Morning came grey and strange, filtering through trees that stood too still. I slipped from Dorian's arms, careful not to wake him, and padded barefoot into the forest. My body ached—not from our lovemaking but from something older. Deeper. The kind of ache that lived in bones, where prophecy went to die but refused to stay buried.
Behind me, Ashara slept with one small hand twitching, fingers grasping at air as if trying to catch something only she could see. I'd check on her soon. First, I needed to walk. To move. To shake off the feeling that something waited just beneath my skin, patient as stone.
The forest held its breath around me. No birdsong. No wind. Even my footsteps seemed muffled, as if the earth itself was listening for something. The wrongness pulled me forward, past familiar trees into a part of the forest I'd never seen despite our weeks here.
Or had I? Memory went slippery at the edges, like trying to hold water.
I found the grove without searching for it. The grass grew in a perfect spiral, each blade bent toward the center as if in worship. And there, where all lines converged, stood a stone tablet I knew I'd never seen but recognized with every cell of my being.
Names covered its surface—most worn to illegibility by time or intent. But one remained clear, carved deep enough to survive whatever had erased the others. A name from the god-skin realm, from that space between spaces where I'd pulled Ashara from divinity's grasp.
Threnara.
The moment I read it, I remembered. Not the name itself but the feeling of it—how it had tried to attach itself to my daughter in those crucial moments of her becoming. How I'd rejected it along with all the others, choosing humanity over the thousand divine possibilities that had reached for her.
But names, I was learning, had their own patience.
My hand moved without my permission, reaching for the carved letters. The moment skin met stone, the world split.
A throne room built from moonlight and sorrow. Ashara sat at its heart, but not my Ashara. This one had lived through centuries, her silver eyes holding the weight of choices that had carved away everything soft.
She wore a crown of bones—finger bones, delicate and white, taken from those who'd tried to name her before she'd learned to name herself. Power radiated from her like heat from a forge, warping reality around her presence.
"Mother," she said, and her smile was terrible in its beauty. "You came to see what your rejection built."
Behind her throne, shadows moved with purpose. The things she'd bound to her will, the prophecies she'd swallowed and made her own. She'd become everything I'd tried to prevent—not through divine possession but through the simple accumulation of power over time.
"Every name you refused to give me, I found myself," she continued. "Every future you tried to prevent, I hunted down and consumed. Did you think denying me divinity would keep me human? All it did was make me hungry."
The vision pressed closer, showing me the path. How each small choice led to the next. How protecting her from prophecy taught her to seek it. How refusing to name her fully meant she'd name herself with whatever she could find. How love, twisted wrong, became the very thing that damned her.
I screamed.
Not from pain—pain would have been simpler. This was rage, pure and clean, at futures that thought themselves inevitable. At the universe's insistence that every path led to corruption. At the arrogance of prophecy that believed itself stronger than choice.
My fist hit the stone before I'd decided to strike. Blood welled from split knuckles, and I used it. Drew letters with trembling fingers, carving a new word over the old name. Not a name—names had proven too dangerous. A declaration.
HUMAN.
Simple. Defiant. A rejection of every grand destiny that reached for my daughter with greedy fingers.
The spiral of grass shuddered. The perfect pattern broke, blades straightening as if released from invisible chains. Somewhere above, a bird sang—tentative at first, then with growing confidence. The forest remembered how to breathe.
I stumbled back from the stone, hand throbbing, vision clearing. The tablet looked different now. Smaller. Just old rock with scratches that might mean anything or nothing. The name I'd read was gone, covered by my bloody declaration.
But I wasn't alone.
At the grove's edge, where shadow met morning light, another Aria watched me. She stood with perfect stillness, wearing my face but not my expression. Where I felt raw and desperate, she looked... satisfied. Complete. As if she'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
She smiled—my smile, but wrong—and I understood.
This wasn't vision or prophecy or divine echo. This was me. A me who'd made different choices, walked different paths, ended up in different places. A me who'd found the grove first, read the name first, decided first.
And she was smiling because I'd just done exactly what she'd expected.
The other Aria raised one hand in what might have been greeting or farewell. Then she turned and walked back into the shadows, leaving me with blood on my hands and questions that had no safe answers.
I ran back to our shelter, feet finding the path by instinct. Dorian was awake, Ashara in his arms, both turning toward me with concern.
"What happened?" He took in my bloody hand, my wild expression.
"I found something. Someone. I don't—" Words failed. How could I explain meeting myself? Seeing futures where love became cage, where protection became poison?
Ashara reached for me with those small, perfect hands. No divine glow. No ancient wisdom. Just a child wanting her mother.
I gathered her close, breathing in her scent of milk and morning. She was here. Human. Mine. The bloody word I'd carved promised it.
But somewhere in the forest, another version of me walked with complete certainty toward a future I couldn't see.
And she'd been smiling like someone who'd already won.
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