## CHAPTER 83: _"The Bridge of Burned Tomorrows"_
The dreamscape began to crumble.
Isalven's breath grew colder.
And in that moment, Arien and Lysia stood within a world made of memory, fire, and ancient, fractured truths.
"I saw you," Arien said, eyes glowing silver as he reached toward Lysia across a chasm of floating stone. "Even in the void. You never stopped burning."
She didn't speak. Her voice was locked behind the spell of the Black Silence. Instead, she opened her palm.
A piece of her soul burned within it.
They met in the center, where stars once danced but now only shadows clung. The bridge beneath them was woven from past choices—every lie, every kiss, every death.
As their hands touched, a tidal wave of visions slammed into them. They fell backward into their own shared timeline.
In one thread, they were children in the streets of Elira, running from guards.
In another, they were enemies at war, bloodied and cursing each other.
In yet another, they kissed beneath the burning library of Sor Elarion, as books screamed.
Vaelith watched from the sky. Her eyes bled stardust.
"They are the last key," she whispered to the winds. "And they are already breaking."
Back in the waking realm, the Widow Queen gathered the Bonescribes.
"Tell me," she demanded, "what happens if the curse breaks?"
The scribes trembled.
One spoke. "Then the gods will awaken. And they will be hungry."
The Queen smiled. "Then we must keep the curse alive."
She poured blood into the Echo Chalice. A portal opened. And she stepped into the underworld.
In the dream, Arien screamed.
His curse was unraveling.
His memories were folding in on themselves like fire through parchment.
"Hold on!" Lysia cried. But he couldn't.
He fell through himself, through every version he could have been.
A boy who ran. A king who never loved. A god who killed her.
And then—
A man who chose her anyway.
That was the one he reached for. That was the self he stitched his soul to.
And the bridge steadied.
They returned to the glass valley, hand-in-hand, eyes wild, heartbeats syncopated.
The dream was ending.
But the war was just beginning.
In the distance, the Widow Queen emerged from the black portal with a blade made of sorrow and silence.
She pointed it at the sky.
And the sky began to bleed.