CHAPTER 5:  The Woman Who Should Be Dead

The silence after Kael’s words was worse than any battlefield. Tanya stood frozen in the narrow corridor of twisted stone roots, her breath shallow, her fingers still tingling from where she had touched the Dragon Wolf’s markings. The creature was gone now… vanished into mist and shadow but its message lingered like a curse under her skin. Her mother was dead. That truth had been carved into her life like scripture. “That thing… it said my mother’s alive.” Kael didn’t answer immediately. His golden eyes stayed fixed ahead, sharp, calculating, as though the answer might appear in the air if he stared long enough.

Finally, he said, “It didn’t lie.” Tanya’s head snapped toward him. “Don’t say that.” Kael’s jaw tightened. I’m saying what I sensed. “You don’t get to sense my dead mother back into existence,” she snapped, anger cracking through the fear. A flicker passed through his expression, something restrained, something almost wounded but it was gone before she could name it. You’re shaken, he said instead and being alone out here is dangerous. I’m not alone, she fired back. “I never asked you to follow me.” That, at least, was true.

Kael stepped closer, his presence filling the narrow space like heat before a storm. “Stop following me,” she said sharply. His reply was instant. “No,” You don’t get to decide for me, I’m trying to keep you alive. The words hit harder than they should have. Tanya looked away, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. “I don’t need your protection.” But even as she said it, the bond between them pulsed soft, treacherous, undeniable. Like something inside her body disagreed with her pride. Kael felt it too. She saw it in the way his breath slowed, in the way his gaze dipped for half a second too long before he forced himself to look away. Neither of them mentioned it.

They began walking again, not together not apart. Something in between that neither of them had agreed to. The deeper they went, the more the forest seemed to forget them. Trees twisted into unnatural arches. Roots formed steps where no steps should exist. The air grew heavier, older like it had been waiting for them for centuries.

Tanya moved ahead stubbornly, ignoring Kael’s steady footsteps behind her. “You’re going the wrong way,” he said after a while. “I didn’t ask.” “You’re heading into a dead zone.” “I said I didn’t ask.” A pause. Then, quieter: “Tanya…”  Her name on his tongue did something infuriating to her chest. She stopped walking abruptly. “Why are you still here?” Kael didn’t hesitate. “Because you are.” That answer should have been irritating. It wasn’t. It unsettled her more than anything else today. She turned away quickly before he could see it.

Hours later or maybe minutes, time had started behaving strangely they found it. The sanctuary. It didn’t announce itself. It simply was ancient ruins swallowed by nature, half-buried in black stone and silver vines. A circular opening yawned into the earth like a wound that never healed. Symbols etched along the edges glowed faintly, reacting to Tanya’s presence before she even stepped closer. Kael’s voice lowered. “This place is old.” “I can see that,” she muttered. “No,” he said more seriously. “I mean older than our kingdoms.” That made her pause. Something about that statement pressed against her mind like a memory she couldn’t access. She ignored it and stepped forward anyway. Kael followed immediately. Of course he did.

Inside, the air changed. It was colder still almost sacred. The sanctuary wasn’t grand in the way royal palaces were. It was not built for power. It was built for truth. Tanya’s footsteps echoed softly as she moved deeper into the chamber. Walls rose around them like carved memory, covered in faint markings that seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them. Kael stayed close behind her. Too close. She hated that she noticed. At the center of the chamber stood a massive stone wall. And on it a mural,  Tanya stopped breathing. 

The painting stretched across the ancient surface like a story frozen in time. Moon Goddess, radiant and watching. Dragon Wolves circling like guardians of fate. And at the center a woman silver-haired, yes fierce, powerful, alive. Tanya’s throat tightened violently because the woman looked exactly like her. “No,” she whispered, stepping back. Kael didn’t speak immediately. For once, even he had gone still.

His eyes moved across the mural slowly, like every detail was breaking something inside him piece by piece. “This…” he said finally, voice low. “This shouldn’t exist.” Tanya laughed once, hollow. “Tell me about it.” But her gaze couldn’t leave the silver-haired queen. It wasn’t just a resemblance. It was an identity. Like looking at a version of herself that had lived another life, one she had never been told about. Kael stepped closer to the mural. His expression shifted, certainty, control, dominance and everything that defined him began to fracture at the edges. “This changes everything,” he said quietly. Tanya swallowed. “What is she?” Kael didn’t answer, not right away. And that silence terrified her more than anything else.

Tanya stepped forward again despite every instinct screaming at her not to. Her hand lifted before she could stop herself. And the moment her fingers touched the mural, the sanctuary responded. Light pulsed through the stone like veins igniting. The air shifted violently. Kael grabbed her arm instantly. “Tanya don’t” Too late. The wall trembled. And words hidden, ancient, alive rose across the stone surface like they had been waiting only for her touch. “The heir lives.” Tanya’s breath caught. Kael went completely still.

“The heir…” she whispered. “What heir?” But the sanctuary didn’t answer instead, it listened. And then a sound, soft at first. Impossible, a  voice echoing through the ruins like it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Tanya.” She froze, every part of her body locked in place. Kael turned sharply, instincts flaring. The voice came again. Closer this time. “Tanya…” Her heartbeat slammed painfully against her ribs because she knew that voice. It didn’t belong in a memory. It belonged in a grave. Slowly, trembling despite herself, Tanya whispered the truth she had buried for years. “…Mother?”