Ada was losing her grip on time; how many months, years, or days had passed? The concept of time was completely different from what she had known. She couldn't tell anymore where the dreams ended and waking began. The boundary between them had dissolved into something murky and uncertain. The faces of her family were becoming blurry in her memory, their features slipping away like water through her fingers, and so she had begun to write everything down. Every memory of her mother, her brother, her grandmother, her father, her sister, her world. Every secret, every moment that mattered, she recorded it all in desperate attempts to keep them alive. But sometimes, when she read back what she had written, it felt like she was reading the life of someone else entirely, watching a dream come to life on the page rather than remembering her own existence.
Last night, she had dreamed again.
The dream began as it always did, with darkness. But this time, the darkness had weight, texture, a presence that pressed against her skin like cold water. She was standing in a vast temple, though she couldn't see its walls or ceiling. The space felt infinite and suffocating all at once.
The only source of light was a mirror.
It stood in the center of the void, a massive crystal glass surface surrounded by frost that crept across its ornate frame like living veins. Behind it, far in the distance, a fiery dial glowed with a dull red pulse, casting long shadows that seemed to breathe.
Ada was conscious fully, terribly conscious. She knew she was dreaming, knew this place wasn't real, and yet her body moved with the weight of flesh and bone. Her breath misted in the frigid air. Her footsteps echoed against the stone she couldn't see.
She approached the mirror slowly, drawn by an instinct she didn't understand.
When she reached it, she saw herself.
Her reflection stared back, pale skin, dark eyes, the same exhausted expression she'd worn for weeks. But something was wrong. The reflection's chest rose and fell with breath, but not in sync with her own. Its eyes blinked a fraction of a second too late.
Ada lifted her hand.
The reflection didn't move.
Her heart began to pound. She took a step back.
The reflection stepped forward.
"No," Ada whispered, her voice swallowed by the vast emptiness around her.
The reflection smiled a slow, deliberate curve of lips that Ada hadn't made. Its hand pressed against the glass from the inside, fingers splaying wide. Frost cracked beneath its palm, spiderwebbing across the surface with a sound like breaking ice.
Ada stumbled backward, but her feet wouldn't obey. She was rooted to the spot, watching in horror as the reflection's other hand joined the first. The glass began to bulge outward, warping under the pressure.
Then it shattered.
The sound was deafening a thousand crystalline screams erupting at once. Shards exploded outward, and Ada threw her arms up to shield her face, but the glass passed through her like smoke, leaving no cuts, no blood.
Only cold.
And then the reflection was out.
It lunged at her with inhuman speed, hands closing around her throat before she could scream. Ada gasped, choking, her fingers clawing at the hands that were her own but weren't. The reflection's grip was iron, its face inches from hers, and its eyes
Its eyes were empty. Hollow. Like looking into a well with no bottom.
They fell.
Ada's back slammed against the stone floor, the impact driving the air from her lungs. She thrashed, trying to push the thing off her, but her arms had no strength. Her legs kicked uselessly. The reflection's weight pressed down on her chest, crushing, suffocating.
I'm going to die, she thought distantly. I'm going to die in a dream.
She tried to push herself away, scrabbling backward with her heels, but her body wouldn't move. The reflection's hands tightened, and black spots bloomed across her vision.
And then, in the corner of her eye, she saw her.
Another Ada.
This one stood at the edge of the light, half-shrouded in shadow. Her energy was different, darker, heavier, like oil spreading across water. Her posture was relaxed, almost casual, as if she were watching a play rather than a murder.
Ada's dying gaze locked onto her.
The dark Ada tilted her head, studying the scene with detached curiosity. When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost gentle, but it carried through the temple like a funeral bell.
"You just have to die for me to live."
The words settled over Ada like a shroud.
The hands around her throat tightened.
And the world went black.
Ada woke with a violent gasp, her body jerking upright in bed. Her hands flew to her throat, feeling for bruises that weren't there. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and for a long moment, she couldn't remember where she was.
The domain. Astra's domain.
Safe.
But her hands were shaking, and the echo of that voice, her voice, still lingered in her ears.
You just have to die for me to live.
