Chapter 9.The truth l was never meant to know

The moment I stepped into the war room, I knew something was wrong.

My father was standing beside the long table at the centre of the room, staring at a piece of parchment as though the words written on it had taken away every answer he had ever known. The candles around the room had burned low, filling the chamber with the faint smell of melted wax, while the rain continued to beat against the tall windows.

I had followed him here because I needed answers, but now that I was standing in front of him, I wasn't sure I was ready to hear them.

Still, I couldn't turn back.

“Father,” I said quietly. “You said there was something I needed to know.”

He lifted his eyes to mine, and the expression on his face made my stomach tighten.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

I had seen that look before, although I couldn't remember where. It was the look of someone who had been carrying something painful for far too long and had finally realized there was no way to keep carrying it alone.

“What is it?” I asked.

He looked down at the parchment again before folding it carefully.

“There are things about your past that I never told you.”

My chest tightened.

“My past?”

He nodded.

I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down, trying to keep my voice steady. “What could possibly be so terrible that you couldn't tell me?”

My father remained standing.

“When you were eleven years old, you died.”

For several seconds, I simply stared at him.

I wanted to laugh because the statement sounded impossible. Instead, I felt a strange coldness settle over me, beginning somewhere beneath my ribs and spreading slowly through my body.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“No.” I shook my head. “That isn't possible.”

“It happened.”

I looked at him, waiting for the explanation that would make his words less frightening, but none came.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.

“How?”

“You fell from the west balcony.”

A strange pressure formed behind my eyes. I tried to remember it, but there was nothing. No balcony. No fall. No pain. Nothing except an empty space where the memory should have been.

“I don't remember that.”

“I know.”

His voice softened, and somehow that made everything worse.

“The physicians tried to save you. They said you had been unconscious for too long and that there was little hope. Your heart stopped before dawn.”

I swallowed.

“And then?”

“You opened your eyes.”

I looked at him carefully.

“If I died, how did I wake up?”

“That is the part I never understood.”

He finally pulled out the chair opposite mine and sat down. The powerful lord I knew suddenly looked like an ordinary father who had been forced to open a wound he had spent years trying to keep closed.

“When you woke up, you weren't the same.”

My breathing became shallow.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn't recognize me.”

The words hurt more than I expected.

“You didn't remember the palace, your servants, your friends, or even your own mother. You looked at everyone around you with fear, as though you had been brought into a strange world.”

I lowered my gaze.

A strange world.

The words echoed in my mind.

That was exactly how I had felt when I first opened my eyes in Seraphina's room.

I had been surrounded by unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar clothes, unfamiliar walls. I had looked into a mirror and seen a woman who wasn't me. I had spent days telling myself that it was simply because I had somehow entered the world of the novel I had been reading.

But now my father's words were making that explanation feel less certain.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“You slowly learned everything again. You remembered your name. You remembered the palace. Eventually, you remembered me.”

“But not the accident?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

I looked at my hands.

There was something deeply unsettling about knowing that the person whose life I had inherited had already experienced something that resembled what had happened to me.

Perhaps that was why some of Seraphina's memories felt broken. Perhaps there had always been something missing.

Or perhaps I was trying to make sense of something that had no explanation.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked.

My father looked away.

“Because I was afraid.”

The simplicity of his answer caught me off guard.

“Afraid of what?”

“Losing you again.”

His voice was quieter now.

“When you woke up, I didn't care that the physicians couldn't explain what had happened. I didn't care that you had forgotten things you should have remembered. You were alive, and I was grateful. I convinced myself that whatever had happened was over.”

I watched him carefully.

“But it wasn't.”

“No.”

His answer was almost a whisper.

I felt my heart sink.

“What happened?”

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and placed something on the table.

A silver pendant.

The moment I saw it, something inside me shifted.

The crescent moon engraved on its surface looked strangely familiar, although I couldn't remember ever seeing it before.

“What is that?”

“We found it near you after the accident.”

I picked it up carefully.

The metal was cold against my palm.

There was an inscription on the back.

My name.

SERAPHINA VALE.

My breath caught.

“Who made this?”

“We don't know.”

I turned it over again, examining the symbol more closely.

“Then why did you keep it?”

“Because the physicians who examined it warned me not to speak about it.”

I looked up.

“Why?”

“Because they recognized the symbol.”

The room seemed to become colder.

“What symbol?”

“The mark belongs to an old organization called the Order of the Veiled Moon.”

The name sent an unexpected shiver through me.

I remembered reading about them in the novel. They had been mentioned only briefly, almost like a forgotten part of Aveloria's history, but there had been something strange about the way the author had described them.

An organization that believed fate could be altered.

An organization that disappeared without leaving a trace.

At least, that was what the story had said.

“They're supposed to be gone,” I whispered.

My father's expression hardened.

“They are not gone.”

I stared at him.

“They have been hiding.”

My fingers tightened around the pendant.

“Why would they be interested in me?”

My father didn't answer.

“Father.”

He finally looked at me.

“Because they believe you were supposed to die.”

My heart seemed to drop into my stomach.

“But I survived.”

“Yes.”

His eyes remained fixed on mine.

“And that is exactly why they are afraid of you.”

I didn't know what to say.

Everything I had believed about my situation suddenly felt unstable. I had thought my biggest problem was Adrian. I had thought the greatest danger was surviving a story that wanted Seraphina dead.

Now I wasn't even certain the story was responsible for what was happening anymore.

Someone had known about Seraphina before I arrived.

Someone had been watching her.

And somehow, that person had left a message connected to me.

I looked down at the pendant again.

There was a tiny inscription beneath my name that I hadn't noticed before.

I turned it toward the candlelight.

Three words were engraved beneath the crescent moon.

You returned once.

My breath caught.

“What does that mean?”

My father stood abruptly.

Before he could answer, a loud knock came from the other side of the door.

He immediately turned toward it.

“Enter.”

The door opened, and a guard hurried inside. His expression was tense, and there was a thin line of blood running down the side of his forehead.

“My Lord,” he said, struggling to catch his breath. “The Crown Prince has been attacked.”

Everything inside me went still.

“Adrian?”

The guard nodded.

“He is alive, but his guards found him near the eastern courtyard. The attacker escaped before anyone could identify him.”

I looked at my father.

His face had lost every trace of colour.

“Was anything left behind?” he asked.

The guard hesitated.

“Yes.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of black parchment.

“It was found beside the Crown Prince.”

My father took it.

He opened the parchment and read it silently.

Whatever he saw made his expression change.

I stood.

“What does it say?”

He didn't answer.

“Father, what does it say?”

Slowly, he handed the parchment to me.

I unfolded it.

There was only one sentence.

You returned once, Seraphina. This time, fate will make sure you stay dead.

My hands began to tremble.

Beneath t

he words was the same crescent moon I had just seen on the pendant.

For the first time since waking inside this world, I understood something that frightened me more than Adrian's accusation ever had.

Someone wasn't simply trying to kill me.

Someone knew exactly who I was.

And they had been waiting for me to return