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Before the sun and moon, the world was evenly lit.
There was no dawn to look forward to, no dusk to soften the edges of grief. No rising, no waning—only a pale permanence that hovered without warmth or shadow. Light existed without rhythm, without direction. It asked nothing of the land and gave nothing back.
Crops grew because they had always grown.
Days passed because they had always passed.
Time endured—but it was not kept.
There was no witness to suffering.
No promise of return.
The crown called this order.
It carved the word into stone until it felt true.
Eternal Crown.
Eternal Law.
Eternal Order.
Eternity, the people learned, was simply what suffering was called when it was inherited.
The monarchy took before it gave. It demanded loyalty before bread, reverence before mercy. Grief was taxed. Hope was measured. Love—real love—was watched carefully, because love gathers people, and people who gather begin to remember what they are owed.
That was how Raelis and Maelin became dangerous.
They did not meet in rebellion. They met in exhaustion—two figures sitting on opposite ends of a broken stair, the city humming faintly around them. Raelis had stopped to listen to an old man who no longer remembered where his home had been taken from. Maelin had stopped because she was tired of walking past wounds without naming them.
They spoke little at first.
Raelis was quiet by nature. He had learned early that stillness made people careless. Guards forgot he was there. Elders spoke too long. Confessions slipped free when no one felt observed. He carried other people’s truths like embers—warm, contained, never flaring.
Maelin noticed everything.
She had watched laws bend for the powerful and harden for the poor. She had watched her mother barter dignity for grain and neighbors vanish for asking the wrong questions. She spoke precisely, never louder than necessary, never softer than truth allowed. She did not inspire comfort. She inspired clarity.
Where Raelis believed change would come slowly, Maelin believed nothing moved unless pushed.
They argued.
They learned each other’s rhythms. When Maelin burned too bright, Raelis steadied her. When Raelis hesitated too long, Maelin demanded motion. They were not opposites.
They were counterweights.
Love came later.
It rooted quietly, not as promise but as practice. They trusted each other with their fear. With their doubt. With the knowledge that hope was not a feeling but a responsibility.
The people did not rise all at once.
They chipped.
A tax collector turned away at the wrong door.
A shipment vanished before reaching the palace.
A soldier hesitated, then another.
Hope arrived not as a shout, but as coordination.
Raelis and Maelin never promised victory. They promised honesty. When plans failed—and they did—they said so. When sacrifice was required, Maelin named the cost before asking anyone to pay it.
Dignity spread.
And dignity terrified the crown more than violence ever could.
Because dignity teaches people they deserve better.
The monarchy had always known how to punish bodies. What it feared was contagion.
They took Raelis and Maelin at dawn.
Not dragged.
Not beaten.
Handled with care.
Because the crown understood symbols.
The courtroom was designed to make small things feel shameful. The ceiling arched too high. The judges wore mirrored plates sewn into their robes so the accused could see themselves reflected—distorted, fragmented.
The Arbiter spoke of order. Of unity. Of protection.
Maelin listened until the words became hollow enough to step into.
“You do not protect us,” she said calmly. “You protect yourselves from us.”
A murmur rippled through the chamber.
Raelis reached for her hand—not to stop her, but to stand with her.
That was the moment the verdict was sealed.
“Hope,” the Arbiter said, voice almost gentle, “is the most dangerous contagion of all.”
The spell stirred beneath the floor—ancient, stolen, impatient. The monarchy’s magic was not creation. It was appropriation. Long ago, power had lived in agreement: land and rain, seed and soil, life and death. Magic had asked permission.
The crown had learned how to interrupt bindings.
How to seize a force mid-exchange and force it into obedience.
“For your crimes,” the court declared, “you will be separated beyond death, beyond time. You will be made useful.”
Raelis felt fear then—not for himself, but for the world they would leave behind.
Maelin met his gaze. She drew a shuddered breath—fear flickering, sharp and human—then steadied herself, eyes fierce, unbroken.
“I will find you,” she said.
“In any shape.
In any silence.”
The spell answered her with violence.
The transformation was not swift.
First came weightlessness.
Then vastness.
Raelis felt fire gather where his heart had been, growing until thought burned away. Light poured from him, relentless, demanding motion.
Maelin felt herself thin into reflection—cool, distant, whole in a way that ached. She carried memory like gravity, pulling tides and time alike.
Then darkness.
Not absence—
removal.
Their sight was taken. Sight allows choice. Blindness ensures obedience.
They were set into motion, forever circling, forever missing.
The world learned day.
The world learned night.
The sun rose for the first time screaming.
The moon followed, silent and full of grief.
The people broke.
Then they fought.
Not quickly. Not cleanly. The crown did not fall in fire. It fell in attrition. Its stolen magic frayed under overuse. Rituals misfired. Laws contradicted themselves. Soldiers defected. Supply lines failed. The monarchy discovered too late that belief had been its final theft—and belief was gone.
Years passed. Lives were lost. Children grew old enough to inherit anger.
And one day, the palace stood empty.
The sky did not change.
The sun still burned.
The moon still watched.
But the people looked up and said, We remember who you were.
In freedom, they gathered where the palace once stood. They brought no gold. They brought names. Stories. Truth. They tried everything—fragments of old rituals, songs older than language, circles of hands pressed into earth that remembered consent.
They could not undo the curse.
It was too vast.
Too woven into the sky.
But magic listens to effort.
And effort, shared, becomes pressure.
They did not break the spell.
They bent it.
Once in a great turning of years, the sun’s fire dims. The moon draws near. They cannot see. They cannot touch.
But they know.
It is the most the people could give.
Generations later, the story is still told.
Children are taught to stand still when the sky darkens at midday. Not to speak. Not to ask for answers. Only to remember that once, love endured the sky when it could not endure the world.
The sun continues its endless path.
The moon follows.
Always moving.
Always missing.
The world does not promise more than this.
But it no longer drifts.
Time is kept now—not by certainty, but by return. By light that rises, and light that leaves, and the long waiting in between.
Sometimes, in the hush of the eclipse, someone dares to think what no one says aloud.
Not that they will be reunited.
Only that love, once made endless, might still be reaching.
Then the prayer is spoken, as it has always been spoken—quietly, without expectation:
When the sky darkens, do not be afraid.
This is not the end.
Stand still.
Bear witness.
Some distances are not meant to be crossed.
But they are still meant to be kept.