The tower rose like a broken needle against the winter sky.
Cracked obsidian bricks spiraled into stormclouds, rimmed with glowing sigils that pulsed once every heartbeat—ancient, untranslatable, and angry. The wind never touched the tower, not really. It whined just outside its radius like a thing shut out, clawing for purchase.
Within, the air was still. Cold, but never moving. Timeless.
And in the heart of the tower, seated before a long-dead hearth, was the man who could no longer die.
Aurelian Duskmoor looked like he had been carved out of the same obsidian as the walls around him—tall, sharp, and impossibly still. His long black hair was gathered loosely behind his shoulders, falling in silken sheets down his back, save for a single white streak that sliced through his fringe like a scar of moonlight. His skin, pale with a faint chill-blue undertone, caught no warmth from the flickering candles; it reflected light like a blade. His eyes—ice-gray ringed faintly in violet—looked as if they'd once known how to feel, but had forgotten somewhere between centuries.
He wore high-collared robes of midnight black, the hem embroidered in dying silver runes that shimmered faintly with dormant spells. Every thread was precise, every motion calculated. Even at rest, he gave the impression of a man moments from striking.
His face, sculpted and cruelly elegant, was unreadable. As though emotion were a language he had spoken once, long ago, and had since let die.
Though, Aurelian Duskmoor had not always been this way.
There was a time he thought-when warmth could touch him. When blood had felt like fire in his veins, when a lover's sigh or the rustle of parchment could stir something quiet and tender in his chest. That time had become a shadow. A whisper in dreams. He hadn't felt anything in three hundred years.
The world had called him many things: Archmage. Tyrant. Immortal. Savior, Cursed. None of them were wrong. And none of them were right.
He lifted the goblet beside him, full of crimson wine that didn't taste like anything anymore. His fingers-still pale and elegant, untouched by time-closed around the glass, and for a moment he simply watched the way the candlelight caught the curve of liquid.
There were no mirrors in his tower. Not anymore.
Reflections were dangerous things.
He had just begun to read again, a treatise on runic inversion he'd committed to memory a century ago, when he felt it.
A tremor. Not in the earth-but in the magic. A ripple. A disturbance in the deep well of silence that had, for centuries, kept him undisturbed.
Aurelian stood.
He crossed to the far window, robes brushing across the carved onyx floor like wind through salt. Outside, the horizon was bleeding.
A twilight crack split the sky above the western mountains thin, precise, humming with power. Not lightning. Not magic. Something older.
Aurelian narrowed his eyes. Slowly, he reached for the staff beside the archway he hadn't touched it in decades. The blackwood groaned under his hand like it remembered pain.
It's back.
The thought wasn't his. Or maybe it was. After so many years, the voices in his head were indistinguishable from memory.
He hated them all equally.
The tower shuddered again, not from within-but from recognition. The wards surrounding his sanctum didn't resist the energy coming from the west. They welcomed it. Called to it like old friends across a great sea.
"Caelum," Aurelian said quietly, and the name burned like iron on his tongue.
Two hundred years earlier
The battlefield had been quiet for hours.
Aurelian had stood at the edge of the valley, hair unbound and robes in ruin, as the stars shifted unnaturally above him. His enemies lay in ash and glass. Magic had torn the sky open, and from it had fallen Caelum-an entity not quite real, not quite divine.
They had spoken without words. Traded nothing. And yet-
Caelum had smiled, sad and bright like the last flame of a dying star. "You asked to live. So I gave you what you wanted,"
The pain had started then.
And never stopped.
________________________________________
Now
The twilight crack widened.
Aurelian didn't hesitate. He summoned the ancient glyphs carved beneath the tower's foundation, rotating the floor with a whisper.
Portals flickered like sparks in the air.
He thought of not going. Of staying here and pretending whatever was coming had nothing to do with him. That Caelum-whatever remained of him-could burn out quietly and leave him in peace.
But Aurelian had never been a good liar. Especially not to himself.
The bond tugged.
And though he hated it more than anything, he followed.
________________________________________
He came through the rift like a broken song.
