The question hung in the air like a sword ready to fall. Jaenor felt his heart skip a beat, but Rosa spoke first. He was startled by how she found out about his birth.
"Why do you ask such a thing?" Rosa said, her voice thick with grief.
"Of course, he's my son."
"Is he born from your body?" Morgana pressed.
"Or did you find him somewhere?"
Rosa looked at Jaenor, then back at the witch. Fresh tears started in her eyes. "I... I found him," she whispered.
Jaenor put his arm around his mother's shoulders.
He had always known this moment might come. From the day he first opened his eyes in this world, he had known he was different.
Morgana noticed his indifference, and from that she could tell he was aware.
But what she didn't know was that Jaenor wasn't from his world.
In his old life, he had been a man in his thirties, working in an office in a world of cars and computers. He remembered dying—a heart attack at his desk, at his home, alone and forgotten. Then he had woken up as a baby, wrapped in strange cloth, with the mind of a grown man trapped in a tiny body.
He had kept this secret for years, thinking of it as a second chance at life. A chance to have a real family, to know love, to live in peace.
When he woke up, he was in a forest, and it was raining heavily that night. It was all like a dream to him.
"Yes," Rosa whispered, her voice heavy with memory.
"That day... I remember it clearer than my own name."
Morgana's face remained unreadable.
Jaenor wrapped his arm around his mother as she clung to his clothes, like she was holding him.
Rosa continued, her eyes far away. "I was searching for herbs near the Old stone path, and the clouds started to darken. Within seconds, it was raining, pouring, like the sky was breaking apart. I was on my way home, in a hurry, and I stopped suddenly when I heard a baby crying.
At first, I thought I might have been hearing things, but the sound persisted. I followed the sound... and found him."
She looked at Jaenor now, her voice trembling. "You were lying in the center of a clearing. Wrapped in a deep crimson velvet cloth.
And above you... above you was a snake."
Jaenor remained silent, though he remembers clearly to this day. It wasn't something that you forget easily.
Morgana's eyes sharpened. "A snake?"
Rosa nodded. "Not just any snake. It had seven heads attached to one body. A crown of them. They hovered over you like guardians, not striking. Just... watching. Its body curled beneath you like a throne. The strangest thing was, despite the rain, you were dry. Perfectly dry."
Jaenor was quiet, the memory flashing in his mind—his first moment in this world, that bizarre vision of serpents and velvet, the heavy scent of pine and soil. He had dismissed it as a dream.
A hallucination after death.
"When I stepped closer," Rosa went on, "the snake did not attack. It merely uncoiled. Slowly. Gently. As if it were… offering you to me. When I picked you up, it looked at me. All seven heads. Then it slithered into the woods. And vanished."
Morgana's face had gone pale.
Her throat was dry.
"Ba'narussa," she whispered, lips moving but barely audibly.
Though it wasn't lost on Jaenor.
Jaenor noticed. "What does it mean?" he asked.
Morgana didn't answer right away.
She stared at him, as though seeing him for the first time. Looking at him closely, noticing his every feature, the more she saw, the more she realized.
"It can't be…"
Appearances and the evidence of the serpent proved her otherwise.
"You know something, don't you?" Rosa looked at her suspiciously.
Morgana breathed a long one out, composing herself. Her expression changed looking at Jaenor.
"I know who your parents are," Morgana said, her voice cutting through the silence like a sharp blade.
Rosa's eyes grew wide with shock, and her mouth opened slightly. She gripped the arms of Jaenor, and he was surprised, but his gaze sharpened.
Now what is she playing at?
"So what?" Jaenor said, his voice rough with anger.
"I don't care about the ones who left me behind. I have parents right here." He pointed to Rosa with a sharp gesture. "And one of them just died. If you're going to leave me alone, I need to prepare for his funeral."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Rosa's husband had passed away, and the grief still felt as fresh as an open wound. Jaenor had been the old man's pride and joy, the son he never had by blood but loved just the same.
Rosa looked up at Jaenor with eyes full of sadness and love. "Don't be like that, son," she said softly.
"No matter what happened, they are the ones who gave you life."
Jaenor's face grew red with anger. He turned to Rosa, taking her rough hands in his own. "I don't care, Ma," he said, his voice gentle now.
"You are my mother, and you always will be. Nothing will change that. Ever."
Morgana's face twisted with anger.
Her eyes blazed like blue fire, and she stepped forward. "You would not be saying that if you knew what really happened to them," she said, her voice rising like thunder.
Seeing the boy running his tongue in front of her made her snap.
She paused, breathing heavily, then continued with words that cut like a sword. "You are the reason your parents are dead."