> In another lifetime, they were fire and water.
A prince carved from silence. A slave-born girl wrapped in forbidden blood.
And the world was never ready for their love.
---
The first time he saw her, she was scrubbing the blood of nobles from marble floors.
She didn't look up when he passed — she had learned long ago that eyes like hers were dangerous. But he stopped. Something in him paused, even before he knew her name.
Ha-eun.
She was the shadow behind the princess. A woman with fire in her eyes, chains in her blood, and a softness she offered no one but the child in her arms.
He was Ryuseong, prince of the eastern dynasty. Deaf from birth. A tool for the court. A symbol of broken perfection.
And yet, with her, he heard everything.
> "You don't need words to love," she once wrote in the dirt, smiling.
"Only a soul that remembers."
---
They ran from their fate — left the palace, changed their names, built a home beneath the plum trees. She carried his child. He built her cradle with his bare hands. They believed, for a while, that love could be louder than war.
But blood always catches up to legacy.
One spring morning, messengers came bearing silk and lies.
> "Your father begs for peace," they said.
He left to catch fish for their daughter's birthday. When he returned, their home was on fire.
Ash in the wind.
His wife's body, shielding the child.
The child's hair, streaked with white, soaked in soot and silence.
No gods wept that day.
Only Ryuseong.
---
He buried them where the plum blossoms fell. Then he vanished.
But before he left, he stood at their graves and carved into the stone with shaking hands:
> "If I had one more life…
I would find you sooner.
Love you harder.
Burn the world before it burned you."
--
> "Two hearts. One fate. A love that time could not destroy."
---
Because when two souls are bound by a promise…
> Even death cannot break it.
> Not when love remembers.
Not when the past still breathes.
Not when someone, somewhere, is still whispering —
> If I had one more life… I'd find you again