Aurelia stopped walking. The silver bindings around her wrists and ankles tightened at once, glowing with pale light as they tried to drag her forward, but for a heartbeat she scarcely felt them.
Her lips parted soundlessly. "...What?"
Seraphielle did not turn immediately. She stood with her back to Aurelia, rainwater slipping from the hood of her robes onto the forest floor.
"The records speak of kingdoms that vanished so completely," she said at last, her voice carrying through the darkness, "that no monument remained to remember them. Cities became forests. Palaces crumbled into mountains. Rivers swallowed entire civilizations, and those who survived rebuilt the world without ever knowing what had stood before them."
She finally looked over her shoulder. "When history speaks of the beginning, Queen of Virelia..." she said quietly, "...it is only speaking of the beginning it remembers."
Aurelia felt the blood drain from her face. "No..."
