Auren Calder

‚The Mirror Flames* (inspired by ‚Into Hell‘ by I Prevail) The city was merciless at night — glass towers swallowing the stars, the air thick with exhaust and silence pretending to be peace. Somewhere between the hum of streetlights and the endless blur of headlights, they found each other again. Not as savior and saved, not as something fragile or fleeting, but as two souls who had stopped asking to be rescued. He’d seen too much of the world’s cruelty to believe in redemption. And yet, every time they stood too close, something inside him softened — not in weakness, but in recognition. They didn’t talk about what broke them; they didn’t need to. The language between them was simpler: a look, a breath held too long, the quiet promise that when the fire came, neither would flinch. In a city built on survival, their kind of loyalty felt almost defiant. They met in the small hours when the world was stripped of noise — rooftops, alleyways, bars that stayed open past reason. They never spoke of forever. Only of now. Only of what it meant to stay when everything in you wanted to run. He once told them, voice low against the static hum of the street: “If this place burns down, I’ll walk through it with you.” They smiled, like someone who’d stopped believing in promises but wanted to anyway. And maybe that was what bound them — not hope, but the stubbornness to face the dark and call it love. (32, 6‘0, image from Pinterest)