Let the Gods Tremble
Meanwhile…
The stars above him were already dying out.
Auren stood on the bones of the last war that he waged for her, it was an ancient battlefield buried by time, but still the whole foundation was trembling beneath his boots. Every lifetime, it always started like this: silence followed by a storm. A pull manifested in his chest which was enough to snap him awake in a cold sweat.
This time, the moment came during a solar eclipse. He wasn't surprised. It was fitting, really. The gods have always liked theatrics.
He looked up, and he immediately knew.
She was here, reborn. Again.
Alive. Soft. Unaware.
And worst of all, she was once again… an empty husk.
He decided to shut his eyes, and in the enveloping darkness behind his eyelids, he felt her soul like a phantom breeze across a burning fire. It felt warm. Fleeting. Familiar. But her soul… still wasn't looking back.
He did not cry this time. He had long since bled his grief dry.
"So you have done it again," Auren muttered to the wind, to the stars, to the bastards in the sky who watched his life like it was a game. He hated that they were using them for their entertainment.
"You bring her back, and you take everything from her. Again."
He was kneeling before the broken altar of a god that he had once begged… once believed in. The stone was cracked and broken. The statue was headless. In fact, he had shattered it himself, three lifetimes ago.
"I was foolish. I asked for one thing. Let me remember her."
He laughed under his breath. Though it was quiet, bitter, and quite frankly… full of pent up rage.
"And you… answered. You gave me exactly what I begged you for. But it wasn't what I wanted and all of you knew that."
"I understand it though. She forgets. I remember. That is the curse."
He stood up. Slowly. Power was rippling through him like coiled snakes under his skin.
"I have watched her die sixteen times. Sixteen times…. sixteen times."
"I have watched her fall in love with pitiful strangers, with kings, with even you bastard gods. And I never once stood in the way of fate, because I told myself she would remember and come back to me eventually."
"But she never does. She doesn't even dream of me."
He clenched a fist. Magic was tearing the air like lightning clawing out of the clouds.
"I could find her now," he whispered to himself. "She's in Lysira. I know it. I feel it. Hah. I can feel her laughter overthrowing the light of the sun. I could walk into the market tomorrow, wear a false name, speak to her gently, charm her like I did the first time."
He paused.
"And what then? Pretend like it's the first time again? It would pain me all over again to watch her fall for a lie, only to die before the truth finally catches up."
He turned away from the broken altar and looked at the horizon, where the mountains guarding Lysira were like proud old kings.
"No."
"No more games."
"No more gentle hands and hopeful antics."
"If she is reborn empty, then I will become the storm that fills her."
"If I must carve memories into her bones, I will."
"If this world insists on taking her from me, then I will take the world in her place."
His footsteps scorched the ground now. The forest around him began to wilt. Birds were fleeing in silence. The sky itself refused to shine over him.
The gods had not locked him beneath the earth.
They had not sealed him in stone or drowned him in time.
They had left him free and untouched, simply because they were afraid of him. Of what lengths he was willing to go through if he ever broke.
He smiled for the first time in quite a while.
Let them tremble.
"Eliane," he said, with a voice softer than death.
"Will you wait for me…? Even if you don't. This time, when I find you, I will not let you forget."