What she would give to see Uncle Adras again!
But the Adrastia lineage flowed through blood she didn't share and carried truths she could never access!
The thought should have brought bitterness, but instead it brought only a fierce determination to protect what they had, to be the anchor that kept them grounded in the present while they walked through the shadows of the past.
---
The Lineage Memory unfolded around them like a vast blueprint built from starlight and sorrow.
They stood on ground that sparkled with the essence of distant suns, crystalline sand that stretched toward horizons that seemed to bend upward into infinity. And filling that impossible expanse, extending beyond the reach of vision, were graves.
Not hundreds. Not thousands.
Millions.
Each one marked with symbols that pulsed with their own inner light, each one a life that had been cut short in service to something greater than themselves.
