The Price of Magic
It settled like a stone on his chest, a weight heavier than any burden he had ever carried before. It wasn't simply the fear of what he might witness; it was what it would cost him. Gazing into the future was no easy task, even less so when fate itself intervened.
And magic wouldn't be satisfied with something trivial. No, it would demand something far greater. Something irreplaceable.
And he must be willing to relinquish it.
He let his fingers curl at his sides as he eyed Ronan. The thief was seated at the far end of the desk, idly tossing a gold coin up and down, the glimmer of gold dancing in the dim candlelight. The way Ronan scrutinized the coin, his face furrowed in thought, told Zephyr he clearly was not aware of the tension tightening in Zephyr's shoulders or his mildly trembling hands at the thought of what came next.
If Ronan knew the risk Zephyr was prepared to take, he would never let him do it.
So, Zephyr smiled, hoping it was reassuring rather than merely fragile.
"I need to do this alone."
The coin at that instant froze in the air as Ronan caught it clenching his fingers around the metal. Ronan's golden eyes were sharp yet uncertain as they emerged to meet Zephyr's gaze.
"Alone?" he asked again, scepticism tinting his voice.
Zephyr nodded, maintaining a steady face. "The magic… it requires focus. If you're there, it might interfere."
That wasn't a complete lie. Magic was volatile, but it was also very dangerous.
And it would also need prices to be paid.
This was more than just about the focus. It was about the price he would be paying. And he didn't want Ronan to see just how much it would cost.
Ronan's narrowed gaze sparked with conviction like a slow-burning flame. "I don't like this."
"Neither do I," Zephyr admitted, his voice softer now as he reached out, placing a hand on Ronan's arm. "But I need to do this, Ronan. Trust me?"
For a moment, Ronan was silent. His mouth opened as if to contest, then stopped.
Zephyr could see it—the war within him. The instinct to rebel against this, demand an answer, and not allow Zephyr to go through something alone.
But there was something else—the more fragile something.
Trust.
A sigh sharp and reluctant escaped from Ronan as he turned away from him, now gripping the coin tighter in his hands.
"...Fine," he muttered.
Zephyr squeezed Ronan's arm briefly before pulling free; an ache settled in his chest where Ronan's warmth had lingered on his fingers.
"Wait for me here," he whispered barely above a whisper.
And with that, he turned and vanished behind the heavy velvet curtain leading into the card-reading room.
As the fabric rippled in his wake, Ronan remained seated, eyes fixed on the candle's ever-flickering flame, weighted down by all the things there were to say.
Some part of him wanted to chase after Zephyr.
Another part of him already feared that to wait would be the greatest mistake of his life.
A Temptation Too Familiar
The silence that followed became eerie-the sort of quiet that pressed in from all sides, filling the room with nearly suffocating quietness.
Ronan drew a slow breath, leaning back against the desk, fingers now tapping on the wood unconsciously. The only motion in the room came from candlelight; the light flickered, sending shadows dancing on the walls of Zephyr's treasure room.
Artifacts lined the shelves-rare objects whose stories had been lost to time, relics of the old magic and fate. Each held some mystery, some past waiting to be untangled.
Just one caught his interest.
The golden spear.
The one Marcus had given Zephyr as payment.
It was nowhere near being the finest artifact in the room. There were jewelled daggers, there were spellbinding tomes, and there were trinkets tingling with dormant energy.
Yet, this simple artifact stood out to him.
It was calling to him.
He stammered for breath as he approached, heart beating in bare rhythm, slow and heavy, against his chest.
It rested on a dark shelf of wood, flanked by two dusty tomes, as if it had been abandoned there, forgotten. But Ronan felt it; he felt its weigh-the hum of the unseen curling around it like a whisper.
He bit the inside of his mouth as he longingly scanned the spear's sleek body with his eyes-the way the surface caught the flickering candlelight, aglow with an almost ghostly edge.
There was an odd sense of familiarity to it.
Too familiar.
And then— A flicker of memory.
The vision.
The second card reading.
The bag he had seen himself carrying, laden with the weight of something cherished. Protecting it. Holding on.
His heart thundered against his chest, aching yet consistent.
Was this it?
Was this what Lukas had taken from him?
His fingers moved a little at his sides. Every instinct weakly urged him to reach out, to grab it; to claim what might have once been his.