Ada wrapped her arms around herself, staring into the darkness of her room, and wondered which version of herself had spoken the truth.
She sat there in the darkness, her breath still ragged, and tried to summon her mother's face.
Nothing came.
The panic was familiar now, she'd felt it before, many times, in the weeks or months since this nightmare had begun. How long had it been? She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating, reaching for the memory like grasping at smoke. Her mother's voice, yes, she could still hear that, the cadence of it, the warmth. But the face. The shape of her eyes, the curve of her mouth,
gone.
Blurred.
Like looking through frosted glass.
"No," Ada whispered into the darkness. "No, no, no"
She tried her brother next. Eris. His name was solid, real, but his face... she could see fragments. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his eyes would narrow when he was thinking. But when she tried to piece it together, the image fractured, slipping away like water through her fingers.
Her grandmother Lyanna. The weight of her presence, the authority in her voice, but her face was dissolving too, features smudging into indistinct shapes.
Her father. Even Emrys, whose memory should have been sharp as a blade, seared into her soul by grief,
All of them fading.
Terror seized her, cold and absolute.
The pages.
Ada threw herself out of bed, her legs nearly giving out beneath her. She had to get to the study. She had to find them, the pages she'd written, all those nights of desperate recording. They would prove it. They would prove she was real, that her family was real, that she had lived.
She stumbled through the darkened corridors, her bare feet slapping against cold stone. The route should have been automatic, but even that felt uncertain now. Was it this hallway? Or the next one? How many times had she made this journey? Dozens? Hundreds?
She couldn't remember.
The study door was open, had she left it that way? and Ada burst through, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
There.
The desk was covered in papers. Stacks and stacks of them, cream-colored sheets filled with her handwriting. Some neat and careful, others frantic and smudged. Bottles of ink, some empty, some half-full. Pens with silver nibs scattered across the surface.
Ada lunged for the nearest stack, her hands shaking so badly she nearly knocked it to the floor. She caught it, pulled it toward her, and began tearing through the pages.
My name is Ada. I was born in the Bohemian Empire...
Yes. Yes, that was right. She had written this. She remembered writing this. Or did she? When had she written it? Last night? A week ago? Months?
She flipped to the next page, scanning desperately.
I lived in a manor with my family. The house was large, with high ceilings and...
The words blurred. Ada blinked hard, trying to focus. This was her life. Her memories. She had written them down to keep them safe, to anchor herself.
But as she read, a cold horror began to creep through her chest.
The girl on the page the one who had lived in that manor, who had played in those gardens, who had loved that family
She was a stranger.
"No," Ada whispered, her voice breaking. "No, that's not"
She grabbed another stack, flipping through it frantically. More memories, more details, all written in her own hand. A brother who had teased her. A grandmother who had taught her. A mother who had braided her hair.
But none of it felt real.
It was like reading a story. A well-crafted tale about someone else entirely. The emotions were there on the page love, fear, grief but they were abstract, distant, belonging to a girl Ada didn't recognize.
She tore through stack after stack, her movements becoming more frantic, more desperate. Somewhere in here, there had to be something that felt true. Something that would anchor her to herself, prove that she was more than just words on paper.
I remember the day Emrys died...
That should have been sharp. That should have been seared into her memory with perfect clarity. But even as she read her own account of it, carefully recorded in neat handwriting, it felt like fiction. A sad story about people she'd never met.
I left the manor because...
Why? Why had she left? The reason was written right there on the page, but it didn't mean anything. It was just words, just shapes, just ink on paper.
Ada's hands were shaking so badly now that the pages rattled. She could feel tears streaming down her face, hot and desperate.
"Please," she whispered to the empty room. "Please, I need to remember. I need to"
But the more she read, the more detached she became. Every memory she'd so desperately tried to preserve was becoming inert, lifeless. Her own life was dying on these pages, becoming a corpse of words with no breath, no pulse, no warmth.
She had written about her childhood, about learning to read, about summer days and winter nights. She had written about festivals and ceremonies, about family dinners and quiet afternoons. She had written about fears and hopes and secrets she'd kept.
And none of it belonged to her anymore.
