The wind in Vireya had changed.
Where once it carried the serene lull of silver bells and distant moon-chant, it now whispered in fractured tones—like breath through a cracked flute. The ley lines still pulsed underfoot, but their rhythm had shifted. The beat was faster. Uneven.
Selene stood at the edge of the palace balcony, Elira pressed to her shoulder, and watched the sky.
She could feel it—Theron's magic stirring again.
---
He had stopped sleeping through the night.
Where Elira dreamed in soft glows and lullaby whispers, Theron cried in fits of fire. His breath would fog the glass in the moonroom. The hearth flared whenever he fussed. And once—just once—when Kael had tried to soothe him with a lullaby, the crib had caught flame for a heartbeat.
He hadn't been burned.
Not a hair.
But Selene had felt it in her bones: Theron was changing.
Not in the way infants normally grew.
In the way volcanoes did before eruption.
---
It started with dreams.
Elira began humming songs in her sleep—songs Selene had never taught her. Songs of stars, time, and wind. Every time she did, flowers bloomed beneath her bassinet. Her skin glowed like pearl dust. Magic wrapped around her like air.
Then came Theron's dreams.
He didn't hum.
He growled.
And once, Selene heard a name from his lips as he dreamed—one she didn't recognize.
"Azthera…"
---
Kael returned from a patrol of the outer borders on the sixth day after they left the Bone Wastes. He strode into the chamber, armor dusted in frost and blood. Selene rushed to meet him.
"Was it another breach?"
Kael nodded grimly. "The wards at Hollow's End were bent. Not broken—but something tested them. Something… strong."
"Rogues?"
"Worse. It wasn't wolves."
His eyes flicked toward the twins' sleeping forms.
"It was drawn by them."
---
They met in the Temple of Quiet Stars with Rowan, Lira, Naeria, and the new priestess of lore, Maelyra.
A map stretched between them, illuminated by rune-light. Naeria tapped a point near the old ruins of Olyria.
"Magic's thinning. The birth of the twins has created a surge, a vacuum, and a bleed. All three at once. And now… it's drawing others."
"Others?" Kael asked, voice sharp.
Maelyra looked up. "Things that should not remember us. Things we buried in prophecy. They are… listening."
---
Selene sat in silence, her hand absently rubbing her mark. She felt Elira's peaceful hum in the back of her mind. She felt Theron, too.
His heartbeat was faster.
Stronger.
And it beat out of sync with hers now.
---
That night, it happened.
Elira was playing in the moon garden, her laugh trailing behind butterflies of light she'd summoned without even trying. Theron toddled a few feet away, not yet walking, but crawling faster than the eye could follow. Kael watched them both with wary affection, a blade sheathed across his back.
Then—Elira floated.
Just an inch off the ground.
Like the air lifted her.
Kael gasped. "Selene!"
She ran from the chamber, heart in her throat.
Elira spun gently midair, eyes wide and unblinking. A spiral of stars had formed above her head—visible only in moonlight.
Then Theron screamed.
Magic burst from his chest in a ripple of heat. The grass beneath him blackened instantly. He grabbed the air—and Elira fell, softly, like a feather—but the stars vanished.
She blinked.
He growled.
And for a second—
Their eyes met.
Not as children.
But as forces.
Opposing tides.
---
Kael scooped them both into his arms before anything else could happen. Selene wrapped her arms around all three, heart shattering in slow motion.
"They're only infants," she whispered.
"They're not," Rowan said from the garden wall, where he'd been watching. "Not anymore."
---
They began testing the twins in secret.
Maelyra used lunar prisms. Rowan invoked memory crystals. Naeria cast dream magic in circles around them to see how they reacted.
Elira thrived in every test of creation. She summoned light. She restored dead plants. She once sang a shadow away.
Theron?
Theron absorbed energy.
Where Elira gave, he took. When they showed him runes, he burned them into the stone—like his magic wanted to own knowledge, not honor it. He melted a crystal in his fist when it hummed too loudly. He made the moon water boil.
And he smiled as he did it.
---
Kael didn't speak of the test results.
He trained harder. Patrolled longer. Stared at his son like he was trying to see something before it saw him first.
Selene noticed.
"You're afraid of him," she said softly one night.
Kael didn't deny it.
"I'm afraid of what he'll be forced to become."
---
That same night, Selene dreamt again.
Elira floated above a pool of silver water, her skin glowing with light. But she looked older. Wiser. Alone.
Then came the storm.
Theron stood across from her, cloaked in red fire, surrounded by wolves of flame and ash.
> "Why are you doing this?" she asked him in the dream.
> Theron tilted his head. "Because they made me choose."
---
Selene woke gasping.
She went to the twins' room.
They were asleep.
Elira's hand glowed with stars.
Theron clutched her wrist in his.
They were holding each other.
Peaceful. For now.
But the room smelled faintly of burned jasmine.
---
In the weeks that followed, Selene and Kael took the twins to the River of Threads, an ancient place where prophecies were woven and unraveled by sacred spirits. It was said that the river sang of every life before it began.
Naeria performed the ritual, casting silver sand into the current.
Elira giggled.
The river rippled into a thousand delicate constellations, singing softly:
Healer. Lightbearer. Queen of the Last Gate.
Then she placed Theron on the stone.
The river boiled.
The water turned red for a moment—then cleared.
And whispered:
Breaker. Flamebearer. Shadowborn.
Selene wept silently.
---
Kael came to her that night.
They didn't speak.
They made love in slow silence, clinging to the only thing that made sense: each other.
It was fire and fear. It was warmth and war. It was two bodies swearing never to let fate take what they had built.
And in the quiet after, Kael said:
"I love them both."
Selene whispered, "So do I."
"Then we raise them not as opposites."
"But as halves of a whole."
---
Far away, a new moon rose.
And in the deepest dark—
A new prophecy awoke.
---