Prologue
He left her.
Again and again and again, he left her.
Vhenan, he said. A kiss, a breath. Fingers intertwined with her own, the sweet taste of tears on her tongue. The word still echoed within her mind. A kaleidoscope of colors, a symphonic melody of death. He faded further and further from her reach. His silhouette opposed the shimmer of the glass towering before her. He was a shadow she would never catch, a longing she would never grasp, a dream she would never fulfill. He was nothing, yet he was everything.
His voice, the Dread Wolf's voice, remained an anchor to the fact that all of it was real. He was real, just as much as she was. But everything she ever believed was a lie.
She was a fool, an ignorant fool, blinded by what could have been. And she bought it all, drunk on his words in the hopes that one day she would finally win. One day she would finally understand. But all she could do now was relive it all, relive him leaving her again and again and again.
You change everything. You are so beautiful. In another world.
She could scarcely tell whether she already died, whether this was what death felt like. The knowledge that it could never be, that their misery would never cease to stop. The memory of her and him, together but never complete. But vhenan. It was all she needed to keep death at bay, and it was all she needed to fulfill her own demise.
Ar lasa mala revas, you are free.
Another bitter truth, another sweetened lie. She could have never been more imprisoned. His pain, her pain, the world's pain on her shoulders, her lungs, her heart. The world forever unsatisfied with its appetite for her sorrow. It fed on her agony and drained away whatever joy she once remembered like a long-forgotten dream. This damning world taunted and teased her with hope and love and beauty… with him.
She screamed, the memory of his lips ghosting over her own, the shattering pain piercing up her arm. He couldn't leave her. Not again. He couldn't.
Losing him would-
She reached out desperately into emptiness, but the silhouette was gone.
Again and again and again.
It was an unspoken promise.
He would always leave her, and they would always break.