Chapter 3: The Eyes That Remember Flame
Jaden wandered through the black forest, its trees twisted like forgotten prayers, each root groaning beneath his footsteps. The broken sword pulsed faintly at his side, and with every mile he walked, the dreams returned—her voice, her tears, the sound of their blades clashing against the world. He didn't know her name. But her sorrow had made a home in his chest.
He found her beneath the ruined arches of an ancient sanctuary—Lisa, cloaked in red, her blade buried in the stone at her feet, her eyes covered by silk and silence. She stood alone, unmoving, like a monument to a tragedy no one remembered. Jaden didn't speak at first. He knew her before he knew himself. It was the kind of knowing that didn't need names.
"I… saw you," he said finally, voice low. "In dreams."
"I've been waiting," she whispered. "For you to remember."
He stepped closer, and the storm gathered above them. A dark wind tore across the broken temple, as if creation itself feared what they might become—what they had once been. Lisa trembled. "I see only fire," she said, lifting her face toward him. "But not with these eyes. The real ones were taken long ago… when you died."
And then it came—vision not of this world but a memory older than reality. A battlefield of stars. Lisa kneeling over Jaden's body, her screams swallowed by the collapse of galaxies. She had burned her eyes away trying to pull him back. And he had faded from her arms, not knowing her name.
Jaden knelt and reached out—not to her sword, but to her face. His hand trembled as it brushed the silk away, revealing scorched lids, raw with forgotten power. "I don't have magic," he said, voice cracking. "But I remember what your eyes looked like. And I'll give them back… even if it takes everything."
Lightning struck.
A phantom blade came screaming from the sky—a spectral assassin, cloaked in dust and red chainmail, forged from ancient regret. It moved faster than wind. Jaden threw himself forward, blade drawn—but Lisa stepped in front of him, striking with her blind sword in a perfect arc. The assassin's chest split open like cloth.
But another came. And another.
Ten. Twenty. All born of the "Old Pact"—a curse Lisa had made to remember Jaden. Each assassin was a reflection of a memory where he had died. And now, they were here to finish the forgetting.
Jaden fought like he was breaking—blades ringing against spectral limbs, eyes wild with panic. He had never been trained. But something deeper moved in his bones. An old rhythm. A vow: I will not leave her again. Blood ran down his shoulder, but his hand never loosened. And in one terrible, beautiful instant, he stepped in front of her and drove his broken sword into the sky—straight into the heart of the last assassin.
The world fell silent.
Lisa collapsed into his arms, her blind eyes open, glowing faintly red. For the first time in millennia, they were whole. "You gave them back," she breathed. "Even after all I burned."
Jaden held her tightly as the rain began to fall.
"I never left," he whispered. "Even when I didn't know your name