The girl who had lived those moments was gone. The girl who had written them down was fading. And the girl reading them now
Who was she?
Ada's vision blurred as she stared down at the pages scattered across the desk. Her own handwriting stared back at her, neat and careful and utterly meaningless.
She was losing herself.
Not all at once, but slowly, inexorably, like sand slipping through an hourglass.
And the worst part was that she couldn't tell how much was already gone. She couldn't tell which Ada she was anymore.
The one who had lived these moments?
The one who had written them down?
Or the one reading them now, feeling nothing, recognizing nothing? Her own life had become inert words on a page. The nightmares were hers they belonged to her, they were real but everything else was dying as she read it. Her lived experience was disconnecting from her with each line, each memory she no longer recognized as her own. Becoming a corpse of words, a body with no breath, no pulse, no warmth.
Her hands trembled as she set the pages down.
Ada pulled one of the older stacks toward her and began to read.
The handwriting was hers she recognized it, even though it looked slightly different, as if written by a younger version of herself. Or an older one. She couldn't tell.
My name is Ada. I was born in the Bohemian Empire...
The words stared back at her, neat and orderly on the page.
But they felt wrong.
Ada read about a girl who had lived in a grand manor, who had loved her family, who had played in gardens and learned from tutors. She read about a brother who had been both protector and tormentor, about a grandmother who had been stern but loving, about a mother who had braided her hair and told her stories.
She read about loss and fear and desperate choices. She read about the day everything changed, about running away, about the journey that had led her here.
And she felt nothing.
It was like reading a story. A well-crafted tale about someone else entirely. The girl on the page was a stranger her joys and sorrows distant, abstract, unreal.
Ada's hands began to shake again.
She flipped to another stack, searching for something that would feel true, something that would anchor her to herself. But the more she read, the more detached she became. The memories were there, recorded in careful detail, but they no longer belonged to her.
I remember the library. There were thousands of books, and I would spend hours...
Had she? Or had she just written that because it seemed like the kind of thing she should remember?
My brother Eris taught me to ride a horse. I was afraid at first, but he stayed beside me...
That felt familiar. Almost real. But when she tried to picture it to see Eris's face, to feel the horse beneath her, to remember the specific day it had happened there was nothing. Just the words on the page, claiming a memory that might never have existed.
My grandmother told me about our family's history. We came from a line of...
Of what? The sentence ended there, unfinished, as if she'd been interrupted or had simply forgotten what she meant to write.
Ada flipped through more pages, faster now, desperately searching for something solid. But every memory she'd recorded felt equally distant, equally unreal. They were dreams. Someone else's dreams, transcribed onto paper and presented to her as fact.
This is my life, she thought desperately. This happened to me. I was there. I remember
But did she?
Or was she simply remembering the act of writing it down?
Ada stared at the pages spread before her, at the careful loops of her own handwriting, and felt the ground shift beneath her feet. The boundary between memory and invention, between self and story, had dissolved.
She found a page near the bottom of one stack, the ink slightly faded, the paper more worn than the others. This one was older she must have written it weeks ago, maybe longer. The handwriting was shakier, more frantic.
I'm forgetting. I can feel it happening. Every day, more pieces disappear. I have to write it down. I have to remember who I am.
Ada stared at those words, written by her own hand in some earlier moment of panic, and felt a chill run through her.
She didn't remember writing that.
She didn't remember the moment of desperation that had produced those words. It could have been yesterday or months ago. It could have been written by someone else entirely.
She flipped to another page, then another, reading fragments of her own recorded life.
The manor had a rose garden. My mother's favorite flowers were...
I had a friend named... I can't remember. But we used to...
There was a festival in the summer. We would...
My father said...
I was afraid of...
I loved...
Fragments. All of it fragments, disconnected pieces that refused to form a coherent whole. And none of it felt real. None of it felt like hers.
She had been writing for so long, trying so desperately to preserve herself, that she'd lost track of what was real. Had these things actually happened? Or had she simply written them down so many times that they'd taken on the weight of truth?
When she read about the manor, was she remembering the actual place, or was she remembering her own descriptions of it? When she pictured her family, was she seeing their real faces, or was she seeing the faces she'd imagined while writing about them?
