Astelion POV
Tas stepped through the door in his human skin, but even without his scales, he carried the copper scent of a thousand battles. He brought a pressure with him that made the air feel flat, the heavy aura of something ancient and cold.
"You should know," he said evenly, "it's rude to spy on your elders."
I didn't move from the bed. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come here."
It was a command. A command my body followed on its own, not because he forced me, but because I chose not to test the limits of his patience just yet. When I stood before him, I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. He looked at me like actually looked at me fir the first time as if searching for a stranger hidden behind my eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, his voice low. "Why hide your powers from me?"
"If I had," I replied quietly, "would you have protected me? Or would you have handed me over to the man you serve?"
"I serve no one."
The lie hung between them, thick and suffocating.
"You are my daughter," he said, the word scraping out of his throat like gravel.
"You never even looked at me," I countered. "You made me wear a mask for years."
"I was trying to make you invisible!" His voice cracked not with rage, but with a sudden fear. "I prayed for a son. Someone less obvious. Someone Cion wouldn't notice. I wanted you to be nothing."
My jaw tightened. "So I was a mistake."
The lights flickered. It wasn't his power it was mine. The air thickened, gravity shifting just half a degree. Tas felt it and stilled.
"You are not limited," he said carefully. "You are simply... asleep."
I laughed, he couldn't possible be serious he knows nothing about me and the sound caused the mirror behind me to shatter into a thousand pieces. I hadn't even touched it.
"I am not asleep."
Books slid an inch across the desk. Dust rose in the air without a breeze. The floor groaned under an invisible strain. Tas stepped forward, water beading across his skin not from the air, but from the storm surging within him.
"Don't let anyone hear you speak the traitors language was rule number one I taught you," he warned.
"Esie akos la lossa esie pirch genni avo rehen ku pek?" she whispered. (The language I was born into?) "La lossa ces veim dere avo ain dere pirch genni ku pek." (The language my mother and her mother were born into?) "Vaa ota tolm ku pek res." (Yes. I dare speak it.)
The windows cracked outward. Precisely. Tas felt the pressure spike this wasn't just a hybrid flare. This was a primal control struggling against something much larger.
"Stop," he said sharply.
I could feel myself losing control I inhaled, forcing the power back down into my marrow. The air settled, but the tension remained.
"Your wedding is in five days," Tas said. my stomach dropped. "As your father, I will do what I must." He reached for my cheek, but I flinched from disgusted, water condensing in the air between them as a reflex. He dropped his hand and left without another word.
I didn't fall asleep. I couldn't
The stone floor remained cold beneath my feet, but my consciousness slipped sideways, peeling out of my ribs like smoke escaping a cracked window. Dream-walking isn't drifting; it is choosing a thread in a tapestry of madness.
I followed the scent of jasmine and rot until I landed in my mother's mind.
It was a garden of impossible colors. Sunlight without a sun. Flowers that breathed. She stood barefoot among the blooms.
"How long," mother asked without turning, "do you plan on invading my sanctuary?" mother turned, her face younger here. Unbroken. "My cursed aidi." The word rippled through the dream, and the flowers wilted.
"You're angry," I said. The dream-sky darkened.
"You're bleeding into my mind," mother replied.
I reached out mentally. The garden flickered. For a split second, the flowers became ash and the sky turned a bruised red. Mother stood in chains. Then, it snapped back.
"I'm not trying to hurt you." I called out to her
"You already are."
The garden shifted. Vines crept toward my ankles they weren't plants, they were memories. Scenes flickered in the petals, mother forced to kneel. The red wedding. The stillbirth.
"You feel it now?" mother asked softly. "This is the rot you were made of."
I steadied herself. Not able to pull away. Instead, I seized the dream. The vines stopped mid-crawl. Time froze around a single falling petal and then mother inhaled sharply.
"You touched Nhronos."
"You're not trapped here," I whispered. Confused has to everything happening in her mind, she had really gone mad.
"I am. You are the one trespassing."
I extended my hand, rewriting the dream-sky. Stars appeared in broad daylight. Mother's chains flickered, turning translucent.
"You can't undo what happened," Mother warned.
"No," I agreed, "but I can redirect what hasn't."
The dream began to fragment. "You're going to tear yourself apart," mother said.
"Maybe." I stepped closer. " What if I want you free?"
Mother's eyes softened for a fraction of a second before hardening. "You want my rovon? My place beside the King?"
"No. I want to end this cycle."
Silence. In the darkness of her mother's deepest thoughts, I saw it a red thread pulsing with light. A tether stretching backward through time. Castel's blood. The moment the world rotted.
"You feel it," she whispered. "The moment everything broke."
The thread vibrated. The dream shattered like glass. I saw it all: Castel bleeding. Cion smiling. The blade. The unfinished seal.
"You said I could rewrite," my voice trembling.
"Not forward," mother whispered. "Backward."
The word shattered the sky. The red thread widened into a corridor of years 2076 peeling back into 2050, 2040, 2030. Every year screamed as it tore.
"You can't survive that jump," mother cried out.
"I can't survive staying here."
Not sure when I started bleeding, but I raised my bleeding wrist. I commanded "Nhronos. Nhronos osoch ku veim volema!" (Time, heed my will!)
The door burst open. Through the rift, I saw him. Castel. Alive. Before the betrayal. Before the blade. The moment was still soft, still changeable.
Time didn't accept me, it devoured me into lights and fragments. My body felt like it was being unscrewed from history. My bones turned to light, mother reached out, not to pull me back, but to steady me for the fall.
"Save our Rieg," she whispered and for the first time I saw love in her eyes.
I stepped through and somewhere in the past on a night thick with the scent of jasmine and impending blood a I fell out of nothingness.