The wind whispered like dying breath. Zeyla's fingers brushed her dagger, but she did not draw it. She could not.
The figure stood by the window, unmoving, untouched by the storm.
"Who are you?" Zeyla's voice was barely above a whisper.
The hood shifted. Silver hair spilled into the night—unearthly, like threads of moonlight woven into something human.
Then, the voice—low, quiet, and heavy with something ancient. Something inevitable.
"Once, there was a mother."
The glass vial pressed into Zeyla's palm, fragile, weightless—like the moment before a fatal fall.
"She had two sons. One held the light in his hands. The other carried the dark in his veins."
The wind howled through the open balcony. Zeyla could not move.
"Fate came to her one night and whispered: 'Choose.'"
The silver-haired figure finally turned. Porcelain skin. Eyes like frozen fire. No mercy. No cruelty.
"One to live. One to die."
Zeyla's breath shuddered in her throat. She wanted to speak, but the words did not come.
"She begged. She wept. But grief is not an answer."
The storm howled louder, rattling the glass, the bones beneath her skin.
"So she ran."
A pause.
"And so Fate took them both."
Zeyla's fingers curled around the vial, skin cold, blood colder.
"You do not get to run."
Her chest heaved. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
"You do not get to walk away."
The figure took a step closer.
"And when the moment comes, you will pray to rewrite it."
The wind howled. The air turned to ice.
"And you will fail."
Zeyla's breath broke. Her pulse screamed.
"Two lives. One choice."
Zeyla's breath shuddered. "What do you mean?"
A pause. The silver eyes did not meet hers, not yet.
"Pain is the oldest currency."And one must pay."
Her stomach twisted. "I—I don't understand."
The wind whispered between them. The figure sighed, almost pitying.
"You will."
The bottle gleamed as it tilted in pale fingers.
"Love is the cruelest debt."
Zeyla felt it now—the weight of something unseen pressing down on her chest.
"One will be spared."
A breath.
"One will be lost."
Her pulse roared in her ears. "There has to be another way."
The figure laughed—soft, almost sorrowful.
"There never was."
The vial was pressed into her palm. Cold. Thin. Heavier than it should be.
She tried to pull back. The fingers did not release.
"No one gets to walk away."
A sharp breath, her own. Her vision blurred. "I—I can't."
The silver eyes finally met hers. They were ancient.
"You must."
Zeyla was trembling. "If I choose wrong—"
"You will beg to rewrite this moment."
Her grip on the vial wavered.
The figure tilted its head, a motion so slow, so deliberate, it felt like the shifting of something vast and inevitable.
"Did you think love was meant to be kind?"
The wind howled. The figure was fading.
Zeyla jerked awake.
The room was suffocatingly still, but her heart pounded like she had been running for her life.
Her skin was damp. Her breath hitched. Her hands, ice-cold, clutched the sheets.
"Just a dream."
She forced the words through trembling lips.
A dream.
A dream.
Then why—
Her eyes flicked toward the window.
The curtains were moving.
The window was open.
Zeyla's stomach twisted.
Her mind scrambled for logic—she never left it open. She would have—
Her breath cut off.
There. On the windowsill.
A bottle. Small. Fragile. The same one.
Beside it—
Spider lilies.
Blood-red. Twisted petals like screaming mouths. The same flowers that had bloomed behind the man's shoulder when he spoke to her in the dark.
Her hands clenched the sheets, knuckles turning white.
"No. No, it wasn't real. It wasn't—"
But then—
The words from the dream whispered back to her.
"Two lives. One choice."
She froze.
"Pain is the oldest currency."
Her breath came faster.
"Love, the cruelest debt."
Her skin prickled.
The weight of the words sank into her bones.
She could still hear that voice, deep and distant, like it had spoken from beyond something she was never meant to touch.
Her eyes burned, her throat closing around an impossible truth.
Inside Noor's dream
The battlefield reeked of iron, smoke, and the sickly sweetness of something long dead. She lay in the ruin of it all, body sinking into the blood-wet earth. Silver hair, slick with filth. Golden eyes, dull as dying embers.
The sky above her was gray. The kind of gray that swallowed everything whole.
Footsteps.
She did not move. What use was movement?
The voice came, small and clear, like a bell in a graveyard.
"Why are you lying here?"
She let out a slow breath, lips cracked and dry.
"Because I am tired."
A pause. Then—
"Are you hurt?"
Her fingers twitched.
"Hurt?" She almost laughed.
"Do you ask the sea if it is drowning? The fire if it is burning? I do not know. I only know that I exist, and that existence has a weight."
The child crouched beside her, eyes wide, unblemished by horror.
"Then why don't you get up?"
Ah. There it was. The cruelty of innocence.
