It started again with a dream.
But this time, it didn't feel like a dream.
It felt like a funeral.
And I was the body.
Not just once.
But three times.
---
I stood in a snow-covered field.
The sky was white.
The ground was white.
Everything was white.
And I was so cold I couldn't feel my own heartbeat.
Ahead of me stood three figures.
They didn't move.
They didn't speak.
They just waited.
Delmira.
Vaerra.
And me — the girl I had been in the beginning.
---
Delmira wore a wedding gown, soaked in soot.
Her skin was blistered.
Her lips cracked and bleeding.
A crown sat melted into her hair.
But she still stood tall.
Even as ashes fell from her sleeves like dust.
She turned slightly, and I saw her eyes — dull, broken, begging for answers she never got.
And then came the memory.
One I hadn't wanted to see.
"You were sentenced by royal decree," the High priest has said. "To die by fire, for crimes against the throne."
She had looked to the king — the man who once held her under the stars and promised she'd never know sorrow.
He didn't meet her eyes.
He didn't raise a hand.
He didn't even blink.
She burned.
And the people watched.
And no one cried for her.
---
My knees buckled as that grief passed through me like wind through broken glass.
Delmira had loved so deeply.
And died with her love turning his back.
All because she was inconvenient.
Because her purity didn't fit their politics.
Because her silence made her an easy scapegoat.
---
Vaerra came next.
Clothed in black.
Blood still drying on her collar.
Her hair bound in cords that smelled of incense and death.
A high priestess.
A monster to the world.
A martyr to the few who truly remembered.
Her runes still glowed faintly across her bare arms.
She wasn't bound — not physically — but she carried shackles inside her gaze.
---
They carved power into her back when she was a child.
Fed her blood to the ash-tree altar.
Told her she was chosen, but never told her what for.
She never chose to lead the Order.
She was born into it.
Raised with pain.
Crowned with agony.
Her brother betrayed her.
Her sisters watched.
And when she burned, it wasn't because she sinned…
But because she questioned.
---
" The old gods must return."
"The crown is only as strong as its rituals."
"She is forgetting her place."
And so they turned on her.
She who had spoken with stars.
Who had danced in blood so others wouldn't have to.
Who had sacrificed.
They ended her.
Because she remembered too much.
---
And then came Elira.
My body. My voice. My face.
But even she wasn't truly mine.
A forgotten girl from a crumbling house.
Reborn into a palace she didn't belong to.
Dressed in another woman's face.
Living under the rules of a system she couldn't control.
---
She had never asked for this life.
Never dreamed of power.
All she wanted was to matter.
To live without fear.
To protect herself — and maybe, someday, someone else.
But instead…
She inherited scars she didn't earn.
Hatred she didn't deserve.
Pain that wasn't hers — until it became all she knew.
---
And then, in the center of them all, stood the child.
The first version.
Small. Pale. Silent.
Her hands were stained with ink and ash.
Her eyes glowed — one red, one white.
She didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
Because her voice echoed in my bones:
"You were not born. You were forged."
"They took me apart. Then they gave me names. Delmira. Vaerra. Elira. None of them mine."
"I just wanted to stop.But they kept calling me back."
---
I fell to my knees.
My breath choked on nothing.
I felt it all.
The heartbreak of Delmira.
The fury of Vaerra.
The helplessness of Elira.
The hopelessness of the original.
And through it all—
The system said nothing.
---
Pain Conversion: 72% → 76% → 79%
System: SILENT
No skill unlocked.
No aid provided.
Memory merge accelerating.
---
I tried to scream.
But my throat felt sewn shut.
I pressed my hands to my chest—
And felt three heartbeats.
None of them mine.
---
They stood around me now.
Watching.
Delmira's gaze was soft.
Vaerra's sharp.
Elira's hollow.
And the child?
She reached for my face.
And whispered one last thing:
"It was never your fate you lived."
"It was always mine."
---
I shattered.
Not in light.
Not in fire.
But in silence.
The kind of silence that wraps around your bones and says, You were never meant to survive this.
---
I woke in darkness.
The shard beside my bed had cracked down the center.
The scroll had unraveled itself, its glowing runes now smoldering with heat I could feel from across the room.
---
Clarisse burst in minutes later.
I hadn't called her.
She just knew.
She froze when she saw me.
Her lips parted. Her eyes filled with something I didn't expect:
Fear.
---
"You're not... her anymore," she whispered.
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know who she meant.
---
System warning: Identity Core Splintering.
Host integration near failure.
Memory dominance: fluctuating.
---
I looked at my hands.
They weren't shaking.
They were steady.
Too steady.
Like I had finally stopped fighting.
---
I walked to the mirror.
Stared.
Waited.
And when I blinked—
She didn't.
The reflection was still smiling.