Sleep was a luxury the Elder Hall had stolen from me. Our appointed chamber—secluded, they'd said, as if isolation was kindness—felt more like a cage lined with silk. Dorian dozed fitfully on the narrow bed, exhaustion finally claiming him, but I sat by the window, watching shadows shift in ways shadows shouldn't.
Ashara lay in the carved wooden cradle they'd provided, and from her small form came a sound that set my teeth on edge. Humming. But not our lullaby, not any melody I'd ever shared with her. This tune was older, structured in intervals that human throats weren't meant to create. Each note made the walls vibrate—subtle, almost imperceptible, but there.
Something was listening through her. Using her sleeping mind as a conduit to taste our world.
I couldn't stand it anymore. Carefully, I lifted her from the cradle, settling her against Dorian's chest. He stirred but didn't wake, arm curling protectively around our daughter even in sleep. At least if something tried to claim her, he'd know.
The night air bit sharp and clean as I stepped outside. I needed clarity, needed space from the wrongness that seemed to cling to everything since we'd returned. The moon hung full above, its light stranger than I remembered—warmer, almost personal, as if it knew my name.
Three steps from the door, I noticed it.
A line of silver moss growing in my footprints.
I stopped, heart hammering, and looked back. Each place my bare feet had touched earth now bloomed with luminescent growth—delicate, beautiful, and absolutely wrong. This was temple magic, old marking that hadn't been seen since...
Since the High Priestesses of Velara walked the sacred paths.
"No," I whispered, but the moss continued to spread, following the heat of my passage like it had been waiting for permission to grow.
"Denying it won't make it less true."
I spun toward the voice, hand going to the knife at my belt. But what stood before me wasn't flesh—it was memory given form, echo shaped into almost-presence. Velara herself, or what remained of her in the spaces between legend and truth.
She looked like me, if I'd chosen differently. Older, harder, wearing power like armor instead of burden. Her silver hair fell in intricate braids woven with moonstone, and her eyes held the terrible wisdom of someone who'd seen the end of things and chosen to walk backward into beginning.
"You're dead," I said flatly.
"Death is a narrow definition." Her smile was my smile, turned sharp. "I'm what remains when a goddess-vessel refuses to empty. Echo. Warning. The shadow cast by choices you're still making."
"I want nothing from you."
"Want is irrelevant. You carry my mantle whether you choose it or not." She gestured to the silver moss still spreading from my path. "The world has already decided. You defeated what I became, yes. But power doesn't vanish—it just finds new vessels. And you, little mother, are shaped perfectly to hold what I left behind."
"I rejected godhood. I chose—"
"You chose for yourself. But did you choose for her?" Velara's form flickered, and for a moment I saw through her to something vast and patient. "Your daughter hums songs I used to dream. She speaks in tongues that predate naming. She is becoming what you refused to be, and you cannot stop her without becoming what you fear."
The truth of it hit like cold water. Every choice I'd made to keep Ashara human had only taught her that choice itself was power. And what does a child do with power but test its limits?
"What do you want?" I asked, exhausted by riddles and warnings.
"To prepare you." Velara stepped closer, and I smelled ozone and old roses. "The next eclipse comes in three turnings. When the moon hides its face, your daughter will either crown herself with the light you rejected... or be consumed by the darkness you've been keeping at bay."
"There has to be another way."
"There's always another way. But each path demands its price." She began to fade, edges blurring into moonlight. "Ask yourself, Aria Nightbloom—what kind of world do you want her to inherit? One bound by old laws that would see her caged? Or one remade by infant hands that don't yet understand consequence?"
Before I could answer, she was gone. Only the silver moss remained, glowing soft testament to power I'd never asked for but couldn't seem to escape.
I ran back to our chamber, bare feet leaving more luminescent trails I didn't look back to see. Inside, I found a scene that stopped my heart.
Ashara was awake. Wide awake, sitting up in Dorian's arms though she shouldn't have the strength. Her silver eyes glowed in the darkness, and her small mouth moved carefully, shaping words in a language that had died before humans learned to write.
As I watched, frozen, she raised one tiny hand. Where her fingers traced air, fire bloomed—not wild but controlled, deliberate. A sigil burned itself into the wooden wall, complex and beautiful and absolutely impossible for an infant to create.
"Ashara?" My voice came out strangled.
She turned to me, and in her gaze I saw not my daughter but something ancient wearing her face. Then she blinked, and she was just my baby again, reaching for me with chubby fingers that still smelled of smoke and prophecy.
I gathered her close, feeling Dorian wake fully beside us. "What happened?" he asked, seeing the burning sigil, the fear in my eyes.
"I think..." I stared at the mark on the wall, trying to decipher its meaning and failing. "I think the prophecy was never about saving the world."
"Then what?"
I looked at our daughter, who watched us both with those impossible eyes, and felt the weight of understanding settle like stones in my chest.
"It was about choosing what kind of world she'll inherit. Whether we let the old one stand... or let her remake it in dreams we can't control."
The sigil pulsed once more, then faded to smoking char. But its message remained, burned into more than wood:
Change was coming, whether we guided it or not.
And our daughter would be its architect.
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