Kael’s breath caught as he stood between the girl and the woman cloaked in moonlight.Because it was her, Liolai. Every inch of her glowed with sovereign weight, But something in her eyes... It wasn’t the warmth he remembered. It was colder, Sharper, She stepped forward.Her crown shimmered, not gold, not bone, but a weave of threads from every timeline she’d touched.“Give me the child,” she said.Not asked. Commanded.The girl gripped Kael’s hand tighter. “Papa…” she whispered, her voice small and cracking. “That’s not her.”Kael didn’t move, Didn’t blink.His whole soul balanced on a knife’s edge, He looked again, really looked, The face, the hair, the voice. All Liolai’s. But… Her presence didn’t feel like forgiveness. It felt like finality.Kael stepped in front of the child. “Tell me your name.”She smiled, A slow, regal smile. “I am Liolai, daughter of ruin, crowned by silence.”“I died and rewrote my death.”“I returned and claimed what was denied.”“That girl belongs to me.”
She hesitated, Then took one step, And then another, Until moonlight kissed her face, She couldn’t have been more than six, But her presence was vast, Too vast, Kael fell to his knees. Because her eyes, They weren’t just white.They were Liolai’s. Not her color. Not her fire. But her stillness. Her knowing. Her grief. The girl tilted her head. “You remember too.”Kael swallowed hard. “What’s your name?”She looked down at the thing she was clutching, And gently held it out to him. It was a torn page. Old. Scorched. The ink faded but legible. Liolai.Kael’s hands trembled as he took it. The page buzzed in his palms like it was alive, A heartbeat pulsed behind the faded lettering, He looked up. “Where did you get this?”She sat beside him. “I woke up with it,” she said softly. “In a cradle of roots. Far under the dirt.”“No one was there. Just… the page. And the thread.”She pointed to his hand. “I followed it. And found you.”Kael stared at her. “You knew I’d be here?”She nodded once,
Kael opened his eyes to stillness, No screams, No magic, No realm-tearing grief. Just a quiet breeze rustling through trees that should have been burned, in a land that should have been broken.He sat up slowly, His armor was gone, His scars had faded, But one thing remained, A name he could still remember. Liolai. And it hurt like hell.He rose to his feet, heart pounding, The forest stretched around him, lush, green, vibrant. It was beautiful, pristine, untouched by ink or blood. But it wasn’t right, Not to him, Because he remembered the ashes.The rewritten queen, The scream of a child born of contradiction. Kael stumbled forward, searching. For what, he didn’t know. Until he found the stream. And its reflection didn’t lie, He was younger. Not by much.But enough to make his chest tighten. The realm didn’t just reset, It erased. He spent the day walking, Village after village, Town after town.He saw faces that should have been familiar, Ashen as a quiet, nameless herbalist. Liora
She stood at the center of the trial ring. Small, Barefoot, Her eyes glowing white, not the fierce gleam of divine magic, nor the golden fire of Luna blood, but pure, untouched potential.No one spoke, Not Kael, still kneeling, his chest burned with love. Not Ashen, wide-eyed in disbelief, Not Liolai or Liora, whose connection to the thread flickered like a flame caught in wind.The Librarian recoiled as if scorched by her mere presence, Even the sky, the great eye above them, shivered. The girl blinked. And asked again, softly: “Mama?”Ashen was the first to move, He stumbled toward the child, hands open, trembling. “What… are you?”The girl tilted her head, Then pointed at both Liolai and Liora. “You’re both my mama.”Liolai gasped, Liora took a step back, her expression torn between awe and horror. “That’s not possible,” Ashen whispered.But deep inside, he knew, Because this child did not carry the weight of the past, She carried everything that could have been.Kael reached her n
Ashen was the first to move, He reached the edge of the scar just as the second hand, Liolai’s, gripped the cracked stone tighter, her knuckles scraped raw, skin smeared in golden ink and blood.“Liolai?” he whispered, unsure if hope would betray him again.The woman beside Kael, Liora, or the echo of her tensed, her posture tightening like a bow pulled too far.Kael turned, eyes wide. “It’s her. It’s really”Liolai pulled herself up from the dark. And she was smiling, Not the soft, uncertain smile of a girl lost in the pages of other people’s choices, But the hard-won, defiant grin of someone who had clawed her way out.When Liolai stood, the land shook, Because now, two of them stood side by side, Liora, reborn, Liolai, returned.Ashen staggered backward. “They can’t exist together,” he breathed. “The realm won’t allow it.”Liolai looked at the woman beside her and frowned. “You’re wearing my mother’s face.”Liora turned slowly. “And you’re wearing my daughter’s guilt.”Kael’s breat
Kael froze. Ashen’s body tensed, his still-bleeding hand hovering protectively near the half-drawn forbidden circle. Because the hand that rose from the crack in the world wasn’t ink-born.It was flesh, Smooth. Pale. A single mark, half rune, half scar, glowed faintly beneath the skin of its palm.And it was unmistakable, Kael whispered, his voice crumbling. “Liora…”The hand gripped the edge of the fissure, And pulled. She rose slowly. Hair like midnight oil.Eyes like stars, burned out, then reignited, Her dress was not the one she had died in.It was woven from memory, sewn with silence, trimmed with the threads of promises kept too late.She stood before them, Breathing, Whole, And yet, Wrong. Kael stumbled forward.“You…”Her head tilted, She regarded him as if he were a name on the edge of her tongue, Ashen raised his blade but it fizzled, powerless before her presence. She didn’t radiate magic.She was magic, The kind that rewrote rules just by existing, He stepped between her