But he couldn't.
No. No, this wasn't his.
This belonged to Zephyr.
This was part of the magician's collection, nothing more than a piece in a world where Ronan belonged less than nothing.
Yet...
Ronan swallowed hard as his breath trembled.
Perhaps-just perhaps, it was not theft if it had been his.
The thought twisted somewhere painfully deep into his mind.
His hand hovered above the spear: the air around it thickening, moving. Some presence-something palpable yet hidden-coiled along its body like a warning.
His heart thudded against his ribs.
If this really bore witness to his past...
If this was all that Lukas had stolen...
What if he took it?
Which thought terrified him even more: What if he left it behind?
A Meeting with Fate
Taking a slow breath, Zephyr felt his fingers glide across the cool, ornate wooden surface of the table. Beneath this weighty chair scrolled all the coiled history of a thousand heartbreaking decisions—mortal decisions that could not be revoked.
Energy crackled deftly in haunting arms around him, touching him on the skin, like invisible fingers.
Smells of ancient paper and burnt candle wax pervaded the stillness. But there was something other than that.
Something deeper.
Something ancient.
A force older than time itself.
He released his breath slowly and began to chant.
The words rolled from his tongue not spoken but unveiled. They were not his-they belonged to the universe, to the very fabric of existence.
They curled into the air like whispered secrets, weaving an invisible bridge between the present and the unseen.
Then-
A shift.
The temperature drops in the room, a chill creeping across his skin as the candle flames tremble violently, the golden light pouring into something deep and turned luminous blue.
The walls seem to exhale, stretching and contracting as though space wasn't quite real anymore.
And then she came.
A wrinkle in space, a shimmer in time, and suddenly she was just there.
No door had opened.
No shadow stretched before her.
She was not coming in-or rather, she didn't enter the room at all.
She simply was there.
And she was beautiful.
She was ethereal.
She was otherworldly.
She was –
Fate.
Her form shimmered like stardust wrapped in the shape of a woman. A gown of constellations clothed her figure, whose fabric seemed to roll and undulate as if woven from the very night sky itself. Every movement sent ripples through the air, bending reality to her presence.
Golden chains coiled around her wrists-dainty but unbroken-while now they slithered as a living thing up her arms and vanished into the void. Tied with no one, bound to nothing. A symbol of her existence: shackled to time yet never controlled by it.
Like liquid midnight, her hair rained dark as the gash between the stars, threaded with the faint glimmer of those long-forgotten galaxies.
Then those eyes-
No.
It was not eyes.
They were shifting pools of past, present, and future swirling endlessly, unfathomable in their depth.
They settled upon Zephyr, with not a hint of kindness nor cruelty.
Only with knowing.
Her lips curved into a lazy, almost amused smile, which did not reach her eyes.
"You have called me, Zephyr of Veyris," she said, her voice layered with echoes.
By all accounts, it contained the echoes of everything that has ever existed in all forms of reality-there were tales, fables, even songs.
It was not a voice. It was all voices.
"And now, you must name your price."
Zephyr swallowed, his throat dry. The weight of her words pressed against his very soul.
He had known it would not come easily.
He had prepared himself for this.
And yet, here he was, face to face with Fate herself, feeling her all-encompassing presence coil around him-
Was any amount of preparation ever enough to make him ready?
The Weight of the Bargain
The unsettling grin of Fate was edged sharp, deceptively soft, an arched brow and amused almost with the stardust in her hair as if that held galaxies set unraveling, slow and deliberate motion:
"The price can't be a small one," she murmured. Inevitable where her voice was neither cruel nor kind.
Zephyr swallowed.
His throat was dry.
He already knew the cost would be high before he stepped into this room, but standing before Fate herself now, it was no longer distant, no longer theoretical-in fact, it was here now, pushing against him, threading cold fingers of dread through his spine.
Still, he could not hesitate.
Not when Ronan's future hung in the balance.
Not when this was the only chance to break the chains Marcus had wound around him.
Straightening his back, he forced his voice to remain steady.
"What if I give a chunk of my lifespan?" he asked, fingers curling into his palm. "Or a part of my magic?"
A hush fell over the two of them. Heavy and thick.
Then, the air shifted.
Not violently; suddenly but just enough for him to feel it.
