1750.
The year the stars wept fire, and time forgot how to heal.
He was born beneath an eclipse—
a child not meant to cry,
yet the world trembled with his first breath.
The seers called him a fracture,
a rift dressed in flesh,
with eyes like broken moons
and a soul too old for its cradle.
They named him Aurem—
but he would become only a whisper,
a tale too cursed to pass down whole.
He loved once.
Truly, painfully.
A girl of sun-kissed fate and midnight song.
Her magic was wild, like his,
but untethered to vengeance.
Together, they were supposed to heal the realms—
light and shadow woven in balance.
But fate, cruel and laughing,
let her heart choose another.
And Aurem… broke.
He didn't scream.
He rewrote the stars.
Called on gods that slumbered beneath silence.
Bartered centuries for a single wish:
"Let them suffer like I have.
Let them forget each other, again and again—
until love becomes a curse."
And so, the prophecy was born,
inked in the bones of time:
> "When fire touches shadow, a bond will rise that fate itself cannot undo.
But if remembered too late, it will awaken the king who forgot nothing."
Aurem became what the world feared to name:
The Forgotten King.
Not dead. Not dreaming.
Just waiting.
He watched lovers burn,
watched shadows repeat,
watched magic bleed dry in every realm.
Until now.
The tale was buried.
But not all who knew it had turned to ash.
One witch still breathed.
Locked away in the eastern ruins,
where time coiled like a snake around stone,
where memories grew teeth
and shadows whispered lullabies laced in warnings.
They called her Seris.
Once the High Seer of the Ivory Flame.
She had seen the prophecy unfold—
seen the child born beneath the eclipse.
And for that, the coven exiled her.
To speak his name was to awaken his gaze.
But when magic tore the skies
and the veils thinned with war,
Seris escaped her prison of silence.
And on the battlefield,
where blood soaked spells and air broke from screams,
she found them.
Lyra, lit by wildfire.
Raven, shadow-bound and steady.
The moment she saw them, she fell to her knees.
> "You've touched the thread,"
she whispered, her voice dry like old pages.
"And now it unravels. He stirs.
Lyra stepped forward.
Raven didn't speak—but his shadows curled tighter around him.
> "Who?" Lyra asked.
"What are you talking about?
Seris met their eyes, broken stars in hers.
> "The Forgotten King.
Aurem. The one whose love cursed every realm to repeat.
He has watched every lifetime
and now…
he remembers you.
Silence thundered louder than any war cry.
The air changed.
Like the world itself exhaled—finally admitting it had been lying all along.
Seris trembled.
> "They kept me hidden so I wouldn't tell.
But the war… the fire… your bond… it's all waking him.
You were never just lovers.
You are his undoing—
or his return."
The wind howled like it, too, remembered.
Seris rose, frail yet fire-lit, her silver hair untamed as storm tides.
> "Aurem was love incarnate once…
before love turned to wrath.
Before betrayal fractured his soul and birthed the prophecy.
He bound time in loops,
each turn rewriting pain into fate,
all to find her again."
She looked at Lyra.
Then at Raven.
> "In every lifetime,
you are reborn to find each other.
And in every lifetime,
your bond tears the world open."
"This cycle—this one—was meant to break it.
Or seal it forever."
Raven's voice cut through the rising silence.
> "Why us?"
Seris closed her eyes, and when she opened them, a spark of memory—not her own—glimmered.
> "Because you were his.
Both of you.
In a time long gone, you were Aurem's.
His love.
His curse.
His end."
> "And now he wants you back."
Thunder cracked like a broken promise overhead.