The door slammed open before the echo faded.
"Maya!" Zeyla barely breathed the name before the storm hit.
Maya stood in the doorway, eyes blazing, clutching her phone like a loaded gun. "Did you see this?" Her voice sliced through the quiet like a blade.
Zeyla didn't move. Instead, she let Maya's fury wash over her. "Show me."
Maya thrust the phone forward. The screen glowed — Sanlang and his co-star, shameless, tangled in betrayals made public.
"Madam Noor knew," Maya whispered, eyes locked on Zeyla, daring her to deny it. "She left because she always knows. She saw the fall before it even started."
Zeyla's fingers tightened around the phone, but her gaze was cold, unreadable. "And you think she left because of this?"
Maya stepped closer, voice dropping to a venomous hiss. "What else? A woman like her doesn't walk away for nothing. She senses the rot beneath the surface. Sanlang's poison wasn't just his body—"
Zeyla cut her off, voice low and sharp as obsidian. "You don't understand. What if its not just a simple affair."
Maya's eyes flickered with unease. "Don't get clever with me. He's humiliated her. On purpose. You saw how he looked at her, the lies beneath those eyes."
Zeyla's lips curved in a slow, cold smile. "Maybe. Or maybe he's losing control.."
A silence grew between them, thick and electric. Maya's hands curled into fists, trembling with frustration. "We can't just watch her fall."
"We don't have to," Zeyla said, voice like ice, "but first we shield her. No one touches Noor—not while I'm standing."
Maya swallowed, searching Zeyla's face for weakness. "And after?"
Zeyla's gaze sharpened, a predator's focus. "Then we strike. This is far from over."
Maya's breath hitched, the fire in her eyes now a smoldering blaze of alliance and defiance. "I'm with you. But —"
Zeyla's voice softened for a split second. "She will come back. And when she does, the world will tremble."
Somewhere far from that morning sun, in a bed of silk-soaked sweat, Noor was unraveling.
Her body tossed in defiance of heat and ice, fever burning like betrayal.
Her lips parted—air cut her throat like knives—and from them slipped names that didn't belong to the world anymore. "Sanlang," she whispered. Then: "Kang..."
Then something not of this world.
The EN—an old woman with hands like river stone and eyes that had seen gods kneel—wiped her down with a rag dipped in rosemary and saltwater. But nothing cooled Noor.
"You're burning from both ends," the EN muttered. "Someone's holding onto your soul too tight."
Noor's skin shivered. Her eyes fluttered open for half a second—gold, glassy, ancient. Then they shut again.
The door groaned open, and he entered—the man with eyes like molten rubies, burning with fury and something far older, far deeper.
He stepped from the shadows, ruby eyes lit like dying suns.
One look from him, and the old woman lowered her gaze. No words were exchanged. She knew better. With a soft bow of the head, she left, her footsteps vanishing into the storm.
And then there was silence.
He looked at her and said, voice sharp and cold, "This weakness... it is unbecoming."
He stood above her, a statue carved from storm and fire, almost dismissing the fragile human before him.
Then he knelt at her side.
Her breath stuttered as if the world itself were forgetting how to breathe. And still, even in her pain, she glowed — soft gold beneath the stormlight.
His cloth, damp with rosemary and melted snow, traced her skin with trembling reverence.
His voice came low.
"I've held galaxies in my palm," he said, "and yet… this—this skin, this heat—is the first thing that has ever burned me."
Noor stirred, a moan escaping her throat.
He leaned closer, his lips brushing the air beside her temple.
His breath trembled as it touched her shoulder. Her skin, damp with fever, smelled of crushed herbs and storm-swept sorrow. Her hair, loose across the pillow, tangled with memories .
He laid his hand on her spine.
"Every time I've found you, you've slipped through my hands like time itself. But even so…""…I would choose this ache again. And again."
His gaze stayed fixed on her—on the fever that scorched her skin, the way her breath rattled like a temple bell at the end of the world.
"You were not made for pain," he whispered, brushing the damp hair from her brow.
"And yet, they wrote it into you like scripture."
The storm outside bowed to his voice. Wind howled. Trees bent.
His fingers moved down her back with the same reverence . But when they touched the scar—when his palm found the ruined tapestry that once held wings, —his hand stilled.
"They marked you," he breathed.
"As if you were theirs to scar."
"What they did to you…" His throat closed around the words. "Even I — even I, in my wrath — would not have dared."
He pressed his forehead against her spine, just above the wound.
And then a tear fell from his ruby eyes.
No sound escaped him. He burned from the inside — quietly, entirely — his soul a collapsing star wrapped in silence.
"You remember none of it, do you?" he murmured.
"Not the moons you swallowed .
Not the wars I turned to ash so you could sleep.
Not the name you once made me forget my own to hear."
A slight shiver rippled through her, as though something in her blood knew the sound of that voice.
He kissed her shoulder—once, twice, and again—lowering his mouth to where memory lived beneath skin. He breathed into the hollow of her neck as if he could inhale time itself.
"I would've unmade Heaven for you," he said.
"And they knew it."
His fingers curled into fists at her sides.
His body trembled—from the sheer agony of recognition.
Then the door creaked. The scent of iron and lilies curled into the room.
She stood in the doorway—barefoot, beautiful, rotted at the core.
"Still mourning?Still worshiping corpses, brother?" she said, stepping into the room as if it belonged to her" she mocked, stepping through the flickering light. "Still clinging to the corpse of what you couldn't protect?"
He turned.
His eyes—ruby and endless—met hers with a stillness that preceded violence.
"You shouldn't be here," he said. "The ground you stand on knows who I am."
She smiled.
"But I am. And she's dying, isn't she?" she smirked. "I can smell her soul leaking out of her. Pathetic. For what? And you____you kneel, broken over her like a mortal boy."
"You fear what she is becoming," he whispered. "That's why you're here."
"Fear?" she laughed, stepping closer. "No, beloved. I'm here to witness. To see the great Devourer of Suns undone by the soft pulse of a dying girl."
Blue fire seeped from his hands now. The room dimmed. The earth trembled.
"You mock me," he said. "Must you forget who is your king."
Her smile faltered.
The storm screamed.
Flames curled along the windows. The sky split above the cottage. And the woman—vanished with a hiss of wind and smoke."You don't have much time left, brother. She's already between worlds. And they are watching."
He remained.
Alone again.
By Noor's side.
And then, barely a whisper from her lips:
"…stay…"
He did not breathe.
He only bowed his head to her back, and kissed the scar again—so softly it could've been a prayer.
"Always."
Noor floated in the endless void, pierced by black threads that pulled at her very essence.
A voice emerged from the darkness—deep, cold, and ancient.
"The debt calls."
"Chosen pain."
"Nothing returns."
The threads tightened.
"You drink the shadow willingly."
Blood spilled—both dream and flesh.
"Beyond mercy. Beyond time."
"The hour nears."
The void swallowed her silence.
Beside her, the man's breath was warm, urgent—anchoring her back to flesh and blood.