✨ CHAPTER ONE ✨

The rain wouldn’t stop. It slid off the rooftops in crooked lines, pooling in the broken cobblestones like silver blood. Kael tugged the hood of his cloak lower, scowling at the sky as if he could curse it into silence.

He’d passed through towns like this before—muddy, grey, tight with suspicion. The kind of place where old men spat at strangers and children stared too long. Where the word mage was spoken like a death sentence.

He walked fast, shoulders tight, boots splashing in the filthy puddles. His hands were buried deep in his cloak, hidden from view—not out of cold, but caution. If anyone saw the scars on his palms, the runes burned into flesh, they’d scream witch and drag him to the pyre before dusk.

So naturally, this was the moment someone slammed into him.

Hard.

Kael staggered back, already muttering a curse under his breath—but stopped short when he saw the man in front of him.

Tall. Rain-slick. Smiling like he’d just bumped into an old friend instead of nearly knocking someone over.

“Ah—sorry,” the man said, voice deep and maddeningly warm. “Didn’t see you there. Bit hard in all this divine piss coming from the sky.”

Kael blinked. Once. Twice. “Get out of my way.”

The man cocked his head, a golden strand of hair stuck to his cheek. “You always this friendly, or just with strangers?”

Kael stepped around him with the grace of someone trained to disappear. “Only with idiots.”

“Good. We’ll get along splendidly.”

Kael paused mid-step. Turned. The man hadn’t moved. That smile—infuriating—still tugged at the corners of his mouth like he was enjoying this.

Kael narrowed his eyes. “Are you following me?”

The man shrugged. “Wasn’t planning to. But now that you’ve made it weird, I might.”

“Don’t.”

Another shrug. “Well, in that case, let’s pretend I’m not. Name’s Ron, by the way.”

Kael didn’t answer. He walked.

Ron followed.

---

And just like that, Fate began to weave its thread—one damp footstep at a time.

Kael didn’t know his name would be written alongside Ron’s in blood and fire before the moon waned. Didn’t know that the knight with the irritating grin would be the one to break the silence he’d buried himself in for years.

Didn’t know that love—real, raw, dangerous—was stalking them both like a shadow in the mist.

But he would.

Oh, he would.

Kael turned a corner, faster now, hoping the knight would take the hint and vanish into the drizzle like every other mistake in his life.

No such luck.

Boots echoed behind him. Steady. Relentless.

“I’m starting to think you like me,” Ron called, tone light but laced with something else—curiosity, maybe. Or danger.

Kael spun, rain dripping from his hood like tears. “I don’t. And if you keep following me, you’ll find out just how much.”

Ron only grinned wider. “Careful. You’re starting to sound interesting.”

Kael scowled.

The kind of scowl that meant he might kill him.

Or kiss him.

Eventually.

📖 CHAPTER TWO: The Weight of Names

POV: Ron

The inn smelled of wet wood, cheap ale, and smoke that never quite left the walls. The fire in the hearth spat and crackled like it was trying to be heard over the storm. Outside, rain lashed the shutters with fury. Inside, silence pressed thick between two strangers who were now—by some cruel twist of fate—traveling companions.

Ron dragged off his soaked cloak and wrung it out, water pooling at his feet. Across the room, Kael sat hunched in the corner near the fire, eyes shadowed beneath the fall of dark hair. He looked like a warning carved in stone: still, sharp, and meant to be left alone.

But Ron never had much luck following warnings.

“You always glare at people like that,” he asked, breaking the quiet, “or am I just lucky?”

Kael didn’t move. “You talk too much.”

“That’s what my commander used to say,” Ron replied with a lopsided grin, walking to the empty chair across from him. “Back when I had one.”

Kael’s eyes flicked up then, briefly. His gaze lingered on the worn military crest sewn into the lining of Ron’s cloak—torn clean through. Recognition? Maybe. Or just curiosity.

“Exiled?” Kael asked, voice soft but not gentle.

Ron shrugged and sank into the chair. “Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m not the law.”

“Good,” Ron said. “Because I’m not in the mood to be arrested tonight.”

Kael’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile—something more bitter. “Why were you exiled?”

Ron leaned back. “Killed a man I wasn’t supposed to.”

He expected Kael to ask for more. Instead, the mage simply nodded, as if that made sense.

“You?” Ron asked. “What’s your story, ghost-boy?”

