The Underrealm had no sun, no seasons, no sky. Its geography was emotional, not elemental. Time moved in pulses, not hours. With every step Vespera took beside Liora along the River of Forgotten Stars, the landscape shifted to mirror what they refused to say.
They walked in silence, shadows of memory rising around them. Once, the path became the balcony of their old penthouse, the city lights of New Carthage flickering beneath a glass of red wine. Another step, and it transformed into a Sicilian orchard from a vacation that never was—only talked about in the soft hours between deals and danger. A third step revealed a dining table set for two, still holding phantom laughter, unsent letters folded into napkins.
"This place knows everything," Liora murmured, fingertips brushing the air as if tasting the past.
"Including the things we buried," Vespera replied. "And the ones we never dared to name."
He could hardly believe she was here. Liora's presence was not ghostly, not spectral, but tactile. She smelled of jasmine and old books. Her voice held no echo, only exhaustion. Death had not withered her beauty—it had refined it. Yet her eyes were darker now, deeper, filled with truths she had seen that he never could.
"You shouldn't have come," she said, her gaze fixed on the river.
"I couldn't stay."
They paused at a junction of shattered bridges. Above, the black void flickered with forgotten constellations—maps of dead worlds, charted by regret. A woman with no mouth stood at the fork, holding a scale forged from bone. She gestured without speaking, presenting two paths.
Liora stepped forward. "The Tribunal waits."
Vespera studied the woman. Her expressionless face revealed nothing, but the scale trembled. It tilted slightly toward the right-hand path, where the stone was slick with blood and each step echoed with distant weeping.
"What is this place?"
"Judgment," Liora replied.
They took the right path.
The Tribunal Hall stood like a cathedral built from guilt. Columns of vertebrae supported a dome carved with scenes of betrayal and regret. Candles burned blue with flame that fed on secrets. At the altar stood three beings—not demons, not angels, but something older. Their forms were fluid, bound in masks of porcelain and bone.
The first wore a crown of iron thorns. His voice boomed with finality. "You seek to alter the balance."
The second wore a mask with no eyeholes. Her words slithered like silk. "You come armed only with love."
The third held a broken hourglass. Its voice was a whisper in Vespera's own ear. "What are you willing to lose?"
Vespera stepped forward, his fists clenched. "Everything. I already have."
The Tribunal conferred without words. Shadows spun across the chamber like storm clouds. Then the crowned judge spoke.
"To restore what was taken, you must complete three exchanges. Each one a sacrifice. Not of blood, but essence."
"Name them."
The judge pointed to Liora. "First: your memory of her."
Vespera froze. "That defeats the point."
"To bring her back, you must sever who she was to you."
Liora looked away. Her voice was steady. "It's the only way I become real again. Not just a memory stitched into your grief."
His heart fractured in slow motion.
"If I forget you, how do I know what I'm saving?"
"You don't," she whispered. "That's the test."
The ritual was performed beneath the Mirror Tree, a gnarled thing that reflected not faces, but truths. The bark shimmered with unlived memories. Its roots drank from regret.
Ilyra returned, bearing a chalice of oblivion.
"Drink, and her name becomes ash in your mind. The first gate opens."
He took the chalice. His hands shook. He turned to Liora one last time.
"Say something I can carry without memory."
She stepped close, cupped his face like she had the day she died. "When you feel the coldest, that's me. When you rage against silence, I'm there. Love isn't a name. It's a thread."
He drank.
Pain bloomed behind his eyes. Her image blurred. Her voice muted. Then—emptiness. Not silence, but an absence he couldn't define.
Liora stepped back. Her shoulders sagged. "Now we begin."
The second exchange led them into the Womb of Wounds, a subterranean city of screams. Here, sorrow had form. Towers wept blood. Bridges collapsed into abysses of broken promises. Residents moved slowly, their faces hollow, each dragging chains inscribed with their greatest shames.
"This is where your guilt lives," Liora explained. "To proceed, you must feed it."
At the heart of the city stood a construct of glass and veins—the Echo Engine. It required a confession, but not of sins. Of love withheld.
Vespera approached, his voice hoarse.
"I loved her. But I never let her see the whole of me. I fed her half-truths, thinking it was protection. In truth, it was pride."
The Echo Engine pulsed, gears grinding.
"I chose power over peace. Control over connection. I never let her save me. Only obey."
The Engine screamed. A crystal formed in its core—a fragment of guilt transmuted into clarity. Liora retrieved it, handing it to him.
"This is your second cost: vulnerability. If you finish this path, you will never again be able to wield fear or secrets. Only honesty."
He nodded. It felt like losing a weapon. Or gaining a wound.
Around them, the city began to dissolve, the screams lessening. Statues of weeping gods cracked open, revealing faces of children beneath.
The third exchange was the hardest.
They crossed into the Vale of Once-Was, a place where all possible lives shimmered like soap bubbles. Vespera saw hundreds of versions of himself: a quiet teacher, a broken drunk, a father, a priest, a corpse. Some had never met her. Some had died with her. Others had become monsters far worse than he ever imagined.
At the center stood a version of him who had run away with Liora before the first bullet was ever fired.
Happy. At peace.
"To complete the bargain," Ilyra said, reappearing one last time, "you must kill this version."
"Why?"
"Because he's the life you never earned. And envy cannot pass into the world of second chances."
The alternate Vespera looked at him with pity. "You've done so much to get her back. But she was always there. You just never chose her first."
Vespera wept. Then he raised the obsidian shard—the same one the demon had given him. With trembling hands, he struck. The vision shattered.
The Vale dissolved into mist, each version of himself fading like mist in morning light.
Back at the River of Forgotten Stars, the gate shimmered open. The Tribunal reappeared.
"Your debt is paid," they intoned. "What remains is choice."
Liora stood beside him. He could no longer remember her face, but he felt her in his bones. The ache of absence. The peace of presence.
"Return," said the crowned judge, "and she lives. But your name, your empire, your power—all remain here."
Vespera laughed. Softly. "I traded those long ago."
He took her hand.
Together, they stepped through the gate.
In a small village on the edge of nowhere, two strangers arrived at dawn.
They bought a cottage with forgotten gold and spoke little. He read poetry. She planted sunflowers. At night, they held each other against the cold, never speaking of what came before.
Love needed no history. Only presence.
Sometimes, he dreamed of thrones. Of blood and fire. He would wake with tears in his eyes, and she would hold him until the past faded into morning.
And in the Underrealm, a new legend whispered through the catacombs:
The king who gave up everything for the only thing that mattered.
Her.