The Diamond Kingdom vs The Gold Kingdom

A loud, piercing sound attacks my eardrums, blurring my vision as my eyes try to process the scene before me. Stone and metal are fused together in a structure that looks less constructed and more grown, like she manipulated the earth itself to close around her. I’ve never seen anything like it. Runes I don’t even understand are carved all over it.

I stand a few feet away, unable to move closer and unable to step back. My body is locked somewhere between instinct and restraint. The ground beneath my boots is scorched, cracked from magic and impact, but the air around the box feels… contained. Pressurized. Wrong.

She’s in there, and that reality nearly brings me to my knees. There’s no pull. No echo. No familiar pressure curling behind my ribs—nothing urging me forward or warning me away. The bond is silent, like someone severed a nerve I didn’t realize I needed to breathe.

“Asha,” I say, my voice hoarse. Useless.

“No—no—no.” Sasha rushes toward the container, but the moment she gets close, she’s thrown back.

Everett catches her, his frown deepening on contact. “The heat pushed you back?”

“No,” Desi answers for her. “It’s a protection barrier—designed to keep the fire and heat in. Just one arrowhead could wipe out a quarter of the kingdom by itself, and she had multiple.”

“I need someone to explain to me what just happened. I—I feel like I’m asleep. M-my brain isn’t—” Everett says, his voice cracking.

“First things first.” My mother steps forward, still in full uniform, filthy from head to toe. “Take these.”

She passes around blood pills—to normalize our emotions. The gesture only deepens the pain in my chest, because that means whatever explanation is coming is worse. No one argues. We all take them.

“Asha used the Mother-Lioness spell.” She pauses, giving space for those who recognize the name to react. Asha’s parents break even more.

My mother turns to me. “The lion hunts while the lioness protects. The spill of blood and the heat of passion are the two ingredients needed to cast the spell. Once it’s completed, the Tester of Fate sends their arrows. The longer you stand, the more power you can command.”

“I’m getting the final update.” Vera speaks, her eyes a pool of white, tears still pouring down her face. “Everyone was transported back at the same time. Not just us.”

“We sent out over six thousand troops,” my father says, turning to her.

She drops to the ground. “W-we sent out six thousand five hundred. All confirmed back. All alive.”

I can’t stop seeing her the way she was when they parted the soldiers—strung up, beaten so badly it barely looked like her. Blood down her throat, bruises layered over bruises, her body stretched and restrained like they were trying to break something sacred just to see if it would crack.

And that wink.

At the time, it felt impossible. Insane, even. How could anyone in that condition manage something so deliberate? I told myself it was her telling me she was still there. Still alive. Still her.

But standing here now, staring at the structure she built to save us all, I realize it might have been something else entirely.

A signal.

When we got close—when the distance finally closed enough—the bond ignited so violently it nearly tore me apart. Pain ripped through me, sharp and sudden, like my body was being punished for catching up too late. I remember doubling over, the ache deep and relentless, as if something inside me was being demanded rather than shared.

Blood shed. Not metaphorical. Not symbolic. Hers.

It’s adding up now—the way she stepped into that field alone, planting herself between our people and annihilation. The shield she held wasn’t just magic; it was conviction. Fury. Love. She burned through the battlefield like someone who had already accepted the cost, fighting with the kind of focus you only have when you believe this is the last stand you’ll ever make.

That was the heat of passion. No fear, she didn’t hesitate and didn’t look back.

“Lucien—your eyes,” my mother says, sharp enough to cut through the noise around us.

I barely register it. There’s a pressure building behind my eyes, behind my ribs, like something vast is trying to surface and my body no longer knows how to contain it. The box hums in front of me, the runes flaring brighter for a split second, and my knees finally give way.

“Sorry, son,” my father says, close now—too close for me to turn, too close for me to argue.

Something heavy collides with the back of my skull.

The world tilts, sound collapsing into itself, and then—

Nothing.

—————

The smell of sulfur and spice—sharp, invasive, hits me strong. It floods my lungs and rips me out of unconsciousness so fast my body jerks before my mind catches up. I suck in a breath and choke on it, muscles snapping tight as I surge upward—

Chains bite into my wrists and ankles. Metal scrapes. The table beneath me rattles.

Panic flares, hot and immediate. My vision swims, the room a blur of light and shadow, shapes melting into one another as my heart slams against my ribs. I strain against the restraints on instinct alone, power stirring before thought, before reason.

“Lucien.” My father’s voice cuts through it. Firm. Grounded. Too calm for the state I’m in. “Son, stop. You’re safe.”

Safe.

The word doesn’t register. My chest is heaving, the smell still burning my nose, my pulse roaring in my ears. I turn my head sharply and the motion makes the world tilt again, but this time the blur starts to settle.