The sky peeled back in layers, soft and slow, as though the universe itself had to remember how
to let him through. Light refracted unnaturally, bending at the seams of reality, and where there should have been lightning or fire, there was only silence-and him.
Caelum stepped out of the tear barefoot, dressed in shadows and moonlight.
The first thing he noticed was the cold. Not
physical, but emptiness a world without him that had kept turning. The sky was the wrong color. The magic tasted wrong. He exhaled and saw his breath scatter like silver dust. He was back, but only partly.
And he could feel it immediately.
Aurelian was alive.
That pull-the ache in his bones, the invisible thread spun from starlight and spellwork-tugged just behind his sternum. He pressed a hand to his chest and closed his eyes. It's still there, he thought. Even after everything I broke.
A breeze stirred his long hair, silver-black and tangled from acons of restlessness. It fell past
his shoulders, partially tied with a fraying ribbon of twilight. His face was sharp, unsettling in its symmetry-high cheekbones, a straight nose, pale skin with a faint glow, as if he belonged to a softer dimension. But it was his eyes that unsettled the world.
They were not merely silver. They were reflective, infinite-mirrors of dying stars. He was not beautiful in a human sense. He was myth, shaped into a fragile form the world could just barely tolerate.
But he was decaying.
Already, cracks lined the inside of his skin-thin glowing fissures running down his arms like veins of light. His body was failing. Too much time outside time. Too much anchoring without the anchor,
Caelum whispered to no one. "I shouldn't be here."
But he looked toward the east.
Toward the pull.
Toward him.
He walked, barefoot, through the snow-flecked valley at the foot of the Shadowrise Mountains. Snow melted under him, not from heat but from
recognition. The world remembered him. Trees shifted to let him pass. Magic trembled in the air, uncertain whether to obey or fear him.
He could feel it-Aurelian's magic had stirred, It was awake, raw, and colder than he remembered
And closer.
Caelum paused at the edge of a frozen lake, its
surface shimmering with faint runes. The wind here still carried his name, whispering it like a
secret: Caelum... Caelum...
His reflection wavered. Not in the water, but behind it.
A mirror shimmered into being a fragment from the city of mirrors, long lost to time and gods. It showed him a vision.
Aurelian, standing in black, his hand resting on
A staff of deadwood and stormlight. No older, no younger. Eternally untouched by time. Eyes narrowed in distant fury.
He's coming, the mirror hummed.
Caelum turned away.
"I didn't come to hurt him," he said quietly. "I came to see if he'd finally forgotten me."
________________________________________
Years Ago -The Last Memory Before the Fall
Aurelian's hands had bled twilight, clawing at
the walls of the void between lives. "I don't want to forget. Not this time. Not you."
Caelum had touched his face, sorrow pouring from him like rain. "Then you'll suffer forever."
"I'd rather suffer than lose you again"
That had been their mistake.
________________________________________
Caelum: The Dream Rewoven
He stepped through the rift like a memory trying to become real.
Twilight curled around him in strands, folding gently off his shoulders like silken smoke. The breach in the sky sealed behind him in silence, leaving no trace but the faint scent of ozone and starlight. For a long moment, Caelum simply stood there—on frost-bitten soil, in a world that no longer remembered how to hold him.
And then he opened his eyes.
They were the kind of silver that didn't reflect light, but swallowed it—liquid mercury flecked with distant constellations, like someone had drowned the night sky in his gaze. They held the weight of a thousand lifetimes, but blinked like he was still learning how to be human again.
He exhaled, and his breath fogged silver. Already the edges of his body were flickering, unstable—cracked lines of faint light veining through his pale skin. As if he were made of porcelain and something divine leaking through.
Caelum didn't look like he belonged in this world.
Or any world, for that matter.
He was tall, though he stood like someone unused to the heaviness of form—his limbs graceful but strange, as if borrowed from shadow. His skin glowed faintly, opalescent and smooth, like moonstone half-covered in frost. Wounds of light lined his arms, not from injury, but from returning.
