Rafayel felt the beacon's call like a hook in his chest—insistent, desperate, *pleading*.
It had been calling for days.
He'd been ignoring it for days.
Each pulse of summoning magic was agony, the bond mark burning hotter with every attempt she made to reach him. But answering meant facing her. Meant looking into those trusting eyes and either lying about what was happening to him or telling her the truth that would destroy them both.
So he'd stayed away. Had spent a week wandering the ruins of his kingdom, watching his hands become more translucent with each passing day, counting down the time he had left while trying to convince himself that dying alone was the merciful choice.
*Let her think I abandoned her*, he'd told himself. *Let her hate me. Let her move on. It's better than the alternative.*
But the beacon kept calling.
And calling.
And *calling*.
Until finally, on the seventh day, he felt something change in the summons. Not desperation anymore. Something worse.
*Fear*.
She was afraid. Not for herself, but for *him*. He could feel it through the bond—that terrible, beautiful concern that meant she cared more than she should, that she'd somehow looked at a monster and decided he was worth worrying about.
*Please*, the summons seemed to say. *Please, I just need to know you're okay. Please come back. Please don't leave me like this.*
And Rafayel, who had spent a hundred years being left behind, who knew exactly what it felt like to wait for someone who never came back...
He couldn't do it to her.
*I'm weak*, he thought as he felt his body responding to the summons without his conscious permission. *I'm so pathetically weak.*
*But I'd rather be weak with her than strong without her.*
The magic pulled him across the distance, from the golden desert that had been his ocean to the palace where she waited. Light bloomed in her chambers, and he materialized from radiance into flesh, and—
She slammed into him before he'd even fully solidified.
"Rafayel!" Her voice was raw, broken, like she'd been crying for days. Her arms wrapped around him with desperate strength, her face pressed against his chest, her whole body shaking with sobs. "I thought you wouldn't come back! I thought—I thought—"
She couldn't finish. Just held him tighter, like if she let go he might dissolve into nothing.
*If only you knew how close to the truth that is*, he thought, but wrapped his arms around her anyway. Because denying himself this—denying *her* this—felt more cruel than anything fate had done to him yet.
"I'm here," he murmured, one hand moving to cradle the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair. "I'm here, Nana. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You were gone for so long," she sobbed against his chest. "You left, and you said it was a mistake, and I didn't know what I did wrong, and I kept calling and calling and you wouldn't come, and I thought maybe you—maybe you decided I wasn't—"
"Stop." The word came out more forcefully than intended. Rafayel pulled back just enough to cup her face in his hands, tilting her chin up so she had to look at him. "Don't. Don't ever think that. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Then why?" Her eyes were red from crying, her cheeks wet with tears, and she looked so small. So hurt. "Why did you say it was a mistake? Why did you leave?"
*Because I'm dying*, he wanted to say. *Because my entire kingdom fell because I loved you more than duty. Because I have three months before I dissolve into sea foam and the only way to stop it is to kill you.*
*Because being near you makes me want impossible things, and staying away is the only way to protect you from what I might become when the fear of death finally outweighs my love.*
But he couldn't say any of that. Couldn't find the words that would make this make sense without destroying everything.
So instead, he did something he'd been wanting to do since the moment he'd seen her again in this lifetime.
He kissed her.
It wasn't strategic. Wasn't calculated. Wasn't part of any plan to make her fall in love with him so she'd willingly offer her heart.
It was just... necessary. Like breathing. Like the tide. Like every inevitable thing that you can't stop even when you know it's going to hurt.
His lips met hers softly at first—a question, an apology, a confession all wrapped into one gentle touch. And for a heartbeat, she froze, surprised.
Then she melted against him.
Her hands moved from his chest to his neck, pulling him closer, deeper, like she'd been waiting for this and didn't want to waste a single second. She kissed him back with a desperation that matched his own, with a hunger that said she felt it too—this connection between them that neither of them fully understood but both of them were helpless against.
'Ilove you', Rafayel thought as he kissed her. *I loved you when you were eleven and saved my life. I loved you through a hundred years of waiting. I loved you the moment I saw you again. I loved you when I should have killed you. I love you now. I'll love you when I'm foam dissolving on the wind.*
*I love you, and it's going to destroy us both.*
The kiss deepened, becoming something more than just lips and breath. It felt like a promise. Like a goodbye. Like the most important thing that had ever happened and would never happen again.
