## CHAPTER 96: _"The Letter She Never Sent"_
There were things she never got to say.
Not because there wasn't time—but because the weight of the words was heavier than the silence.
Lysia sat beneath the oldest tree in Elira, a gnarled titan called the Heartroot. Its bark hummed softly with ancient memories, and its roots reached deeper than the oldest spells. In her lap sat a parchment, trembling beneath the weight of her hand.
She was writing a letter.
Not to the king.
Not to her people.
But to Arien.
And yet she would never give it to him.
—
"Dearest Arien,
There are moments when I look at you and feel like I'm staring into a storm I want to drown in. I do not know when I first began to love you—perhaps it was before I even knew your name. Perhaps it was the way your voice breaks when you say my name, or the silence that falls when you leave a room.
I know now that love is not soft. Not gentle. It is sharp. Loud. Brutal. Beautiful.
And I fear what it turns me into.
But if I could choose again, I would still find you in every lifetime—even if I lose you in each one."
She paused, breath shaky.
The ink bled at the corners.
"I want to remember you without pain. I want you to remember me without guilt. I want us to be something more than a curse and a prophecy."
The letter blurred as tears dotted the page.
She folded it.
Tied it with a thread of moon-silk.
And buried it beneath the tree.
—
Far across the battlefield, Arien stood atop the Whispering Walls, staring at the valley below. War banners flapped like dying birds. Soldiers whispered the names of gods they no longer believed in.
But he was only listening for one thing.
Her voice.
He heard wind.
He heard fire.
He heard silence.
But not her.
And that silence—it screamed.
—
Meanwhile, in the Temple of Broken Time, the Seers read the echoes of the letter Lysia never sent. They saw the prophecy trembling. Shifting.
"The timeline bends," one whispered.
"The curse falters," said another.
"But what replaces it?" asked the third.
They did not know.
Only that love had spoken—through words buried in dirt—and the gods were listening.
—
That night, the wind carried a whisper across the whole of Elira:
"I would choose you—even if it broke me."