There was once a king who loved his queen like she was made of air, necessary, invisible, everywhere. He worshipped her laugh, her softness, her beauty. She was the sun to his empire. The queen held his heartbeat in her palms. Every smile of hers steadied him. Every tear unmade him.

But she was never meant to be his because she was the daughter of a man who served the king. Yet she saw beyond the gold and glory, saw the man behind the throne and loved him still.

Her father told her no, once, twice, perhaps a hundred times. But their love, stubborn as dawn, kept returning.

And one day, despite his better sense and her father's fear, she married him.

The king built his world around her warmth, but somewhere between love and need, he forgot that the sun isn't meant to be caged.

And when she gave him a son with her green eyes and his lopsided smile, the kingdom rejoiced.

The prince was born to rule.

But the king, obsessed with power, chose to keep him hidden from the world. "A diamond," he'd preach, "must be buried before it's revealed." So he locked away the boy's name, his existence, waiting for the day he would present him as perfection to the world.

But perfection never came.

When the prince turned eight, something shifted in that golden castle. Whispers started to spread through the walls of betrayal, a rumor, no one knows what it was, only remained terrible after.

All that's remembered is how love turned to poison.

The king began drinking. The gentle man who once carried his son on his shoulders now raised his hand instead.

The queen, once light, became a shivering shadow. She begged him to stop, shielding the boy with trembling arms.

But her pleas only fed his fury. The more she shielded the boy, the more he tore him away from her.

Rumors of the king beating the boy for coming in their life, of the queen loving the prince more spread like a virus.

Because, it was believed that even in his drunk state he never laid a finger on her.

Some nights, the king pressed a piece of broken glass against his son's back. He would dig it in his back, until blood bloomed, just to make sure he was real. To make sure it was the same blood that runs in his body.

And the prince bled in silence. He never shedded a single tear in his life and swore to never do so.

Because crying would only make it worse. Instead he smiled even in pain for his mother. For the woman who applied ointment in his wounds in the dark when no one was watching.

But while his world was ruining, somewhere else, the universe breathed in, as if to balance the cruelty.

A baby girl opened her eyes, ocean blue eyes.

Her mother whispered a prayer she would never live long enough to repeat.

The girl learned early that the ocean looks calm on the surface but hides storms below. And when the world broke her too soon, she didn't harden... instead she deepened.

Every wound carved another current in her, every loss another tide pulling her farther from the shore, to the dead center.

Years passed in bruises of son, broken mother and monster father.

And when the boy was seventeen, the queen set herself on fire. Their room went up in flames, and she burned inside it, leaving behind nothing but ashes and her son's shattered scream.

The prince screamed, tried to run inside to save his mother but the king held the prince close, sobbing like a madman.

"Now you'll understand," King whispered between sobs. "How, love always destroys."

That night, three things changed:

Fire took his smile.

Rain washed away his innocence.

And the king was buried alive beneath the ashes of the same room by the prince.

The prince walked out of that burning castle alone. The sole heir of the kingdom. But his hands were covered in blood, skin held specks of ashes followed by utter silence.

That's how monsters are born not from dark things but from the people who swore to love them.

The sunlight was gone.

The woman who'd filled his days with it had vanished into fire, and all that was left was night.... an endless, merciless night.

But while the sun died in his world, somewhere far away, the ocean stirred again.

And one day, that ocean girl would meet the boy made of fire.

He'd try to tame her, not realizing you can't cage the waves.

She'd dance in his chaos, feed his fire, and call it freedom.

Because long before they met, the universe had already chosen them. The boy made of fire and the girl made of oceans.

Two broken halves of the different stories, bound to destroy each other before they learn what it means to heal.