His hair was half-long, a deep silvery-black, falling in soft, uneven waves to just below his shoulders. It was loosely tied back with a twilight ribbon, fraying at the ends. A few strands had come loose and brushed against his high cheekbones and faintly parted lips. Everything about him was soft—too soft—until you looked into his eyes and realized he was older than the stars.
He wore robes the color of dying dusk—shifting tones of violet, silver, and blue that moved like liquid shadow across his form. They didn't cling or hang, but floated, as if the air itself was too reverent to weigh them down.
To look at Caelum was to feel something inside you ache, though you didn't know why.
And though he was beautiful, it was not the kind of beauty meant for admiration.
It was the kind meant for mourning.
He walked, barefoot, across the snow-flecked valley floor.
Snowflakes melted where his feet touched, not from heat, but from recognition—the land remembered him. Birds stilled. The trees tilted slightly in his direction, their frost-covered limbs bowing as if in prayer.
He paused at the lake's edge. The water was perfectly still, the surface polished like glass, though a soft wind moved all around it. His reflection shimmered—but it was not his current form.
In the mirror-like ice, he saw himself as he had been once—brighter, uncracked, smiling beside a younger Aurelian with fire still in his eyes.
The vision made his chest ache.
"Three hundred years," he murmured, voice barely above a breath. "And I still come back to the same places."
He reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out a sliver of mirror—framed in runes that no longer existed, etched in a language only he remembered.
It pulsed in his hand.
Aurelian was near.
________________________________________
Now
Caelum stood at the edge of the lake and watched the sky begin to warp again this time with purpose. Controlled. Aurelian was using his old portal glyphs. He was coming.
Too fast.
Too soon,
Caelum wasn't ready. Not like this not
fragmented. His body was leaking starlight from the cracks. He hadn't stabilized. The longer he remained in the mortal realm, the more the fabric of reality rejected him.
And still, a strange warmth stirred in his chest. Dangerous. Familiar.
He hated it.
You cursed him to save him. But who will save you now?
The mirror rippled once and vanished,
Aurelian would arrive within the hour.
Caelum turned toward the mountains and
began to walk again-slower this time, eyes lowered, silver hair tangling in the wind. The ache in his limbs returned.
He wasn't sure if he was here to see Aurelian again or say goodbye.
Aurelian Closing In
He could feel him now.
Each step through the sigil gates brought
Aurelian closer to the core of that strange, fractured magic-dense and luminous, like the
heart of a dying sun.
The mountains rose around him, cliffs sharp and ancient, Wind screamed through broken
peaks, yet the world itself felt hushed, Waiting.
Aurelian stepped into the valley basin.
And saw him.
Caelum stood with his back turned, moonlight clinging to him like breath on glass. He was thinner than before. Paler. Cracked.
Aurelian's voice was sharp, too sharp: "Are you here to curse me again?"
Caelum turned.
And smiled, Soft. Sad. "No. I think I came to see if you would kill me."
________________________________________
When the World Held Its Breath The valley felt smaller now.
As if the presence of both of them the cursed and the curser-folded space in on itself. Magic
clung to the air like damp velvet, dense and expectant. Somewhere nearby, the ley lines pulsed underfoot, trembling beneath the strain of two forces once bound now face-to-face.
Aurelian stood tall, his silhouette still and precise, clock swaying just enough to betray the force building inside him. His eyes flickered like stormglass-flat, unreadable, but crackling with withheld fury.
Caelum didn't flinch. He never had.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," he said, voice low, strange and musical. "You hated the bond more than anything."
"I didn't come for the bond," Aurelian said, "I came for the interference."
A beat.
Then Caelum gave a breath of laughter not joy, not derision. Just tired, knowing.
"That's what you're calling it now? Me nearly dying in the center of your world's largest ley cluster?"
"You didn't nearly die," Aurelian growled stepping closer. "You broke. You left pieces of yourself everywhere like blood in the water. And every gate in the Western Reach is trying to drink you in. You're not supposed to be here. You were finished."
Caelum turned away, slow and loose, like someone hiding the weight of old injuries. His silver eyes dimmed, reflecting stars that didn't belong to this sky.