And then, without warning, Rafayel felt his chest crack open.
Not physically. But emotionally, spiritually, in every way that mattered. All the walls he'd built, all the careful control, all the lies he'd been telling himself about being strong enough to let her go—
They shattered.
A sob tore from his throat, muffled against her lips. Then another. His hands, still cradling her face, began to tremble.
*No*, he thought desperately. *No, don't break now. Don't let her see—*
But it was too late. The tears were already coming, hot and fast and unstoppable. A hundred years of grief and guilt and love and loss and fear all pouring out at once because he'd finally reached his breaking point.
He was kissing her and crying and couldn't stop either one.
"Rafayel?" Nana pulled back slightly, her voice panicked, her hands immediately moving to his face. "Why are you crying? What's wrong? Please, tell me what's—"
She stopped.
Her fingers, which had been wiping at his tears, froze against his cheek. Her eyes went wide, her breath catching in her throat.
Because the tears weren't just tears anymore.
They were turning to pearls.
Small, perfect, iridescent pink pearls that formed where his tears touched her skin, then rolled down to fall on the floor with tiny crystalline sounds. Each one caught the lamplight, beautiful and impossible and undeniably *real*.
*No*, Rafayel thought with something close to hysteria. *No, not like this. She wasn't supposed to find out like this.*
But Nana was staring at the pearls in her hands, her expression cycling through shock, confusion, understanding, disbelief. Her fingers closed around them gently, reverently, like they were the most precious things in the world.
"You're..." Her voice was barely a whisper. "You're Lemurian."
It wasn't a question. Just a statement of fact, delivered with such quiet certainty that Rafayel felt his last defense crumble to dust.
"Yes," he said, and the admission felt like surrender.
They stood frozen for a long moment, Rafayel still crying (and gods, he couldn't seem to stop, decades of repressed emotion pouring out in a flood he had no control over), Nana still holding the pearls that had been his tears, both of them trying to process what this meant.
"I didn't know," Nana said finally, looking from the pearls to his face and back again.
"I mean, I suspected you were... different. The way you move, the magic, the way you smell like the ocean. But I thought—I've heard the stories about Lemurians. Everyone has. But I thought they were just legends. Fairy tales." She laughed, the sound slightly hysterical. "But you're real. You're *real*."
"Yes." What else could he say? The evidence was literally in her hands, rolling across her floor, catching the light like captured stars.
"And the ocean..." Nana's eyes widened further as connections started forming. "That day you collapsed. Something happened to the ocean, didn't it? Something bad."
Rafayel closed his eyes, unable to look at her while he said it. "It's gone."
"Gone?" She said it like the word didn't make sense. "What do you mean gone? Oceans don't just—"
"The Lemurian Sea is gone," he said, and his voice cracked on the words. "Dried up. Turned to desert. Everything that was there—my people, my kingdom, ten thousand years of history—all of it is just... sand now. Golden sand and sea foam."
The silence that followed was deafening.
"When?" Nana's voice was small, horrified.
"A week ago. The day I collapsed in your chambers." Another tear fell, becoming another pearl. "The day I felt them all die."
"All of them?" The words came out strangled. "You mean your people? They're... they're all...?"
"Dead." The word was brutal. Final. "Every single one. Because the sea dried up and Lemurians can't breathe air. Because there was no Sea God maintaining the cycle. Because I—"
He stopped, the words lodging in his throat like broken glass.
*Because I chose you over them*, he couldn't say. *Because I loved you more than my duty. Because I was supposed to kill you and couldn't, and this is the price.*
But Nana was too clever for her own good. He watched her face as the pieces came together, watched horror dawn in her eyes.
"The Sea God," she whispered. "You said there was no Sea God maintaining the cycle. But that means..." She looked at him, really *looked* at him, seeing past the beautiful face to what he actually was. "You're the Sea God. Aren't you?"
There was no point in denying it. "Yes."
"And you're supposed to be in the ocean. Maintaining the cycle. Keeping your people alive." Her voice was rising now, panic bleeding through. "But you're here. You've been here for weeks, with me, while your kingdom—"
"Was dying," Rafayel finished flatly. "Yes."
"Why?" The question exploded from her like something physical. "Why would you leave them? Why would you let them die? Why would you—"
"Because of you!"
