I. The Boy in the Snow
The first time Darian Vale saw the man who would one day die for him, he was shivering in a snow-covered forest, clutching a basket of herbs that had long since slipped from his numb fingers.
Darian had always been fragile—too pale, too thin, born in mid-winter and carrying winter inside his lungs ever since. His mother used to say winter spirits marked him at birth. The villagers said it less kindly: cursed, frail, unnatural.
But at seventeen, wandering too far into the woods in search of a rare frostflower, he wasn’t thinking about curses. He was thinking of the warmth he didn’t have, of the ache in his chest, of the wind whipping too sharply around him.
Then he heard it—heavy footsteps through the snow.
He turned, expecting a wolf.
Instead, a tall man stepped into the clearing.
A man with silver eyes.
A man wearing black armor unlike anything forged in their kingdom.
A man barely human in presence, yet painfully, startlingly beautiful.
He moved like shadow and moonlight fused into flesh.
Darian gasped. “Wh-who are you?”
The man did not answer at first. He walked toward him with slow, measured steps, knelt, and lifted Darian’s chin with gloved fingers.
“You wandered too far,” the man said. His voice was a deep, resonant calm. “And the forest does not forgive weakness.”
Darian blinked, breath catching. “I—I don’t even know you.”
“No,” the man murmured. “But I know you, Darian Vale.”
The air tightened.
Snowflakes stilled mid-fall.
The world itself seemed to hold its breath.
“My name is Caelan,” the man said. “I am your guardian.”
---
II. The Curse Unspoken
Caelan carried Darian back to the village—literally, in his arms, as Darian fought embarrassment the entire way. The villagers stared, eyes wide with a familiar mixture of fear and suspicion.
“Who is he?” the baker’s wife whispered.
“A mercenary?” someone muttered.
“No,” said the old blacksmith. “That armor… no kingdom for a thousand leagues crafts like that.”
But Caelan ignored them all, walking straight into Darian’s small cottage as if he’d been there all along.
He placed Darian on the bed. “Rest.”
“I—I didn’t ask for a guardian,” Darian said, struggling to sit up.
“You were not meant to.”
Caelan stood by the bed like a dark sentinel. “My existence is not yours to grant or deny.”
“That’s not an answer!”
Caelan stared at him. Slowly, he removed one glove, revealing a hand that looked human—no claws, no strange markings. But Darian sensed energy from him, old as the deep forest, cold as moonlit stone.
“Why me?” Darian whispered.
Caelan didn’t speak for a long time.
Finally:
“Because your life is no longer only yours.”
“What does that mean?” Darian murmured.
Caelan turned away.
“It means,” he said quietly, “if you die, I die. If I die… you live.”
Darian’s heart lurched. “That’s not—no. You’re lying. That’s—”
“A curse,” Caelan finished. “Bound to your bloodline long before you were born. A life for a life.”
Darian stared, dizzy with disbelief. “So you’re… protecting me because you have to?”
Caelan’s jaw tightened.
“Because I must,” he said.
Not want. Must.
And yet, Darian caught the tiniest flicker in those silver eyes.
Something that looked almost like sorrow.
---
III. Slowly, Uneasily, Together
For the next year, Caelan never left Darian’s side.
Never.
If Darian went to the market, Caelan followed.
If he walked the forest edge, Caelan trailed silently behind.
If he coughed blood into his hand on cold nights, Caelan would sit awake until dawn, eyes glowing faintly in the darkness.
It should have been suffocating.
Instead, it became… comforting.
Darian had never known gentle protection before.
He’d never had someone who looked at him without pity or disgust.
He’d never had someone to walk home with, talk to, or trust.
And Caelan—reserved, unreadable Caelan—began to reveal small hints of humanity.
Very small.
A softened gaze when Darian laughed, rare as it was.
A hand steadying him when he stumbled.
A quiet “be careful” when Darian sliced his finger while chopping wood.
Once, shocked, Darian realized:
Caelan cared.
Not because of the curse.
Because of him.
One night, after a coughing fit left Darian weak, Caelan pressed a warm cloth to his forehead.
“Why do you stay?” Darian whispered. “Truly. No riddles.”
Caelan hesitated—something Darian had never seen him do.
Then he said, in a voice low and raw:
“Because I cannot bear to lose you.”
Darian’s breath caught.
“You’d die,” he said. “That’s the curse.”
“No,” Caelan said. “That is not why.”
Silence stretched between them, thick as winter fog.
Neither spoke of it again.
But Darian understood.
---
IV. The Prophecy Revealed
On Darian’s eighteenth winter, soldiers came from the capital with an edict: all young men of the region were to be inspected for magical markings—evidence of the growing “rebirth phenomenon,” where ancient souls reincarnated in modern bodies.
Darian did not worry. He had no magic, no power. He was weak. Ordinary.
But when soldiers forced Caelan back and tore Darian’s shirt open—
—they found a mark over his heart.
A glowing sigil shaped like a crescent-thorn.
Darian stared, horrified. “What is that?”
Caelan’s face drained of color.
“That,” he said in a voice of pure dread, “is the seal of the Life-Binder.”
