The sun fell low, bleeding gold through the skeletal canopy. Its light struck the hollow leaves and bent twigs at strange angles, making the forest appear fractured, as if a memory had been cut and reassembled wrong. Shadows pooled beneath the trunks, moving a heartbeat behind their sources, lagging like echoes from another time.

The air itself quivering was hot and tense. It smelled faintly of cedar and ozone, the way lightning scents the sky just before it strikes. Then came the figures, stepping into the glade like fire walking on frozen ground.

The groom arrived last. His body shimmered with a translucent heat. His skin was black charcoal and hollowed; barely held together by his own temperamental heat. Small flames clung to his skin and flickered at the edges of is fractures. Each breath he drew warped the air and flexed the prominent ribcage. Pieces of him flaked away as he walked up the path towards her.

He was noble, undeniably, in posture and presence. But he was unstable, like a candle blown by a storm. She noticed the way his hands twitched slightly, fingers brushing invisible embers, and how his gaze swept the forest, as though searching for enemies she could not see. 

She wanted to speak first, to fill the unbearable silence with something. But the words caught in her throat. Instead, she stepped forward and inclined her head. She waited. 

A long silence stood between them. 

The shadows leaned in towards them. She could feel the coldness press again her and there was the flutter of the wings. Then a pulse surged up from the soles of her feet and she was almost swallowed by the hum of the Life Stream beneath the soil.

“I arrived,” he said. His words were measured, polite, but carried an edge of distance, a flicker of fear or perhaps caution. “I would not dishonor the forest by arriving before its own hour.”

Her lips pressed into a line. There was truth there, though it came twisted with pride. The Life Stream pulsed faintly beneath their feet, a vibration in rhythm with something older than the Courts, older than the forests themselves. She could feel it in the soles of her feet, a low pressure that urged recognition, attention, patience.

They measured one another for long moments, each aware of the other’s power and decay. The groom’s fire had been a weapon once, a force that protected both courts from the steel monstrosities that had risen in the War. She remembered seeing him stride through a ruined city of glass and metal, flame spilling from his hands like blood from a wound, driving the machines back into the sky’s dark belly. He had been beautiful. Something wild. Now he was a fire spent. Charcoal already burnt and awaiting a second flame.  

“I’ve heard,” she said finally, breaking the silence, “that your fire burns faster now than it did even in the War.”

He nodded. A small flicker of fire escaped him, curling into the moss at their feet. “It does. Every year takes more from me than the last. Soon there will be nothing but cinders.”

She felt a pang in her chest. Her own magic had dwindled in the same measure, though in her case it was silent and patient in its decline. The roots that once sang beneath her fingers now only trembled, uncertain. “Then our union… it must restore what has been lost,” she said. “We cannot risk dilution. Not of our power. Not of what our children may carry.”

He exhaled smoke that lingered like a shadow around him. “I do not wish to harm them—or the courts. Yet I fear that mixing fire with earth… the result may be weaker than either of us.”

The bride’s eyes narrowed. She had feared this, too. They had spent years apart, building their magic separately, each careful to preserve the purity of their element. Now, all would be combined by law, by ritual, by something she could barely name. She felt the weight of centuries pressing down, not only in duty, but in something darker: the Life Stream itself, invisible and infinite, pressing insistently beneath the ground, urging them together.

The glade responded. Roots beneath their feet trembled slightly. The wind stilled. Even the river, distant, seemed to hesitate in its course. The Life Stream had no voice, no body, yet she could feel it as pressure on her chest, a vibration in the soles of her feet and the back of her skull, a whisper that tickled the edge of hearing. It was patient, immovable, infinite.

They began to walk together toward the center of the glade, where the ring waited atop a pedestal of stone. The forest seemed to exhale at the movement, though it was not air leaving lungs but something older, a pulse of potential in the Life Stream that stirred as they approached.

Every step carried memory and dread. She noticed, with an edge of anxiety, that the shadows of their bodies moved half a heartbeat late, flickering behind them like afterimages in water. She swallowed, sensing the unnatural cadence, and realized the forest itself was watching—not conscious, not judging, but aware, attentive, alive in a way she had never felt before.

The groom’s flame cast strange reflections across the moss, touching her roots with a heat that was neither comforting nor safe. “You look… unchanged,” he said quietly. “Still pale, still rooted, still distant from the world.”

She felt her roots twitch reflexively, curling slightly toward him and then recoiling. “I have not healed anything in years,” she admitted, voice low. “The trees no longer answer me. The soil no longer listens. I touch, and nothing grows. Only decay.”

He looked at her, eyes flickering amber. A trace of fear passed through them, and she felt it as if it were hers: a seed of panic, fragile and unformed. “Then perhaps we can heal together,” he said, almost pleading, “if the magic of both courts combines. If the Life Stream wills it.”

Her stomach tightened. The Life Stream was not a mind to plead with. It was raw force, infinite and hungry. She sensed its presence in the vibration beneath her feet, in the quiver of the moss, in the whisper of leaves. It would not judge, but it would take what it needed. And what it needed tonight was them—together.

Above them, a raven alighted on a dead branch, feathers slick and black as oil. Its eyes caught hers briefly, and she thought she saw understanding there—or perhaps warning. It did not caw. It did not move again. Just watched.

When they reached the pedestal, the ring shimmered faintly. Its hum was a slow, breathing rhythm, soft yet insistently present, filling the space between them. She felt it as a vibration against her chest. A heartbeat that was not hers.

“Do you fear it?” he asked. His voice low, almost a murmur, the smoke curling from his lips like thin tendrils of doubt.

She did not answer immediately. She could feel the hum of the ring calling to something in her blood, the faint pressure of the Life Stream underfoot, and the slow, eerie syncopation of their shadows. She feared everything—the wedding, the union, the dilution, the unknown—but most of all, she feared the transformation of everything that she had ever known.

“Yes,” she said finally, her voice breaking. “I fear what it will make of us.”

He nodded, and for the first time, she saw vulnerability there, buried beneath the flickering flame. “So do I,” he admitted. “Yet it seems the Life Stream has already decided.”

The Life Stream pulsed once beneath them, a slow vibration, almost like a heartbeat. It was not sentient. It was not moral. It was simply infinite power, flowing where it must, ready to bind, to blend, to remake.

They both knew the moment was coming, and neither wanted it, and yet neither could refuse. The hum of the ring deepened, echoing faintly like breath from the earth itself. Their shadows shifted again, a heartbeat late, stretched toward one another, hesitant and strange.

She reached out first, roots brushing against the pedestal. He followed, flame curling along his fingers, the bright edges licking lightly at her hand as though tasting her magic. The moss quivered. Even the air felt thick with potential, heavy and electric.

It was only the beginning.