“Where is that bastard? We’re having speeches and ring exchanges after this for God’s sake!” Aroche barked, clutching his pocket sized clipboard with the desperation of a man who’d drafted an entire event agenda only for someone to set it on fire.

Then came the sound of a throat being cleared. Aroche turned.

There they were.

Morgan, perfect from crown to hem, not a strand out of place, standing with the calm of someone who’d done absolutely nothing wrong—and Burn, standing next to her, looking like he’d just walked out of a wind tunnel with his dignity dragging behind him.

The man had no cravat. No handkerchief. His hair had declared mutiny and was currently aiming for the stratosphere. Lipstick painted his jaw, chin, mouth—hell, it looked like he’d been devoured. His expression? Somewhere between euphoric and lobotomized. Face flushed, pupils dreamy, wobbling ever so slightly on his metal heels.

The thing was, this man couldn’t get drunk. Seventh-starred Force Masters weren’t biologically capable. And yet here he was. Drunk. On what? Love? Mana? Sin?

“What did you do to him, Your Majesty?” Aroche asked, deadpan, but stopping himself from reacting more dramatically by biting his knuckle. He didn’t even try to sound hopeful.

Morgan gave a dainty, shy little giggle—the kind that should’ve come with harp music and flower petals. “I used too much of my Vision Mana…”

“For what purpose exactly? Enlighten me. I’m dying to understand the logistics here,” Aroche said, tugging out a comb with the air of a mortician preparing a corpse for open casket.

Burn blinked slowly, dreamily, still staring at Morgan’s fingers tangled with his. Then, with a voice touched by whatever divine chaos just transpired, he said, “I want to do that again.”

“Do whAT?!” Aroche practically exploded, jabbing the comb through the man’s hair with more frustration than finesse. He yanked off his own cravat, looped it around Burn’s neck with aggressive grace, and began scrubbing the lipstick off his face using his handkerchief—which, after a few miserable swipes, he folded clean-side-up and jammed into Burn’s tuxedo pocket with a vengeance.

“After the speeches and ring exchanges, you two are changing into Soulnaught’s traditional wedding robes. Modest robes. Covered in decency. Dignity. The opposite of whatever tantric explosion you just put this poor man through,” Aroche muttered, chewing his words like they personally offended him.

Burn, meanwhile, had spotted the neatly folded schedule peeking from Aroche’s pocket. With zero remorse, he plucked it out and flung it over his shoulder.

“Hey—!”

“Brother, you should enjoy the party,” Burn said, slurring with the sweet, stupid smile of a man still high on marital privileges. “Let’s enjoy the party?”

Aroche stared at him. Squinted. Eyelids twitching. Face forming into a sculpture of disbelief and loathing. “Bitch, get yourself together.”

The man’s eyelids drooped, as he let Aroche button up his shirt properly—because of course he couldn’t be trusted to do it himself right now.

“I am happy right now,” Burn murmured, his voice unpolished, honest in the way only dazed men in love or post-divine afterglow can manage. His fingers curled tighter around Morgan’s, though his gaze lingered somewhere around Aroche’s sleeve, like it was easier to confess to fabric than to faces.

“Would’ve been sweet if Dad was here too,” he said. “And… the rest.”

The rest.

Aroche stilled, if only internally. There was weight in that omission, a gravity wrapped in silence. The rest—those lost, absent, treacherous, gone.

“But you guys are more than enough,” Burn added, pulling out a faint smile that didn’t try to dazzle or perform. It simply was.

And suddenly, Aroche remembered.

When had he last seen this version of Burn? Not the general, not the arcanist, not the crown-wearing Force Master who made grown men shit themselves at court. No—this. This soft-smiling, quietly content Burn.

He hadn’t been a man back then. Just a boy.

The same idiot who’d snuck into that cursed dungeon with him for “treasure” (they found moldy coins and an angry salamander). The same idiot who’d spat out his first drink dramatically and insisted it tasted like fermented feet. The same idiot who tripped a wire trap on purpose just to laugh at Aroche’s panicked reaction, then immediately patched him up and lectured him about situational awareness.

That boy had always been there. Competitive, warm-blooded, reckless. Until one day he just… wasn’t. Until one day he didn’t need help tying his bandages anymore, and Aroche realized he’d been left behind.

“Let’s go,” Burn said softly, leaning in to kiss Morgan.

Aroche caught the glimmer of lipstick freshly returned to his lips. He scoffed—reflexive, irritated, mostly resigned—but didn’t say a word. The man was clearly beyond help. And for once, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

They entered the reception venue with surprising grace, Morgan regal, Burn somehow holding it together. Aroche trailed behind them like a very underpaid babysitter, waiting for the moment this fairy tale imploded under its own glitter.

Except… it didn’t.

What caught him off guard wasn’t the ceremony, the applause, or even the logistics running smoothly for once—it was that smile. That same faint, gentle smile. It stayed.

Through the speeches—delivered by old friends, brilliant children, exhausted colleagues. Through the announcement of their son’s adoption. Through the ring exchange and the overdone performances.

Through the wardrobe change into Soulnaught’s traditional wedding robes, dignified and regal and blessedly unable to be ripped off easily.

Through the walk up to the palace balcony, where the crowd roared like waves for their golden couple. Through the chariot ride, Burn waving like a true royal, his hands offering flowers to the masses with the elegance of someone who’d just experienced a spiritual enlightenment in a hedge garden.

And the whole time, that smile never left.

Not the smirk of a conqueror. Not the grin of a showman.

No.

Just the honest smile of a boy who’d finally come back home.

Too bad it was already time to leave.

At the edge of the city, where the chariot waited and the streets still thrummed with celebration, Burn offered Morgan his hand—and stepped into nothing. Or rather, what looked like nothing. His metal-heeled shoes struck something solid and invisible, a staircase made of light and air—clear as glass, thin as faith.

He climbed. Step by step, higher into the evening sky, posture upright but heart clearly lagging behind.

Morgan, ethereal as ever, didn’t even need to walk. She simply floated up beside him, weightless and radiant, the kind of vision ancient poets would’ve written sonnets about before promptly losing their minds. Together, they rose slowly, like a painting peeling away from reality.

And then the crowd below gasped—not because the couple vanished, but because something else appeared. Just as their silhouettes disappeared into the clouds, a glimmer shivered across the far-off horizon. A radiant sheen, stretching and rippling like a second sky unfurling around the world.

A barrier.

War’s curtain call.

“I want to do that again,” Burn muttered, half a protest, half a prayer. He didn’t look at her when he said it. “But too bad we have to begin now.”

No time to finish the speeches properly. No time for Mahkato to get comfortable in her war throne. No sun to mark the start of dawn.

Now.

Morgan turned to him, smiling with that gentle cruelty only the beloved can wield. “Okay. I’ll rest my tongue and do that again when we’re done,” she said. “With more of my soul energy.”

Yes. It involved tongue.

Burn flushed. His expression twisted into the perfect cocktail of flustered and annoyed—classic Burn, trying to stay dignified while being emotionally waterboarded by his own wife.

“You’re just saying that to get me to finish this quicker,” he muttered.

And she didn’t deny it. Because of course she was.

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You can go ahead read the ,5 chapter on patreon for free! Also, I have no future chapter stacks rn :'vvvvvvv I'm so cooked. Like cooked cooked :''''''v

But I can feel the writer's block coming off of me soon. I can feel it coming off please don't ruin my momentum please aaaaAAAAA *ascending