Figures come into focus.

My mother, standing at my left, her hands are clasped tight in front of her like she’s resisting the urge to touch me. On the other side—Asha’s parents. Her mother’s gold hair is pulled back now, face drawn and exhausted. Her father stands rigid, eyes locked on me with something like wary respect layered over raw concern.

“You had a surge,” my father continues evenly, stepping closer so I can see him clearly. “A bad one. We restrained you before you hurt yourself—or anyone else.”

I swallow hard. My throat burns. The chains are warm, etched with runes I recognize just enough to know they aren’t meant to punish. They’re meant to hold.

My breathing starts to slow, reluctantly, like my body is arguing with itself.

“How long was I out?” I rasp, the word scraping out of me before I can stop it. “What about Asha?”

“The arrows don’t burn as one. When one dies out, another ignites.” Her voice cracks. “She’s been burning for thirty days straight.”

Thirty….days? The chances of her making it a weeks was one in a million but that one was enough for me to still believe.

But no one can last thirty days—not even me.

“We are having a fallen hero service for her tomorrow.” My dad says unlocking my shackles. “You must control yourself. You are needed there and for what’s coming next.”

I should feel her dying. Should feel something—pain, rage, the bond tearing itself apart. But there’s only a vast, empty quiet where she used to be. No pull. No warmth. No pressure behind my ribs.

Just… nothing.

The world keeps moving, voices drifting around me, but they sound distant—like I’m underwater and everyone else is on the shore. I nod when someone speaks. I swing my legs off the table when my father gestures for me to stand. My body obeys out of habit, not because I’m in it.

Thirty days. The number sits in my head, dull and heavy, like a stone I keep turning over even though it never changes shape. I stand, and for a moment the room tilts. Not enough to knock me down. Just enough to remind me I’m still here.

Why am I still here?

My hands curl into fists at my sides. They don’t shake. That’s what scares me most. I’ve lost control before—felt power roar through me like a storm I couldn’t cage. This is worse. This is the aftermath. The burned-out field where nothing grows.

Asha always burned bright. Too bright. Like she knew she wouldn’t get long. The memory of her chained in that field cuts through the numbness—her head slumped, her body broken, and that look she gave me.

Resolve. She planned this. Every second of it. The thought doesn’t comfort me. It hollows me out even further. Because if she knew how this would end—if she chose it—then loving her was never about saving her.

I swallow, my throat tight, and force myself to breathe again. In. Out. Mechanical. Controlled.

“If I’m not allowed to fall into the darkness, neither are you.” Everett’s voice breaks through my shell. “The council confirmed war has been declared. Deadly toxins were released just seconds after my baby got us out. The Gold Kingdom miscalculated when creating a gas based on our atmosphere—forgetting that at one point, we all lived everywhere. It caused the deaths of thousands—civilians and soldiers alike.”

“It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t—”

“You don’t believe that accident was random, do you?” Sasha cuts in. “Better yet, you don’t believe that was your first interaction either?”

I turn to her sharply, brows furrowing. My parents do the same.

“I didn’t know until I saw your eyes turn that ice blue,” she continues, “that you were the boy she said she saved in the border forest. When Asha was young, she was a traveler—always going somewhere she shouldn’t. But that day, she went further than we could have ever imagined. We questioned how she got there and why. She said a boy pulled her there. He had ice-blue eyes and was trapped in a cage.”

She exhales softly. “At the time, I was confused. How could he pull you if he was the one imprisoned? But now… it all makes sense.”

“The girl with the moon scar,” my mother murmurs.

“So he talked about it with you too?” Sasha looks at her. “She got that scar stump -hopping with her father—pretending they were doing parkour.”

“I asked Lucien about the scar,” my father says.

“You didn’t ask if it was shaped like a moon,” I reply quietly. “I assumed you meant my handprint.”

Why don’t I remember meeting her when I was that young?

I remember so much of my childhood. Vividly. Clearly. And yet, as far as my mind is concerned, the first time I ever noticed the moon-shaped scar was the night we finally let ourselves feel.

“In our family, every child receives a future reading from an oracle on their fifteenth birthday. That day, I was told my love would sacrifice themselves to secure victory in war. I always assumed it meant a romantic partner.” Sasha pauses. “Especially after the disaster that followed my first—and only—one.”

The saints have it wrong.

Asha was never meant to be a passing chapter. She was written into the margins of every life I was supposed to live. We are owed a million lifetimes—I’ve seen them, felt them unfold like promises that refused to stay theoretical.

And now this—

This feels like the world correcting itself. Like fate finally collecting a debt it’s been patient about. And I hate it.