Her breath was slow. Measured.
"Because some wounds are not meant to heal. Some wounds do not even belong to us."
The child tilted their head. "Then whose do you carry?"
Noor exhaled. The dead. The living. The ones who never were.
But instead, she only said, "Too many."
The child was quiet.
Then, softly, "Where is your home?"
Home.
She closed her eyes.
"There is no home for those who have seen too much."
The child frowned. "That is not true."
"Isn't it?"
"No. You can still go back."
Noor let out a slow, trembling breath. "Back to what?"
The child's voice was smaller now. Hesitant. "To the ones who are waiting for you."
Noor turned her head slightly, enough to meet their gaze. Eyes round and clear.
She smiled.
"You have not yet learned," she murmured, "that the dead do not wait."
The child's small hand reached for hers.
"No one is waiting for you?"
The battlefield shifted, the air thickening, warping. Something unseen stirred beneath the ground.
The child gripped her hand tighter. Noor finally, finally looked at them.
And in that instant—
She knew.
The child's lips parted, but their voice was no longer small. No longer soft. It was a whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Then why are you still here?"
The world trembled. Noor's grip on reality wavered.
And so, the battlefield collapsed into shadow.
The room was silent, save for the sound of breathing.
Maya sat beside the bed, hands folded in her lap. She had always been good at waiting.
Tonight, she hated it.
Noor's lips had curled. Barely. A slight, phantom of a smile.
Maya stared at it, at the way it held, undisturbed, like something carved into stone.
She reached out, fingertips pressing against Noor's wrist. Still there. Still cold.
"What do you see?"
Maya's voice thinned. "What is it that makes you smile?"
Still, nothing.
She exhaled. Dragged her nails across her own palm.
"I never asked why you did it."
She wasn't even sure Noor could hear her.
"I never asked___I___Why you suffered alone. Why you let it tear through you in the dark, where no one could see."
Maya swallowed.
"I should have."
The door creaked.
Janir.
Maya did not turn. She heard his slow steps, heard the way he hesitated in the doorway.
She closed her eyes. "You're late."
Janir's voice was quiet. "She's still asleep?"
Maya's nails bit deeper into her palm. "She doesn't sleep."
Janir's gaze fell on Noor's face. He saw the smile, that strange, lingering thing, and his pulse slowed.
He wet his lips. "Then what is this?"
Maya opened her eyes. "Something else."
A pause.
Janir shifted. "You knew, didn't you?"
Maya breathed in. Held it. "Knew what?"
Maya shut her eyes. Opened them. "I didn't know why."
Janir studied her. The way she sat too still. The way her shoulders locked.
"And yet, you said nothing."
Maya gave a hollow little laugh. "What was I supposed to say?" She turned, finally, and her voice was razor-thin. "That I watched her put it to her lips, night after night, and waited for her body to stop waking up?"
Silence.
Janir's hands curled at his sides. "Yet she did."
Maya's throat was tight. "Yes."
She looked at Noor.
"Until now."
The air in the room pressed down.
Janir took a step closer.
Maya's voice wavered.
"She smiles in her sleep."
Janir felt something settle in his stomach.
Maya's voice was quieter now.
"I have never seen her smile like that while awake."
Janir said nothing.
Because he had seen that smile before.
And he did not want to remember where.
The night clung to the air like something rotten, thick with the scent of damp earth and the quiet decay of things long abandoned. Zeyla sat at the edge of the bed, her fingers limp against the sheets, her eyes fixed on the bottle. The lilies beside it had begun to curl at the edges, petals folding inward, as if recoiling from the truth of their own existence.
Then, the silence was torn apart.
The phone rang. A shrill, unholy sound. The kind that did not simply demand attention but punished it.
She answered.
At first, only breath. Ragged, uneven—like a drowning thing. Then, a sob, the kind that had no dignity, no restraint.
"Zeyla—"
The name was half-choked, strangled before it fully formed.
Zeyla's fingers tensed. "What is it?"
A whimper. A breath that collapsed into something guttural. And then—
"Sanlang."
The name fell like a stone dropped into a well. No echo. Only depth.
Zeyla felt the room tilt. "What happened?"
"He—he's—" Yilan's voice broke, shattered into unintelligible fragments. Then, through the static, a whisper of something too real.
"He won't__."
Zeyla's stomach curled into itself. The bottle sat where she left it. Pale glass, fragile in the half-light. The lilies had begun to wither.
"Zeyla," Yilan begged now, the sound raw, desperate. "Please."
Her voice was not just fear—it was grief, the kind that did not weep but pleaded.
Zeyla stood. "I'm coming."
The line went dead.
Outside, the wind had stopped, as if the world itself was holding its breath.