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NORA

I ’ve never felt silence like this before.

It isn’t peace.

It isn’t stillness.

It’s absence.

Rhaegar lies broken beneath me, the last echoes of his laughter still warm on my skin. But his chest no longer rises. His body—stone and flesh intertwined—is still, fissured with lightless cracks like veins of ash tracing his final sacrifice.

He was smiling when he said it was love.

And now he’s gone.

No. Not gone. Not yet.

I press my hands against his chest, fingers trembling, heart breaking with every second that ticks past. The world around us is hushed in reverence—forest shadows standing vigil, moonlight pooling through torn branches, wind skimming the earth like it, too, knows something sacred has just been taken.

I won’t let this be the end.

I won’t let death win.

“There is a rite,” the memory whispers, not in my voice but Medea’s—before she was monster, before she was hunger. When she was still woman. Still Purna.

A rite for resurrection.

No, not resurrection— preservation. A shared soul. A divided life.

Two bound as one.

I fall to my knees beside him, blood streaked down my arms, heart thundering so violently it threatens to drown out the ancient words rising in my mind.

It’s forbidden.

Forgotten.

But not gone.

Because she used it once.

And I remember now.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, laying my palm against the cold stone of his chest. The fracture beneath it pulses faintly, like the last beat of a dying heart. My magic stirs—weak, but intact. Still mine.

I dig my fingers into the earth beside me, clawing through moss and root until I find stone. Black and veined with faint amber lines. A focus. It doesn’t need to be pure. It just needs to be ancient.

I draw it to me, place it between us.

And I begin.

The words pour from my lips in the old tongue, not Medea’s corrupted version, but the one buried beneath layers of blood and bone. My voice shakes at first, but then it finds rhythm, cadence— will. Magic blooms like poison in reverse, seeping from my fingertips, from the center of my chest, from the soul I’m about to carve in half.

“I offer what was never meant to be given…” I whisper, the rite flowing through me like a storm barely leashed. “A life split. A flame divided. One heart, halved.”

My skin burns.

My vision blurs.

But I keep going.

“Take what you need to preserve what should not yet be taken.”

The air thickens.

The stone glows.

And then the pain hits.

It’s not fire.

It’s memory.

Every moment of my life floods my body at once—my childhood in the Purna sanctum, my first betrayal, the day I met Rhaegar, the nights I didn’t sleep because I was too afraid of what I might become.

And then…

Him.

His voice. His touch. The way he looked at me like I was worth saving.

I cry out as the rite takes hold—something inside me snapping, not in pain but in cost. My magic surges outward, not alone this time, but joined with something deeper.

Something real.

A golden light bursts from my chest, tethering me to him, wrapping his cracked, still body in a cocoon of power laced with grief and devotion.

The ritual seizes.

I scream.

And then, nothing.

Silence, again.

The stone fades.

The tether dims.

And Rhaegar doesn’t move.

I collapse over him, chest heaving, tears spilling freely. My hand curls into his shirt, gripping him like a lifeline that’s already gone slack.

“It wasn’t enough,” I whisper. “Gods, please… it wasn’t enough…”

I bury my face in the curve of his neck, sobbing. I gave half of myself— more than half—and still, it wasn’t enough.

Maybe love was never meant to win in Protheka.

Maybe this world only knows how to take.

“I would’ve chosen you,” I whisper against his skin. “In every world. Every lifetime. Even if I had to watch you die a thousand times— I’d still choose you. ”

His body is cold now.

Still.

Gone.

I begin to pull away, every part of me shattered?—

When his fingers twitch.

At first I think I imagined it.

But then they move again.

Slowly.

Weakly.

Stone cracks with a low groan as his arm lifts, trembling.

I freeze.

My heart lodges in my throat.

And then, his eyes open.

Not Medea’s black. Not the gold of corrupted soulflame.

His eyes.

Rhaegar.

Alive.

Breathing.

Looking at me like he’s just seen the sun for the first time.

“…Nora?”

His voice is raw. Disbelieving.

I can’t speak.

I throw myself into his arms, sobbing, laughing, clinging to him as his body warms beneath mine, the fractures still visible but glowing—stitched with gold magic like scars that no longer threaten to break.

“You’re alive,” I cry into his neck. “You’re here. ”

His arms wrap around me, tight. Fierce. Real.

“I thought I was gone.”

“You were,” I whisper, pulling back just enough to see his face. “But I brought you back. I gave you half my soul.”

His gaze darkens, full of wonder and anguish. “Nora, you shouldn’t have?—”

“I wanted to,” I say, cutting him off with trembling hands cradling his face. “I chose to. Because I love you, too.”

Then I kiss him.

Iin a world that’s tried to take everything from us?—

He kisses me back.

Not with desperation.

Not with hunger.

But with something terrifying in its gentleness.

Hope.