Chapter 78 - The Cursed Heart of Elira

## 📘 CHAPTER 78: _"The Price of Memory"_

The wind howled through the broken spires of Elira's northern wall, a sound like grieving mothers mourning sons lost to time. Arien stood among the rubble, fingers curled tightly around the obsidian pommel of his blade. Not because he feared war. No—because war had become too quiet.

Across the ruined city, Lysia moved like a phantom, her feet leaving no prints in the blood-dusted ash. Every survivor who met her gaze saw not a girl, not a queen, but something reborn from fire and sorrow.

The Celestial Tree had bloomed—and died again.

Its petals still drifted through the wind, catching sunlight that didn't warm. A cursed beauty. A reminder of all they'd sacrificed. And yet beneath the surface, magic stirred in unsettling ways.

"I dreamed of a boy," Lysia whispered to Arien that night, resting her forehead against his. "He had no name. No voice. But he looked like us—both of us."

Arien didn't answer right away. His thumb traced the edge of the scar on her cheek—the mark she'd earned when she saved him from the Skyborn Blades.

"I think the world is dreaming through you," he finally said. "And it's warning us."

In the depths of the Sanctum Archives, a hidden scroll had unraveled itself. The ink bled upward. Words rearranged. And the old prophecy—once thought fulfilled—rewrote itself:

> *When the cursed love what the gods fear, time itself will bleed.*

That was the night the stars vanished.

Not dimmed. Not obscured.

Gone.

Lysia stood on the balcony of the Starlit Chamber, watching the empty sky. "What kind of omen steals the stars?"

Arien didn't reply. He was reading the letter left behind by a dying Seer:

> *'If you find this, run. The Third Curse has been born, and it wears the face of mercy.'*

The next morning, every mirror in Elira shattered. The sky turned to ink. Birds flew backward. And a child was found in the Moonlit Sanctuary—no name, no shadow, and eyes like obsidian glass.

Lysia approached the child. As she knelt, it reached toward her and touched her chest—exactly where her heart once broke for the first time.

"It's me," she whispered. "It's the version of me who never survived."

The child blinked. One tear fell. Where it landed, flowers grew—black, thorned, and humming with curse-magic.

The gods watched.

And did nothing.