## CHAPTER 1: _"The Boy With No Heartbeat"_
The snow in Elira did not fall — it wept.
Each flake that drifted from the sky was a silent mourner in the kingdom's long funeral, a quiet echo of a curse that had never been lifted. The sky was a pale gravecloth stretched over a sleeping land, and at the heart of that stillness stood the Winter Palace — glass towers and blood-colored banners flapping against the wind, holding secrets older than war.
Inside its tallest spire, behind doors carved with moons and blades, the Crown Prince of Elira sat in silence.
Arien Thorne was not asleep.
Nor was he dead.
He simply existed — as he always had — in that place between breath and burial.
Eighteen winters had passed since he was born without a heartbeat. A miracle, they called him at first. A divine sign. Then a horror. Then a threat.
No mother survived his birth.
No cradle song touched his ears.
He was the boy the gods forgot to finish.
And yet, here he was — not breathing, not aging, not dying — but still painfully alive.
He sat cross-legged on the polished obsidian floor, robes falling in soft folds around him, as the old court physician pressed an icy hand to his chest.
"No pulse," the man muttered, more to himself than to Arien.
"Never is," Arien replied, eyes fixed on the storm outside.
Dr. Halem frowned. "Your color is… worse than usual. Shadows under your eyes. That mark on your neck…"
Arien waved him away. "Leave it. It's not sickness. Just a dream."
"A dream?"
"She came again."
The old man paused. Arien's visions had become more frequent, more vivid. A girl with silver hair, wrapped in vines. Her voice called him, but her name remained locked behind frost and flame.
"She spoke to you?"
Arien stood, brushing snowflakes from his sleeves. The cold had seeped into the very walls, though no window was open.
"She didn't speak. She screamed. Like she was buried alive."
He crossed to the balcony. The snow swirled, forming patterns only he could see. Circles. Moons. Eyes.
Below, the people of Elira moved like ghosts — cloaks wrapped tight, hoods down, heads bowed. No one looked up. No one ever looked at the palace.
Because no one wanted to see the prince who never aged, who walked without breath, whose shadow lingered too long.
He was not their hope.
He was their omen.
"I have to find her," he murmured.
"You don't even know if she's real."
"She is," Arien said. "And she's in pain."
---
The halls of the palace were quiet that evening, as if the very stones held their breath. Arien's boots made no sound as he descended through spiral staircases, past sleeping guards and echoing archways, toward the hidden chamber beneath the throne.
He passed portraits of dead kings — their eyes watching, judging.
The Hall of Silence.
It was said that in this chamber, the gods once whispered to the first queen of Elira. It was also said that madness lived here.
Arien knelt before the altar, a jagged pillar of moonstone etched with ancient runes.
He closed his eyes.
And the dream returned.
This time, he was not in the forest.
This time, he was in fire.
A castle collapsing.
Screams echoing.
Blood staining snow.
And at the center — the girl.
Eyes silver-bright, hair like white flame, a mark on her chest glowing through torn cloth: two crescent moons, crossed over a bleeding heart.
She turned to him, mouth open, but no sound escaped.
Then darkness.
Then nothing.
---
He awoke with frost on his lips.
Not sweat. Not heat. Frost.
Magic.
He rushed back to his chamber, pulled open every drawer, every scroll. The symbols. The signs. That mark — where had he seen it?
He flipped through the oldest texts — forbidden grimoires, royal chronicles, tomes left behind by mad alchemists. And there it was.
**The Sigil of the Moondamned.**
A bloodline erased from the records three hundred years ago. Burned, scattered, slaughtered.
Not by war. Not by invaders.
By the royal family.
His family.
And now, she was calling to him.
Not for love.
Not for mercy.
For vengeance.
And still, he could not stop thinking about her eyes.
They did not look like a killer's.
They looked like his.
---
Outside, the snow grew heavier. The wind howled a name no one remembered.
Except the boy with no heartbeat.
> _She's close._
> _And I'm already hers.