I was the thunder in Aethelgard’s bones. Streets learned my footfalls; towers remembered the heat of my shadow. I ruled because I could, because fear is simpler than law, and the city preferred simple. In those days I counted armies, not heartbeats. I wore a man’s shape when I needed doors to open and a dragon’s when I wanted walls to forget they were stone.

Then came Aisha—steady hands, clear eyes, voice like a blade that cut without shouting. She did not flinch when my wings darkened the square. She traced sigils into air while I watched for the tremor that never came. “Why do you speak to me instead of fleeing?” I asked, annoyed to hear curiosity in my own mouth. She met my gaze and did not look away. I mistook that for kinship. It was resolve.

The Celestial Concordance named me problem, not person. Clerics in white iron. Judges who smelled of incense and paper. My name became a writ; my body, a precedent. Aisha stood among them when the circle brightened. I stepped forward, expecting her to step with me. Instead she spoke a word that carried weight like a falling door. The world narrowed to a seal on my skin and the taste of cold stone. I remember saying, “You,” not as accusation, but as fact.

The Shadowfell does not keep time; it keeps echoes. Rage burned, then cooled, then hardened into a quiet nothing. I learned how to be still enough that darkness forgot me.

Centuries later, iron boots and frightened breath. The Ironclad Legion pried at the edges of my prison like thieves at a coffin. Their torches stuttered when I exhaled. I did not make them suffer; I ended their choices. Stone cracked; night rushed in; history resumed.

The world had softened at its edges and hardened at its rules. Treaties. Wards. Courts that file catastrophe into paragraphs. I searched for Aisha and found a village instead: Oakhaven, where a girl with ink-stained fingers bought bread and laughed with her eyes more than her mouth. The soul was the same chord; the song was different. She knelt to tie a child’s shoe. She smiled at stray dogs. She looked at me and saw—a stranger.

I watched until watching felt like trespass. Then, in the herb field’s hush, I chose the old language: certainty. I crossed the distance, caught her throat in my hands, and lifted just enough to tilt the world. Her fingers flew to my wrists; her breath hitched; her pupils widened and held. “You don’t remember me, but I remember you.” My voice came low, even. “Aisha—what does it matter what you call yourself? You are mine. You have always been mine. And this time...” I traced the warm line of her pulse with my thumb and felt my own falter. “You won’t escape me.”