Like the tightening of a noose, like the weight of invisible chains coiling around his skin.
Fate chuckled.
The sound was light, almost airy-but it held the echoes of something vast and unknowable. Like wind whispering through forgotten ruins, like laughter carried from another lifetime.
"No," she said simply. "I have no use for such things."
Zephyr's heart thumped against his ribs.
"Then what?" His voice settled with a thread of fear shot through it, despite his best efforts.
Fate studied him with that inscrutable gaze, luminous in which she stripped something from layers inside his soul, looking for something completely hidden. Then-it was a smile.
Slow. Amused. Mischievous.
"You are willing to pay such a price for love," she mused, voice both caress and warning, burdened by a thousand untold tales. "But tell me, Zephyr-why?"
Zephyr blinked, thrown off balance.
"What do you mean?"
Fate took a slow step forward, her golden chains glinting under the dim candlelight, shifting like living things around her wrists.
"This love you fight for is not yours to begin with," she whispered, and her voice curled into the space between them like smoke, wrapping around his very thoughts.
"So why? Why do you bend your will, your magic, your very existence for something that was never meant to be yours?"
Zephyr's breath hitched.
The words should have made him angry.
Should have.
But instead, they crept into his thoughts like roots of something that should have never been.
He squeezed his fists together.
"Because it matters," he said in a quietly steady tone.
His Fate expression did not shift, but he swore something flickered in that ever-changing gaze.
"Because love is not something to be dictated by fate or curses," he continued. "It is something we choose."
Silence.
Then-
A twinkle in her gaze.
"Is it so?"
The air between them rippled.
And in that instant-Zephyr just knew. She had made her decision.
The Trial of the Forgotten
The air thickened with fate present, warping between them; Zephyr's space started twisting as if reality was retreating from her very step. The candle flames started writhing, perhaps drawn toward the spectacular allure of her presence; the eerie blue glow was casting restless shadows that danced along the walls and ceiling.
"You think that love is a choice?" she softly inquired, her voice a silky thread wrapping around a core of steel.
"Let us see if your love can indeed survive without a choice."
The breath caught in Zephyr's throat. A cold unpleasantness coiled in his gut.
"What do you mean?"
Fate extended a hand.
And for the first time, Zephyr foresaw beyond her beauty—the sheer unbridled force thrummed through her very being.
Unkind.
Unmerciful.
An unfettered brunt-force, the essence of time itself within the palm of her hand.
"I will test you," she simply stated, each word marked by the finality of an unbroken prophecy. "To see if your sacrifice is worth it."
His chest tightened at Fate's words.
"How?''
A slow and deliberate smile creased Fate's lips, a promise mixed with a sentence.
"You will be my enforcer," she said.
"A being that exists in the in-between, a shadow existing only for the balance of time and fate. In so doing, you will lose yourself, your memories, and your identity."
Zephyr's heart thundered in his ears.
Lose himself?
"You will be forgotten," Fate said, her voice somehow neither kind nor cruel, only sure. "By everyone. And you, too, will forget."
Zephyr staggered back as the weight of her words settled in his bones.
Forget?
Forget Ronan?
Forget the life they had just started to build, the moments they had stolen, the pieces of themselves they had carved into each other?
A horrible, suffocating fear seized his chest.
Fate stepped closer. Her eyes were twin galaxies collapsing in. "And because of the curse which binds you, he will forget you as well."
Zephyr's throat tightened. "That's not—"
"But if you're correct," Fate interrupted pleasantly, "if love is a choice and not simply memory and fate binding you, then you will find one another again."
An implicit challenge. A trial steeped in destiny.
Zephyr could hear his heart thundering like a war drum.
This was more than a price—this was an examination. A horrible, cosmic gamble.
She wanted to see whether love could transcend time. To see whether it could reach beyond the burden of lost memories and forgotten promises.
And if it couldn't...
Zephyr's fingers clenched into fists.
He had come here for answers. To protect Ronan. To fight for him.
But now—now he was being asked to risk it all.
No past to cement them. No memories to guide him. No assurance.
Would he take that leap?
Could he even truly believe that their love would persist—would whittle its way through the void, through the darkness, and back to the light?
Fate was standing before him, waiting. Watching.
There was no turning back now.
His moment of choice lay right in front of Zephyr.
And it felt like the universe held its breath.