Kael stared into the fire. The flames painted his face in shades of regret.

“I burned a chapel to the ground,” he said after a long pause. “People were still inside.”

Ron raised an eyebrow. “That true?”

Kael looked at him then—really looked. “Would it matter if it wasn’t?”

They held each other’s gaze for a beat too long.

Ron didn’t look away. “No.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. The fire crackled. Thunder rolled across the sky. Somewhere, wind howled like something ancient was trying to claw its way into the world again.

“Why did you do it?” Ron asked eventually.

Kael didn’t answer.

He stood instead, slow and deliberate, and walked to the window. Rain blurred the glass, but his eyes were fixed on something beyond it.

“They were going to hang a child,” he said finally, voice thin and worn. “Said she had magic. Said she needed to burn.”

Ron stood too, slowly, jaw tight.

“And you stopped them,” he said.

Kael didn’t nod. Didn’t move. Just whispered, “I lit the fire myself. That makes me no hero.”

“No,” Ron said quietly, “but maybe it makes you human.”

Outside, a bell tolled. Faint. Hollow. One chime. Two. Then silence.

Kael turned sharply. “Get your things. We leave before dawn.”

Ron smirked. “You always order people around like that?”

Kael’s eyes gleamed—silver in the firelight. “Only the ones who won’t shut up.”

And for the first time, Ron smiled without sarcasm.

Because under all the sharp edges and shadows, Kael wasn’t made of smoke.

He was made of fire.

And fire always remembers how to burn.

---

📖 CHAPTER THREE: Embers Before Dawn

POV: Kael

Morning came with mist in its teeth.

The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the world outside still dripped, still breathed like it hadn't forgiven the storm for ending. Pale light filtered through the slatted window, dim and gray, barely enough to cut the cold in the room.

Kael moved quietly, practiced. His boots didn’t creak, his breath didn’t fog the glass. The hearth had died down to glowing embers, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t need warmth. He was used to silence.

He was used to being alone.

The pan hissed as he dropped the last slice of cured meat into it. Beside it, a small hunk of bread—stale, but still soft in the center—and a bit of hard cheese he’d bartered for the night before.

He didn’t look back as he cooked, but he could hear Ron breathing behind him, slow and steady, still asleep.

Kael had considered leaving hours ago. Just slipping out. Quiet as a shadow. No goodbyes. No farewells. Just vanish—like he always did.

But something stopped him.

He wasn’t sure what.

When the food was done, he slid the contents onto a wooden plate, laid the bread beside it, and turned. Ron was curled half on his side beneath the threadbare blanket, mouth slightly open, one hand tucked beneath his head like a child.

Kael rolled his eyes, but... lightly.

He crossed the room, knelt, and set the plate down beside the knight with careful fingers.

He didn’t wake him.

Didn’t speak.

Just... looked.

Only for a moment.

Ron looked different like this—softer. The scar on his jaw less harsh in sleep. The armor stripped away. The grin gone. Just a man, bruised by life and exiled by someone else’s choices. Kael wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to trust someone like that.

Then he stood, pulled his cloak over his shoulders, and stepped out into the morning fog.

---

Outside, the world was hushed and waiting. Crows sat on the crooked fence posts, watching him pass like judges. The ground squelched beneath his boots as he followed the muddy trail out of the village, past the moss-eaten watchtower and into the woods beyond.

He didn’t look back.

He told himself he wouldn’t.

He’d gone maybe half a mile before he heard it.

Hoofbeats.

Kael froze, hand dropping instinctively to the knife at his belt.

But it wasn’t the clatter of soldiers or bounty hunters. It was one horse, moving fast. Familiar.

Seconds later, Ron came riding up the path, hair tousled, one boot barely on, cloak flying behind him like some half-awake knight out of a drunken ballad.

“You forgot something,” Ron called as he pulled up beside him.

Kael blinked. “What?”

Ron leaned forward in the saddle, holding up the wooden plate.

“The food. You left it for me.” He grinned, lopsided and infuriating. “And then you left me. Rude.”

“I didn’t think you’d miss me,” Kael muttered, walking again.

Ron dismounted, walking beside him without asking.

“I told you yesterday,” Ron said, voice quieter now, “we’re stuck together. You might as well get used to me.”

Kael didn’t reply.

Not right away.

But after a few minutes, he said, almost too low to hear:

“I am.”

And the woods swallowed the silence between them.

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