The words tore from him with a force that surprised them both. "Because of *you*, Nana! Because I was supposed to kill you and I couldn't! Because I loved you more than I loved them! Because I'm weak and selfish and I chose wrong and now everyone is dead and it's my fault!"
The admission hung in the air between them like smoke, like poison, like truth that couldn't be taken back.
Nana stared at him, her face white, her hands clutching the pearls so tightly they must be cutting into her skin. "You were supposed to... kill me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To complete the ritual. To awaken my full power as Sea God. To keep the cycle flowing." Each word felt like pulling out his own teeth. "Every Sea God has to make the sacrifice. Has to find their soulmate, make them fall in love, then offer their heart on the sacred altar. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked."
"Their heart," Nana repeated slowly. "You mean... literally their heart."
"Yes."
She stumbled backward, her legs hitting the edge of her bed. She sat down hard, like they'd given out. "You were going to kill me."
"I was supposed to," Rafayel corrected, and another tear fell, another pearl. "That was the plan. Win your heart. Make you love me. Take you to the altar. Complete the ritual. Save my kingdom."
"But you didn't."
"No." The word was barely a whisper. "I couldn't."
"So instead..." Her voice was numb now, distant. "Instead, you let your entire kingdom die. Ten thousand people. Your people. Your responsibility. You let them all die rather than kill one person."
"Rather than kill *you*," he said, and it was important somehow that she understood the distinction.
"Not just one person. *You*. The girl who saved my life a hundred years ago. The girl I waited for every sunset until I thought I'd go mad. The girl I've loved across two lifetimes even though you don't remember any of it."
Nana's head snapped up. "What?"
Rafayel laughed, the sound bitter and broken. Now that he'd started telling the truth, he couldn't seem to stop. It was pouring out of him like blood from a wound, and maybe that's exactly what it was.
"You don't remember," he said, and it wasn't an accusation. Just a fact. Sad and ironic and perfectly fitting for their tragedy. "Of course you don't. You died. Diseases took you when you were young, and when you were reborn, all the memories stayed buried."
"I don't understand," Nana said, but there was something in her eyes. Something that said maybe, on some level, she did.
"A hundred years ago," Rafayel began, and his voice took on the cadence of a story being told. "I was fifteen. Young and stupid and thought I knew everything. I got caught in a hurricane, got washed ashore, got trapped under a fallen tree. My tail was crushed. I was dying."
He watched her face, looking for any flicker of recognition. Found none. Just rapt attention.
"Then a girl found me. A little human girl, maybe eleven years old, who'd just lost her parents to the same storm. She was searching for them on the beach, and instead she found me. A monster from the sea, dangerous and dying. She should have run. Should have left me there."
"But she didn't," Nana whispered, and something in her voice said she knew. Even without remembering, she *knew*.
"No." Rafayel smiled through his tears, through the pearls that kept falling. "She didn't. She dug me out. Worked until her hands bled. Saved my life when she had no reason to. And then..." His voice softened, remembering.
"Then she came back. Every day. At sunset. We'd meet at the beach, and I'd give her pearls and shells, and she'd tell me about the human world, and we'd just... talk. Like we'd known each other forever."
"Until you stopped coming," he confirmed. "I waited. Every sunset. For years. Until I finally learned the truth—that you'd been taken away by family, that you'd died of disease in some distant village while I sat on a rock and waited for someone who was already gone."
Nana's hand moved to her chest, right over her heart, like she could feel the echo of that life. "And then?"
"And then I waited a hundred more years," Rafayel said simply. "Because Lemurians bond for life. We love once, completely, forever. I couldn't move on. Couldn't forget. Couldn't love anyone else. So I waited for you to be reborn, knowing the bond would pull us together again eventually."
"The bond," she said slowly. "That's why I felt... why I've always felt..."
"Safe with me," he finished. "Connected. Like we'd known each other forever even though we'd just met. Yes. That's the bond. It survived your death. It brought us together again. It's why you trust me when you shouldn't. Why you called for me even when I tried to stay away."
"And it's why you can't kill me," Nana said, and there was wonder in her voice alongside the horror. "Even though your entire kingdom died. Even though ten thousand people are dead because of your choice. You still can't do it."
"No," Rafayel whispered.
"I can't. I've tried. Gods, I've tried. I drew the blade. Had the perfect opportunity. And I just..." He spread his hands helplessly, watching the light pass through his increasingly translucent fingers.