The soldiers shouted. The captain ordered Darian be taken to the capital immediately.
Caelan killed him before the order finished leaving his lips.
Steel flashed. Bodies fell. Snow stained red.
Darian screamed Caelan’s name as the guardian dragged him into the forest.
“Caelan—stop—what is happening?!”
“The curse,” Caelan said breathlessly, “has awakened.”
Darian stumbled. “What curse? You already told me—”
“No.” Caelan grabbed his shoulders. “Not that part. The end of it.”
Darian froze.
Caelan’s voice cracked for the first time.
“When the mark appears… one life must be taken to preserve the other. One final death. To break the curse forever.”
Darian’s stomach dropped. “Whose life?”
Caelan’s eyes were full of anguish.
“Mine.”
---
V. Love Confessed in a Moment of Despair
They found shelter in an abandoned watchtower at the edge of the kingdom. Snow fell through the broken roof. Wind howled through cracks in the stone.
Darian sat trembling against the cold wall. Caelan knelt before him, removing his cloak to wrap Darian’s shoulders.
“You’ll freeze,” Darian whispered.
“I cannot,” Caelan said simply. “Not while you’re alive.”
Darian swallowed hard.
“Caelan…”
“Speak.”
“If you die…” Darian’s voice broke. “If you die, the curse ends for me, right?”
“Yes.”
“So I live.”
“Yes.”
“And you… you disappear.”
Caelan closed his eyes. “Correct.”
Darian’s voice turned sharp with grief. “And you’re just going to accept that?!”
“It is my purpose.”
“No!” Darian shoved him weakly. “No, it’s not! You’re more than some curse-bound shadow. You’re— you’re—”
He choked on the words.
Caelan opened his eyes.
“Say it,” he whispered.
“I—” Darian’s breath shook.
He had never said this to anyone.
“I love you.”
The guardian inhaled sharply. His hand rose, trembling, to cup Darian’s cheek.
“And I,” Caelan said, voice breaking like ice under weight, “have loved you from the moment I first heard your heartbeat.”
Darian’s eyes stung.
“Caelan, please… there has to be another way.”
“There is not.”
“Then I’ll die.”
Caelan grabbed him, fierce and desperate. “Do not say that!”
“If it saves you—”
“I cannot live if you die!”
“Then we’re both doomed,” Darian whispered.
Caelan pulled him into his arms, holding him as if trying to memorize the shape of him, the warmth of him, the fragility.
They clung together until dawn.
---
VI. The Last Winter
The kingdom’s hunters eventually located the watchtower.
Caelan heard them before Darian did.
He always did.
He stood. “It is time.”
Darian crawled toward him, weak from cold and illness. “No—please—don’t leave me.”
Caelan kneeled, pressing his forehead to Darian’s.
“I will always be with you,” he whispered. “Even after the curse breaks.”
“How?” Darian sobbed.
Caelan smiled gently.
“In the life you live… because of me.”
Darian shook violently. “I don’t want that life.”
“You must.”
The door shattered downstairs.
Caelan rose.
Darian screamed. “Caelan!”
The guardian looked back one last time.
“Live, Darian Vale.”
And then—
He leapt down into the soldiers.
A whirlwind of shadow and steel.
His armor cracked.
His body bled.
His strength dimmed.
And finally—
A blade pierced through his heart.
Darian felt the moment Caelan died as if someone tore out his soul.
He collapsed, screaming until his voice broke, until blood filled his throat, until his vision blurred.
But he didn’t die.
The curse made sure of that.
He lived.
Caelan vanished like smoke in the wind, his body dissolving into pale light, scattered by the snow.
---
VII. Reincarnation — Another World, Another Life
Two hundred years later, in a modern city that had forgotten magic, Darian Vale awoke screaming from dreams he could not explain.
Dreams of snow.
Dreams of silver eyes.
Dreams of a man dying in his place.
He lived an ordinary life now—twenty-three, university student, chronically lonely. His health was better. His world was peaceful.
But the ache remained.
Every winter, he felt as if he were missing someone he had once held in the dark. Someone who had whispered his name like a prayer.
One night, walking home from campus through falling snow, he saw a tall man standing under a streetlamp.
Black coat.
Silver eyes.
Impossible.
Darian froze, breath catching in his throat.
The man looked at him, expression unreadable.
Something in Darian shattered.
“…Caelan?” he whispered.
The man blinked.
“I’m sorry,” he said politely, confused. “Do I… know you?”
Darian’s heart crumpled.
Of course.
Reincarnation.
A world without magic.
A life without the curse.
And Caelan—who had died for him—was reborn without memories.
Darian smiled through the ache.
“No,” he said softly. “No, you don’t.”
The man gave him a small, gentle smile.
“Then maybe we can change that.”
He offered his hand.
Darian stared.
For a moment—just a moment—he thought he saw recognition flicker in those silver eyes.
But no.
It was only the wind.
Darian took his hand anyway.
The snow fell softly around them.
And though Caelan no longer remembered dying for him, no longer remembered loving him—
Darian remembered enough
for the both
of them.
Sad Ending: Caelan’s memory never returns.
Darian lives with the weight of two lifetimes and a love that only one remembers.
