## CHAPTER 82: _"The Witch Who Ate the Stars"_
Isalven was not dead.
It was dreaming.
And Arien walked its dreams.
The land pulsed with blue light, a heartbeat of ancient energy. Trees sang in voices only the dead could hear. Rivers whispered forgotten names. Time moved sideways, and with every step, Arien felt pieces of his past uncoil—alive and watching. He wandered through the glass valley where stars had once crashed. There, the ground shimmered with stardust, and the bones of dragons curled around sleeping moons. He wasn't alone. A woman stood in the center of the crater. Not Lysia. Not the Widow Queen. A witch older than the gods. Her name was **Vaelith**, and she did not speak. She hummed. The tune unraveled the seams of his thoughts. He collapsed.
Meanwhile, Lysia crossed into the frostbite plains of the North. She battled sky wolves that screamed like children, and outwitted a tribe of seers who could only lie. Each mile bent reality. Each step tore at her soul. And yet, she pressed on. In her dreams, Arien bled. In her veins, power stirred. She remembered the prophecy: _"Your heart will shatter to seal the gate." But which gate? Which heart? She didn't know. She only knew she had to find him. Back in Elira, the Widow Queen crowned herself with Arien's bloodstone blade. She declared a new era: _The Age of Reversal_.
"History is a lie," she told the people. "Love is poison. But I am the cure." And they cheered. She summoned the seven exiled clans. She bent the Eastern Sky Tower into her throne. And she began building a weapon from the bones of forgotten gods. In Isalven, Arien awoke tied to a pillar of void-stone. Vaelith stood before him, skin etched with constellations. "I ate the stars," she said, smiling. "So I could dream again." She touched his chest. The curse inside him screamed. "You carry a contradiction," she whispered. "Love and death. Fire and frost. Fate and choice." Arien groaned, "What do you want?" Vaelith smiled wider. "To taste the future. To see if your love is worth ending the world for." The pillar shattered. Arien stood, reborn in memory-fire. He did not speak.
He roared. And from the edge of the dream-world, Lysia heard it. She ran.
The chapter ends with a collision—not physical, but soul-deep.
They are close.
But so is the end.