She didn't know anymore.
She couldn't tell the difference.
Ada looked down at the fresh pages she'd just filled, at the desperate scrawl of tonight's attempt to anchor herself, and realized with sick certainty that in a few days, or weeks, or however long it took, she would read these pages and feel the same detachment. These memories, still raw and urgent now, would become just more words on paper. More fragments of a life that might or might not have been hers.
She was losing herself.
Not all at once, but slowly, inexorably, like sand slipping through an hourglass.
And the worst part was that she couldn't tell how much was already gone. She couldn't tell which Ada she was anymore.
The one who had lived these moments?
The one who had written them down?
Or the one reading them now, feeling nothing, recognizing nothing, as if she were watching her own dream die? Her own life becoming inert, lifeless words on a page. The nightmare was hers it had belonged to her once, but it was dying as she read it. Becoming a corpse of words, a body with no breath, no pulse, no warmth. Her lived experience disconnecting from her with each line she read, each memory she no longer recognized as her own.
The realization hit her like a physical blow.
A scream tore from her throat, raw, animal, desperate. It echoed through the empty study, through the corridors beyond, a sound of pure anguish that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs, deeper than her body.
Her hands flew to her arms, nails digging into skin.
She needed to feel something. Anything. Proof that she was real, that she existed, that she was more than just words on paper.
She scratched harder, her nails raking down her forearms, leaving angry red lines in their wake. The sensation was distant, muted, like it was happening to someone else. She dug deeper, desperate, clawing at her own flesh as if she could tear through the numbness and find something real underneath.
Feel it. Feel it. You have to feel it.
Blood welled up beneath her nails, but even that felt abstract. Disconnected. Like watching someone else bleed.
"No," she gasped, her voice breaking. "No, no, no"
She scratched at her neck, her chest, anywhere she could reach, searching frantically for the sensation of being alive. For proof that she was here, that she was real, that she existed.
And then, through the haze of panic, a memory surfaced.
The forest.
The accident.
The creatures that had chased her through the trees, shadowlings with eyes like voids, moving with unnatural speed, hunting her with single-minded purpose.
Ada's hands stilled, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
Those creatures. She'd never understood why they'd come after her. Why they'd pursued her so relentlessly through the Whispering Woods.
But she knew what they were. She'd read about them, heard the stories. Shadowlings didn't hunt the living. They hunted wrong things. Things that didn't belong. Dead souls that refused to cross over. Dark entities that had slipped through the cracks between worlds. Things that shouldn't exist in certain places.
Things that were already dead.
Her blood ran cold.
No.
The pages scattered across the desk stared back at her, filled with memories that felt like someone else's life. The nightmares where she killed herself, where her reflection stepped out of the mirror and strangled her. The voice that whispered you just have to die for me to live.
The complete absence of feeling when she read about her own family.
The way everything felt inert. Dead. Lifeless.
What if I didn't survive?
The thought was a knife sliding between her ribs.
What if i didn't survive the accident ?
Her hands were shaking violently now, blood smeared across her arms where she'd clawed herself raw.
What if I've been dead this whole time?
The shadowlings had chased her because she was wrong. Because she was something that shouldn't exist. Because she was
"No," Ada whispered, but the word had no conviction.
Everything made horrible, perfect sense. The disconnection. The numbness. The way her own memories felt like they belonged to someone else. The way her family's faces had blurred and faded. The way she couldn't feel anything real anymore.
The way she'd been dying in her nightmares, over and over, because some part of her knew the truth.
She wasn't losing herself.
She'd already lost.
She was already gone.
Ada stared down at her bloodied hands, at the pages covered in desperate handwriting, at the proof of a life she could no longer recognize as her own.
Her voice came out as barely a whisper, broken and terrified:
What am I?''
....
In the hidden depths of the Icy domain, where time folded in on itself like origami and the walls hummed with temporal frequencies, Astra worked.
Her hands moved through the air, weaving threads of crystallized time into something that had never existed before, a body that could house a soul without flesh, without blood, without the anchor of mortality.
She existed within time itself, moving through her work without the constraints of mortal measurement.
