They met beneath a sky painted in dusk.

  She was humming—low and tuneless—as she crouched among a field of silver-petaled asters, brushing pollen from her fingertips. A faint smile tugged at her mouth, the kind worn by those who'd grown too used to their own company. She looked up at the sound of his approach, curious but unafraid.

  He said nothing. Just watched. Like a man starving might watch a feast and dare not taste it. The wind stirred the flowers between them, bending the tall stems in slow rhythm. A petal caught in her hair, and she didn’t move to brush it away.

  She tilted her head. Studied him as though she’d seen him in a dream once and was trying to place the face.

  “Have we met?” she asked.

  He smiled. A slow, aching thing.

  “Not yet.”

  She blinked, then stood, brushing dust from her skirts. “Well, that’s a strange thing to say.”

  He nodded. “I’m quite strange.”

  She glanced down, then back at him, eyes playful. “That sounds like an invitation.”

  He didn’t answer. Just watched as she turned and began walking barefoot into the twilight, the asters parting for her like water.

  “Come on, stranger,” she said over her shoulder. “You can tell me how strange you are.”

  And just like that, he followed.

  He would always follow.

  They walked the gardens for hours. Or maybe it was days. The Celestial Realm did not keep time the way mortals did, and neither of them cared to mark it. Their fingers brushed once between flowered hedges and didn’t part again.

  “You’re quieter than I expected,” she said, plucking a blossom with glowing tips. “I imagined you more talkative.”

  He glanced at her, as if unsure whether to smile. “I think I said too much, once. And now I’ve been trying to learn silence ever since.”

  “That sounds lonely.”

  “It is.”

  She didn't offer pity. Just laced her fingers with his.

  He paused, as if committing the gesture to memory. Then, without a word, he plucked a blossom and tucked it behind her ear. She tilted her head at him, amused but said nothing. The wind carried the scent of jasmine between them.

  She smiled, unaware of the weight of the act.

  Laughter in a marble corridor. Books strewn like fallen leaves. Mortal works, stolen and hoarded. She read with lips half-moving, tracing lines with her finger. He watched her instead of the words.

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  She would read aloud to him—fragments of mortal poems, letters between lovers long turned to dust. She had a way of making their language sound holy.

  “Listen to this,” she said once, voice low as wind through leaves. “Even the gods, it says, will forget themselves for love.”

  He said nothing. Just closed his eyes and let the words carve him open.

  “They’re so fragile,” she whispered later, lifting a crumbling page. “And yet... beautiful.”

  “Yes,” he said. He wasn’t looking at the book.

  Later that night, she found another book and placed it gently in his lap—a collection of mortal songs. “Read something to me,” she said. “Anything.”

  He tried. Stumbled. His voice was too old for the words. She laughed and took the book from him. “Maybe next time,” she said.

  There would be many next times.

  They kissed.

  It wasn’t shy. Or soft. It was the kind of kiss that felt like memory—like something old made new again. Her fingers curled in his hair. His hands trembled like he was holding a flame he hadn’t earned.

  They were in a sunlit chamber above the sea, walls made of coral and pearl. The wind came through the arches and touched her like it, too, remembered her.

  She kissed him again. Laughed against his mouth.

  “You kiss like someone with secrets,” she said.

  “Maybe I do,” he answered, quiet and raw. And hated himself for how true it was.

  She didn’t notice the ache in his voice. Or if she did, she mistook it for wonder.

  He plucked another jasmine blossom from the pot near the window and tucked it behind her ear.

  “You’re doing that again,” she said, bemused.

  He only smiled.

  They argued once in a forest temple. Over nothing. Over everything.

  It was a place she had made—grown from root and song. The trees there remembered her voice. The leaves trembled when she cried.

  She said the mortal realm could be mended. That healing did not mean forgetting. That decay was not failure, just another form of growth.

  He said the cracks were already too deep. That mercy was a luxury they couldn’t afford. That what she called cruelty was the only way to save them.

  She accused him of giving up.

  He turned away before she could see the war in his face.

  “Why do you always look at me like you're waiting to say goodbye?” she shouted.

  He said nothing. Because if he spoke, he might not stop.

  She forgave him.

  Of course she did.

  They lay together on the balcony of a shattered tower, watching the stars shift out of order. She curled against him like she’d done it a thousand times.

  The sky above them burned slow and pale. Wind moved through the ruins like breath through hollow bones.

  “I think I love you,” she murmured.

  His eyes closed. As if she had stabbed him and he’d decided to bleed quietly.

  “You shouldn’t,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  He pulled her closer, resting his forehead against hers. His voice was barely a breath.

  “Nothing.”

  The scent of burned jasmine. Blood like spilled starlight.

  He stood over her body.

  His hands dripped red. They always did, in the end. No matter how the story began.

  She lay like a fallen statue, unmarked, still, perfect. Eyes closed. Lips slightly parted. As if waiting for him to say something kind.

  A breath left him. Ragged. Then it twisted, jagged, breaking into laughter.

  At first, hollow. Air through cracked stone. But it grew, rough and bitter, a sound with no joy, no relief. Only fragments breaking under weight too great to bear.

  He turned, sudden and violent, driving his fist into the wall of her sanctuary. The opalescent stone cracked beneath the blow, fractures spreading like shattered constellations. Pain flared sharp through his hand—real, grounding—but meaningless.

  He exhaled hard, dragging his bloodied palm through his hair, smearing crimson across his temple like war paint.

  Memories bled through him.

  Laughter beneath violet moons.

  Hands entwined, promises whispered, carved eternal.

  His fingers brushed her fading skin. His voice cracked with a breath too fragile to name.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured. The word tasted wrong. A lie. A prayer. A wound without end.

  The wind through the broken tower whispered her name.

  He turned. Stepped into silence.