt. He turned, smiling, to share it with Seris only to see her already walking toward the river, the infant cradled in her arms.
"Seris?" he called.
She did not answer.
She stepped into the water.
The river closed over the child, and the cry vanished as though it had never existed.
Something inside Aldric screamed, but his lips did not move. His vow wrapped around his throat tighter than any blade.
The second child followed months later. Then the third. Then the fourth.
Each time, the same quiet walk. Each time, the same still water. Each time, Aldric stood frozen, watching pieces of his soul disappear beneath the surface. Eldoria whispered of a cursed queen, of a king bewitched, but no rumor could break a promise sworn by a man who believed honor was heavier than grief.
By the seventh birth, Aldric no longer wept. His tears had long since run dry, carried away by the same river that had taken his sons. He ruled during the day and died slowly each night.
The eighth child was born at dawn.
The air itself felt different, tense, as if the world were holding its breath. Aldric sensed it the moment the child cried this one was not meant to be lost. When Seris lifted the infant and turned toward the river, Aldric broke.
"Enough!" he shouted, his voice tearing free from years of silence. "Take me if you must but not my son!"
The river stilled.
Seris turned, and for the first time, emotion flickered across her face not anger, not cruelty, but disappointment.
"You have broken your vow," she said softly.
"I don't care," Aldric replied, clutching the air between them. "I choose my child."
For a long moment, nothing moved. Then Seris smiled, and the world seemed to listen.
Seven of the children, she revealed, were beings never meant to live as mortals celestial lives bound by a curse. Death had freed them swiftly. The eighth had committed the greatest transgression and was condemned to live a full human life, burdened by duty and consequence.
Seris placed the child into Aldric's arms.
"His name is Kael," she said. "He will live not for joy, but for obligation."
Then she stepped backward into the river, her form dissolving into silver light until only the current remained.
Seris never returned.
Kael grew quickly, shaped by discipline and silence. He learned to stand before he learned to laugh, to obey before he learned to want. Aldric raised him not as a son, but as an answer to loss, pouring every lesson of honor and restraint into the boy. The kingdom admired Kael, feared him, whispered about him but none understood the weight already settling on his shoulders.
Years later, as Kael stood beside his father watching the same river flow past Eldoria, Aldric felt an unease he could not name. The river looked unchanged, eternal and indifferent, but Aldric knew better now.
It did not forget.
And far downstream, where the current curved out of sight, fate began to move slow, patient, inevitable toward a future that would demand everything Kael had been born to give.
The river flowed on.
And the age of fate had begun.