"Nothing's finished, Aurelian. You know that You just stopped watching."
Aurelian's hand twitched near the hilt of his staff. A silent ward bloomed around him sunless light weaving into sharp runes that hovered and hummed. It wasn't an attack. Not yet
"I watched you die. Caelum. Don't make me watch you come apart."
________________________________________
Flashback: The Binding
They had stood in the mirror-city beneath the endless dome of twilight.
Aurelian had been young then human still, barely a mage. His hands trembled from overcasting, his lips stained with copper from the blood price paid for too much power in too
little time.
He had looked up at Caelum not knowing what he was. Not yet.
"I'll do anything," he whispered. "To save him. My brother. My city, I don't care what it costs."
Caelum had studied him, those silver eyes unreadable. "Even if it means you won't be able to love ever again?"
Aurelian didn't hesitate. "Love won't bring them back."
And so Caelum had kissed his
Not on the mouth on the soul. A gesture of anchoring. A divine act.
And with that touch, Caelum had placed the curse.
________________________________________
Present
"I never asked to feel it." Aurelian said now. voice bitter. "The pull. The ache. I hated it. Every time I tried to sleep, it reminded me you
were still out there. Smug. Eternal.
Untouchable."
Caelum faced him again, "And yet.. here you are"
The wind picked up. Snow lifted in spirals, revealing the ancient runes half-buried in the valley floor-wardmarks, the same from the mirror-city. This place wasn't just scenic
coincidence. It was an anchor point.
Auralian realised it first.
"You're trying to stabilize here," he whispered. "You used the twilight rift to bleed your essence back into this world."
Caelum said nothing.
"You should've died," Aurelian snapped. "I burned out half of myself to keep you whole and mortal. You shouldn't be able to do this
anymore."
"I didn't come back through my will," Caalum said softly.
Aurelian froze,
Caelum raised a hand-and between his fingers, a sliver of mirror shimmered.
The mirror-city's memory.
Aurelian's eyes widened.
"You didn't come through the veil," he whispered. "The curse... it's not over."
"No." Caelum said, "It never ended. You
absorbed the core of it when you sacrificed
yourself for me. You became the anchor. And when your magic flared again last moon... the loop restarted."
The world ran on threads veins of starlight
beneath the land called ley lines. They weren't magical in themselves, but they carried
intention, When someone powerful touched them, they bent reality to the wielder's desires-but only if those desires were anchored to truth.
Truth of the soul. Of pain. Of longing.
That's why Caelum's magic was dangerous. He was born of primordial longing a being forged from what gods discarded: emotion too
powerful, grief too row.
And Aurelian?
Aurelian had become the most feared archmage because he had no desire left. His soul was a quiet echo. His magic, cold and perfect.
Until Coelum,
Until the curse gave him back a taste of longing.
________________________________________
The Rift Grows
Caelum's skin cracked again this time across his collarbone. Light bled out like molten silver.
Aurelian cursed under his breath and crossed
the distance in three strides, magic rushing to stabilize Caelum's Frame.
"Don't touch me," Caelum rasped, backing away.
"You'll only speed it up. We're unstable together.
"You should've thought of that before tearing open a ley node, you idiot."
"Still charming, I sez."
"Still dying, I see."
Their eyes locked.
No one spoke.
Above them, the sky rippled. The rift opened wider. The air smelled of scorched dreams and winter iron.
Aureliun's voice broke the silence. "If this is
another loop, I'm ending it here."
Caelum tilted his head, smile vanishing.
"Then you'll have to kill me."
Aurelian raised his hand.
Magic surged.
But his fingers shook.
Not from fear.
From memory.
From the ghost of that kiss on his soul.
________________________________________
Caelum collapsed.
The light burst from his chest like a cracked
star. Aurelian screamed his name and caught him before he hit the ground, magic snarling indo instinct.
Somewhere deep inside the lay lines, something awakened.
The loop had begun again.
But this time-Aurelian remembered everything.
And this time..
He was going to break the rules.