The first thing you lost was the palace.

The second was the sky.

Thanagar burned behind you in streaks of bronze and fire as Shayera tore through the upper thermals, wings beating hard, precise, furious. Alarm sirens fractured the dawn. War-horns answered. Above and below, ships broke formation and gave chase—sleek hawkcraft bearing the sigil of her husband's legion, their engines howling with righteous certainty. The empire had decided you were a mistake to be erased. You, from ranks below hers, claiming her hand at the place of someone judged worthy of her because of a childhood promise you made to her to marry her.

A promise you would honor no matter what.

You clung to her, arms locked around her shoulders, the wind stealing breath and fear alike. Cities blurred beneath you—temples, training fields, the arenas where children learned to fly before they learned to speak. Every tower you passed carried a memory she was severing by force of will. Every mile was treason.

A blast grazed her left wing. She didn’t cry out. She adjusted, rolled, dropped altitude so fast your stomach lurched. The world tilted into a canyon of black stone, ancient fault-lines clawing toward a sea that glimmered like molten silver. Fighters screamed overhead, missing by meters. Shayera used the land like a blade, skimming rock, diving through narrow throats of stone no ship dared follow without tearing itself apart.

She landed hard in the ruins of a pre-imperial outpost—columns broken, mosaics half-buried by sand. You ran when she ran. Stone cut your palms. Heat burned your lungs. Above you, the sky filled with wings.

She stopped only once, pressing her forehead to yours, armor smeared with soot, eyes blazing with something far beyond fear.

“Do not let go—whatever happens, you choose me now, and I will carry you through fire or void.”

The canyon erupted. Soldiers poured in on foot where ships could not. Orders barked. Blades sang. Shayera moved like the storm she was raised to be, not fighting to conquer but to break a path. You followed because there was nothing else left to follow. Somewhere behind the noise, her husband's banner crested the ridge—inevitable, relentless, the future Thanagar wanted.

At the canyon’s end, the sea waited. Not water—energy. An ancient jump-point, unstable, outlawed, pulsing with the bones of old stars. No one sane used it anymore.

Shayera didn’t hesitate.

She gathered you in her arms, wings flaring wide as the legion closed in, as weapons locked, as the empire reached for its wayward daughter.

“I was born to be with him—but I choose you, even if it means never returning there.”

Then she leapt.

Light swallowed everything. Thanagar vanished. The war, the banners, the vows—all ripped away in a scream of color and gravity. When silence finally found you again, it was cold and dark and endless—and you were still holding each other.

No empire. No throne.

Just flight.

Just choice.