The morning started like any other—until Ashara opened her mouth and shattered our illusion of normalcy.
"Keth'ara nim solace. Thu'vani mor delain."
Perfect Old Tongue. Not the stumbling attempts of a child learning language, but fluid command of words that predated written history. From lips that had only recently learned to shape "mama."
The birds fell silent. The wind stilled. And behind us, something that had been formless for days finally took shape.
I turned slowly, arms tightening around Ashara, to see what her words had summoned. A woman-shaped silhouette stood at the edge of our camp, darker than shadow should be in morning light. Where eyes should have been, cracked obsidian caught the sun—not reflecting but swallowing light, containing it in fractured depths.
"Finally." Its voice came like smoke over gravel. "The Moonborn Sovereign speaks my name into being."
Dorian's blade sang from its sheath, but I caught his wrist. "Wait."
"Aria—"
"It's not attacking." My words came steady despite the ice in my veins. "It's... acknowledging."
The shadow-woman moved with liquid grace, each step deliberate but unthreatening. When it reached the invisible boundary of our camp, it did something that stopped my heart.
It knelt.
Not the mocking genuflection of those who bent knee while planning betrayal. This was deep, genuine—the kind of submission offered to rightful rule.
"Moonborn Sovereign," it said again, obsidian eyes fixed on my daughter. "Last holder of the Velaran Throne. Speaker of the Sundered Prophecy. I have waited in the spaces between shadow and substance for you to give me form."
"She's an infant," I said, though the words felt hollow. Ashara watched the entity with those too-knowing silver eyes, no fear in her expression. Only recognition.
"Age is mortal concern." The shadow tilted its head, a gesture disturbingly human. "I knew her grandmother's grandmother, when the bloodline first tasted divinity. I was there when Velara broke the world rather than bend. I watched her scatter the prophecy into fragments, hiding truth in silence."
"Velara is dead. Her line is—"
"Sitting in your arms." The entity's attention never wavered from Ashara. "Blood remembers what minds forget. Power flows through veins like rivers finding ancient channels. She carries more than your love, Aria Nightbloom. She carries legacy."
"What do you want?"
"To finish what was started. To speak the prophecy Velara silenced with her fall." The shadow leaned forward, and I smelled ozone and old roses. "But it cannot come from my mouth. The words must be shaped by the bloodline that scattered them. She must speak them, or they remain forever broken."
My chest tightened. Another thing demanding my daughter become vessel for ancient purposes. "And if we refuse?"
"Then she remains caught between. Never fully of this world, never fully beyond it." The obsidian eyes cracked further, showing depths that went nowhere. "The prophecy is not curse or blessing—it is belonging. Without it, she drifts between what was and what is, claiming neither."
"That's not—"
"Mor'asi velan nethis?"
Ashara's voice cut through my protest. She looked at me with perfect focus, switching to common tongue with ease that should have been impossible. "Will you let me speak?"
The question hit like physical force. My daughter—my infant daughter—asking permission to claim her birthright. Not demanding, not compelling. Asking.
"What will happen if you do?" I managed.
She considered this with gravity no child should possess. "I become real."
"You are real. You're here, you're—"
"Borrowed." The word came soft but certain. "I am borrowed from spaces between. The prophecy makes me... permanent."
I looked to Dorian, finding my own anguish reflected in his eyes. We'd fought so hard to let her choose her shape. But what if the choice was between wholeness and safety? Between complete existence and protected limitation?
"What prophecy?" I asked the shadow. "What words did Velara scatter?"
"Three lines. No more. But they anchor reality in ways you cannot comprehend." The entity shifted, form rippling like disturbed water. "The first names what was lost. The second binds what was broken. The third..."
"The third?"
"Chooses what will be."
Simple words. Terrible implications. A prophecy that didn't predict but created, spoken by infant lips that barely knew language yet commanded tongues older than civilization.
"If she speaks wrong?" Dorian's question cut sharp.
"Then reality reflects the error." No comfort in the shadow's tone. "But silence is worse. Silence leaves her rootless, drifting between destinies like—"
"Like me." The understanding came cold. I'd lived between worlds, between choices, between versions of myself. The constant sensation of not quite fitting, of being real but not really real. "You're saying without this, she'll always be... between."
"The bloodline demands completion. One way or another."
Ashara reached for the shadow with chubby fingers that had traced divine sigils. The entity didn't pull back—if anything, it leaned into her touch. Where infant skin met shadow-stuff, silver light bloomed.
"Neth'ara volum mis," she said, and though I didn't know the words, I felt their weight. First fragment of prophecy already forming on her tongue.
"Ashara, wait—"
She looked at me again, and in her gaze I saw patience that belonged to no infant. "Trust me, Mama. Like you taught me to trust you."
The reversal stole my breath. How many times had I asked for her trust as I'd made choices about her nature, her power, her path? Now she offered the same challenge back—trust her to know what she needed, even if I couldn't understand it.
"The shadow knows things," she continued in that impossible clarity. "About the paths between. About why I sometimes feel like I'm falling. About how to land."
"And if the prophecy changes you?"
"Then I change." Simple acceptance. "But I'll still be yours. Just... more yours. More here."
I looked at this shadow-thing that knelt before my daughter, at Dorian's white-knuckled grip on his sword, at Ashara's patient certainty. All my instincts screamed to protect her from ancient words and bloodline burdens.
But protection and prison were separated by such thin lines.
"If you hurt her—" I began.
"I am hers," the shadow interrupted. "I cannot hurt what I serve. I can only complete what was left unfinished."
Ashara turned back to me, waiting. The morning held its breath. And in that suspension, I realized the choice had never really been mine.
She would speak or stay silent based on what she knew, not what I feared.
"Will you let me speak?" she asked again.
The question hung between us like a blade, waiting to fall.
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