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"Your mother's service to me exempted her from her family's curse," the calm voice returned after a few seconds of silence. "Her lineage was cursed for shedding innocent blood but she escaped her fate and ran to my sanctuary. I kept her safe in my sanctuary for many years, preserving her." I blinked because I was not expecting that.

"What – What do you mean by preserving her?"

"Time is a teardrop to me but an ocean to your kind. To me, she had spent less than a week in the sanctuary but she told me one day that she had spent decades. She had not aged in those decades but she wanted to leave to see the world outside."

I – It was a lot to wrap my head around but I had a goddess in my head. I was listening directly to the voice of divinity so nothing seemed too big to wrap my head around.

If my mother's lineage was cursed, did that make me cursed too? "Who cursed her lineage?" I asked.

Cursed.

I had played around with that idea all my life. I had called myself cursed with bad luck.