One

ISOLDE POV 

They say mothers are strong women.

That their strength isn’t the kind that shouts, but the kind that carries worlds quietly on tired shoulders.

That if love ever took a human shape, it would probably look like a mother.

 

I never really understood that.

 

And maybe I never will.

 

Because I never had one.

 

By the time I was six, I was already learning how to pack my life into a small bag and move from one foster home to another. New house. New rules. New people pretending they cared just long enough to get through dinner.

No one asked who I was.

 

Truth is, I didn’t know either.

 

No last name that meant anything. No stories about where I came from. No family pictures tucked into dusty albums. Just files in an office somewhere and a kid who learned early that belonging was a luxury I couldn't afford.

 

So I stopped expecting it.

 

I grew up the only way I knew how…

 

alone.

 

I walked my own road. Worked jobs no kid should have to work just to keep myself afloat. Learned how to fix broken laptops, build code, and design systems. Tech became the only thing in my life that made sense. Machines had rules. Logic. Structure.

 

Unlike people.

 

I built something out of it eventually. Sent myself to college with money I scraped together from freelance tech design and sleepless nights. Every class, every exam, every late-night project was proof that I didn’t need anyone.

 

At least that’s what I told myself.

 

But the truth?

 

No matter how far I climbed, no matter how much I built with my own two hands, there was always this quiet space inside me that nothing ever filled.

 

A space shaped like something I’d never had.

 

A family.

 

Not the kind written in paperwork or assigned by the system.

The kind that stays.

The kind that chooses you.

 

Because no matter how strong people say you are…

No one grows up without wanting someone or somewhere to call home.

 

 

And two years ago… I finally found my home.

 

A sister.

 

My twin.

 

Same eyes, but a different face. Different hair color. If you saw us standing side by side, you’d never guess we shared the same beginning. We looked nothing alike, like life had taken the same blueprint and written two completely different stories from it.

 

The first time she told me, I thought she was messing with me.

 

Some kind of cruel joke.

 

I remember staring at her like she’d lost her mind. Twins? Me? The girl who grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home, the girl with no family name, no history, no one waiting for her anywhere? If we were really sisters, why was I left behind?

 

It sounded impossible.

 

But science doesn’t lie.

 

DNA tests. Records. Dates. Proof stacked up one after another until there was no room left for doubt.

 

She was real.

 

My twin.

 

My blood.

 

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t alone in this world.

 

It was strange at first. Awkward. Like meeting a stranger who somehow already knew the rhythm of your existence. But there were moments… little ones… when something clicked.

 

The way we both tilted our heads when we were confused.

 

The way we laughed at the same stupid things.

 

The silence between us never felt uncomfortable.

 

It was like pieces of something broken long ago were slowly finding their way back together.

 

And before I even realized it…

 

She became home.

 

Not a place.

 

A person.

 

The one person in the world who looked at me and didn’t see a broken kid or a girl who had to fight her way through life alone.

 

She just saw me.

 

Her sister.

 

Her twin.

 

And for the first time in my life…

 

I knew what it felt like to belong.

 

 

Until life decided to play one of its cruel games.

 

And now… here I was.

 

Sitting in a hospital chair that felt colder than it should, watching the only family I had in this world fight for her life.

 

She lay on the bed, motionless beneath harsh white lights. Machines surrounded her, their steady beeps the only proof she was still here with me.

 

Her body looked so small.

 

So fragile.

 

Bones broken. Her face was swollen almost beyond recognition. Bruises blooming across her skin like dark shadows. Tubes ran from her arms, carrying blood back into a body that had lost too much of it.

 

I hated those machines.

 

Hated the way they sounded like a countdown.

 

Two years.

 

That’s all the time life had given us together.

 

Two years of late-night talks, stupid arguments about food, laughing over things no one else would understand. Two years of finally knowing what it meant to have someone who shared my blood.

 

And now it felt like the universe was trying to take her back.

 

My hands clenched together as I sat beside the bed, staring at her still form.

 

“You don’t get to leave me,” I whispered, my voice breaking in the quiet room.

 

“We just found each other.”

 

My throat tightened as memories crashed into me all at once… her laugh, the way she used to shove my shoulder when I said something dumb, the way she’d call me dramatic whenever I overworked myself.

 

She was loud.

 

Bright.

 

Alive.

 

Not… this.

 

I reached out slowly, careful not to disturb the wires and tubes, and took her hand. It felt cold, too still in mine.

 

“You hear me?” I murmured, leaning closer, tears burning behind my eyes. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to leave me Alara.”

 

My laugh came out shaky and broken.

 

“You said we had decades to annoy each other.”

 

The machines kept beeping.

 

Steady. Unfeeling.

 

I was terrified.

 

Terrified of losing the only home I had ever known.

 

But behind that fear… something else burned.

 

Anger.

 

Hot. Sharp. Alive.

 

Because this wasn’t some accident.

 

Before Alara slipped into the darkness of that coma, before the machines took over the work her body could no longer do, she forced her eyes open just long enough to look at me.

 

Her lips were split. Her voice was barely a breath.

 

I leaned close, my heart pounding in my ears.

 

“Who did this to you?” I whispered.

 

For a moment I thought she wouldn’t answer. Her eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open, her chest rising weakly beneath the hospital blanket.

 

Then she spoke.

 

Just one name.

 

A name that carved itself into my memory like a blade into stone.

 

“Cairos… Veylan.”

 

And then she was gone.

 

The monitors screamed. Doctors rushed in. Hands pushed me away as they fought to keep her alive.

 

But the name stayed.

 

Cairos Veylan.

 

I repeated it in my head again and again, tasting every syllable like poison.

 

Whoever he was…

 

He had taken the only person in this world who belonged to me and shattered her.

 

I stood slowly from the chair beside her bed, still holding her hand for a moment longer before letting go.

 

My jaw tightened.

 

“I’m going to find him,” I murmured, staring at her broken body.

 

“And when I do…”

 

My voice hardened into something colder than the hospital air.

 

“I’m going to make him pay.”