"I put it away. Because killing you would be like killing myself. Worse than killing myself. It would be destroying the only thing in this world that makes me want to keep existing."
They sat in silence for a long moment, the weight of everything said—and everything still unsaid—pressing down on them like physical force.
Then Nana noticed his hands.
"Rafayel," she said slowly, her eyes fixed on his translucent fingers. "Why can I see through you?"
He looked down at his hands, at the way the lamplight passed through them like they were made of colored glass rather than flesh. "The curse."
"What curse?"
"The price for failing my duty." He said it matter-of-factly, like discussing the weather.
"When a Sea God refuses the sacrifice, when they let their people die through selfish love, they're cursed to share their fate. To dissolve into sea foam just like the people they abandoned."
The color drained from Nana's face. "You're... you're dying?"
"Three months," Rafayel confirmed. "I have three months before I disappear completely. Maybe less—the curse is progressing faster than expected."
"No." The word was sharp, immediate. "No, there has to be a way to stop it. There has to be—"
"There is one way," he said quietly.
She looked at him, hope and dread warring in her expression.
"The ritual," he continued. "Even now, even with the sea gone and my people dead, the magic still works. If you give me your heart willingly—if you let me take you to the altar and complete the sacrifice—the curse will break. I'll live. And you'll..."
"Die," she finished.
"Yes."
Another silence, longer than the first. Nana looked down at the pearls in her hands—his tears, his grief made solid and beautiful.
"So that's the choice," she said finally. "Your life or mine."
"No." Rafayel reached out, catching her chin gently, making her look at him. "There's no choice. I won't do it. I can't. I'd rather dissolve into nothing than hurt you."
"But—"
"No," he said more firmly. "I made my choice a week ago. Hell, I made it the moment I saw you again. I chose you over everything else, and I don't regret it. Even if it means dying. Even if it means I condemned ten thousand innocent people. I'd make the same choice every time."
"That's insane," Nana whispered.
"Yes," Rafayel agreed. "It is. But love makes you insane. Or maybe I was already insane, waiting a hundred years for a girl who didn't remember me. Either way, this is who I am. This is what I chose."
He cupped her face in his increasingly translucent hands, his thumbs brushing away her tears .
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I lied. I'm sorry I used you. I'm sorry my love destroyed everything. I'm sorry I'm not strong enough to do what needs to be done. I'm just... I'm sorry."
Nana was crying harder now, her hands coming up to cover his, pressing them against her face like she could keep him solid through will alone.
"Don't die," she begged. "Please, Rafayel, there has to be another way. We can find another way. We can—"
"There isn't one," he said gently. "I've looked. I've searched. There's only ever been one way to break this curse, and I won't ask it of you. I won't."
"But I—" She stopped, something fierce entering her expression. "What if I want to give it to you? My heart. What if I choose to save you?"
"No." The word came out harsh, almost angry. "Absolutely not. Don't even think about it."
"Why not?! It's my life! My choice!"
"Because I love you!"
The words exploded from him like something physical, decades of feeling compressed into three words.
"Because I've loved you for a hundred years, across two lifetimes, through death and rebirth and every moment in between! Because you're the reason I'm still breathing, the reason I became an assassin, the reason I doomed my kingdom, the reason for everything! And I will not—I *will not*—let you die for me when this is all my fault!"
They stared at each other, both crying, both desperate, both trapped in an impossible situation with no good outcomes.
"Then what do we do?" Nana finally asked, her voice small and broken.
Rafayel pulled her into his arms, holding her as tightly as his weakening body would allow. "We have three months," he whispered against her hair. "Maybe less. So we spend it together. We make every moment count. And when the time comes..."
"When the time comes?" she prompted.
"I'll disappear," he said simply. "And you'll live. You'll move on. You'll find someone else. You'll be happy."
"I don't want someone else," Nana sobbed against his chest. "I want you."
"I know," he murmured, and his own tears were still falling, still becoming pearls that scattered across her floor like fallen stars.
"I know, beloved. But you can't always get what you want."
They held each other as the night deepened around them, as more pearls fell and scattered, as the truth of their situation settled over them like a shroud.
Three months.They had three months to love each other knowing how it would end.
Three months before one of them would die—either her on an altar, or him dissolving into foam.
Three months before the tragedy reached its inevitable conclusion.
But for now, in this moment, they were together.
And maybe that would have to be enough.
.
.
.
.
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🐚🐚🐚
To be continued ___