The sun came up sooner in this world.
Elias wasn't used to it yet—the way light seeped through the coarse wooden shutters of the cottage and landed on the squeaky floorboards like a guest too early to knock. In the capital of his world, morning was iron bells clanging and rosewater tossed into marble fountains. Here, it was birdsong and soot.
He woke before the others, as always. Habit, perhaps. His sword—Black Hall steel, dulled by time and over-careful polishing—lay beneath the bed like a relic of a war that had happened in a different story. Perhaps it had.
In the quiet, he would rise, pour water from the jug, and wash his face in the tin basin. Then he'd begin to light the fire.
Sometimes Charlotte—now Lina—would stir before dawn, muttering half-conscious curses about the cold and questioning why the gods had yet to invent heated floors. That hadn't changed about her.
Neither had the way she always seemed to know when he was there. Watching her. Still. Like a man trying not to startle a deer too deep in the woods.
Then came Finn. Taller now. Lean, but strong. Quick to grin, though there were shadows behind his eyes that didn't belong to a boy his age.
He'd grown up beside Charlotte in this reality, but Elias could feel Eladin flutter beneath the surface. In the tilt of his head when he was irritated. In the lilt of his voice when he spun stories for the village children. In the way he always brewed two cups of tea, even if no one asked.
Something ancient moved beneath their skin—like stars buried in mud.
At first, Elias said little. What could he say?
He had imagined Charlotte frozen in time—still seven, still silk and flame, defiance wrapped in lace. But the woman before him was changed. Older. Calmer. Sharper in the quiet places.
Still hers. But different.
So, he remained.
He helped Finn patch the roof. He drew water from the well. He taught the village boys how to hold sticks like swords, though none of them knew his name had once meant something. Sometimes Charlotte would watch from the porch, arms crossed, one brow arched.
"Off to war again, or just posturing for the goats?" she'd call.
He'd glance at the goats.
They weren't impressed.
But she smiled.
And that was enough.
Small Shifts, Subtle Turns
The village began to change.
Elias fixed the carpenter's wheel one morning. Word spread.
He helped the midwife cross the river when the bridge gave out.
When two tax collectors from the next town came looking for coin and trouble, Elias stood in their path—unmoving, unarmed, and entirely unafraid. They left shaken.
After that, the air turned.
The local toughs stopped their visits. The tavern grew quieter. People started looking at Charlotte and Finn not as odd siblings on the edge of the woods—but as something solid. Something safe.
And Then, The Past Stirred
Finn's dreams grew sharper.
He spoke of royal gardens he'd never seen, of sword forms he'd never learned but could mimic with eerie precision. Charlotte, unaware, would sketch the palace from memory—its halls, its window lattice, its chandelier shadows—her hands trembling when she was done.
Butterflies.
Tiny wings altering tides.
A traveler passed through town selling herbs and rare teas. Charlotte froze at the scent of one blend.
The Harvest Moon.
She didn't cry. She just set the kettle down. Let it cool. Never touched it again.
Ashlight and After
That night, they sat together on the porch. The stars had begun their slow shimmer, and the moon cast long, quiet shadows across the grass.
"You were never supposed to die like that," Elias said, his voice frayed at the edges. "Not like that."
Charlotte didn't look at him.
"I was never supposed to die at all."
He said nothing. Just placed his hand gently atop hers.
They were older now. More worn than the stories remembered them. But in that silence—beneath the fading starlight, beneath the heavy hush of healing—the same flame still lived, burning steady beneath the ash.