The body was taking shape before her a lattice of temporal energy and astral matter, woven so tightly that it could hold consciousness, could contain the essence of a soul that had been severed from its physical form. It shimmered in the half-light of the chamber, neither solid nor ethereal, existing in the space between states of being.
This was why she had been absent from the house. Why she had left Ada alone for so long.
Because the work demanded everything. Every fragment of her attention, every ounce of her power as a guardian of time itself.
She had been channeling essence to Ada, nourishment drawn from the deep wells of her own power, fed through a mechanism that existed beyond normal understanding. It was the only thing keeping Ada's soul from dissolving completely.
Days ago, the Council had called her.
She remembered it clearly, the weight of their presence, the pressure that had made the temporal threads vibrate with tension. She had been working then too, her hands moving through the delicate weaving, when the air had shimmered and they had manifested around her.
"You must cease this work immediately."
The voice had cut through the chamber like a blade of ice.
She hadn't stopped working. Hadn't even looked up.
"No."
"You defy us again, Guardian." The voice belonged to one of the Seven Flames of Infinity, ancient and absolute. "We have told you repeatedly, the girl is not the chosen one. She cannot be your successor. That role has been designated to another."
"Aerys," she had said flatly, her hands never pausing in their work. "Yes, I'm aware of your decision."
"Then you understand that your efforts are futile. The girl's soul should have crossed over. You are prolonging something that was meant to end."
"She didn't want to end." Her voice had been sharp then, edged with something dangerous. "Her soul fought to survive. It chose to survive. I will not abandon her because you've decided she doesn't fit your plans."
"This is not about plans. This is about order. About the natural progression of"
"Natural?" Her tone had been cold. "There was nothing natural about what happened to her. Her body was destroyed by astral magic, torn apart by forces she never asked to encounter. Her soul was ripped from the physical realm and thrown into the void."
"And perhaps that would have been mercy."
The words had hung in the air like poison.
She had stilled her hands then. Had looked up, her eyes blazing with a fury that made the temporal threads flare white-hot.
"Get out."
"Guardian"
"I said get out." Her voice had been low, controlled, but it had carried the weight of eons. "I am the Guardian of Time. This domain exists outside your jurisdiction. And I will not stand here and listen to you call Ada's suffering mercy."
The pressure had intensified, the Council's displeasure manifesting as a crushing force.
She had stood firm.
"You are making a mistake," the voice had said, colder now. "The girl is not meant for transcendence. She is not meant to be your successor. Aerys has been chosen. The path has been set. If you continue this work, you will be acting in direct violation of"
"I don't care."
The words had been simple. Final.
"You will care when the consequences come to bear. When the balance is disrupted. When"
"I will deal with the consequences." She had turned back to her work, her hands resuming their weaving with renewed intensity. "Now leave. I have work to do."
For a long moment, their presence had lingered, heavy and disapproving.
Then, slowly, it had withdrawn.
The chamber had fallen silent again, save for the hum of temporal energy and the soft whisper of threads being woven into existence.
She had exhaled slowly, her shoulders sagging just slightly under the weight of what she was doing.
She had known the risks. Known that defying the Council could have repercussions that echoed across dimensions. Known that creating a body for a soul that wasn't "chosen" violated protocols that had existed since before recorded time.
But she had also known what it felt like to be abandoned by those who were supposed to protect you.
And she would not do that to Ada.
That memory that resolve was what drove her now. Days later, her hands moved through the weaving, shaping astral matter into form, creating something that could hold consciousness.
The work was delicate. One wrong thread, one miscalculation in the temporal frequencies, and the entire structure would collapse.
The body grew more solid with each passing moment. It was beginning to take shape humanoid, but not quite human. Something that existed between states, between life and death, between mortal and transcendent.
She would finish this. She would create the body.
But there remained one uncertainty: would the soul and body accept each other when the time came?
She would finish the work.
And then, as her hands moved through the final weaving, something shifted. A tremor ran through the temporal threads, subtle but unmistakable. Astra stilled, her breath catching.
It wasn't the Council. This was something else.
Something that felt like a door opening somewhere far away.