Asteria The seven Relics

The strangers reflection

Ariana couldn't breathe.

She stared at the mirror. The young woman reflected in its polished surface wasn't her. Long raven-black hair cascaded over slender shoulders. Emerald-green eyes, filled with the same confusion twisting through Ariana's own chest, stared back at her. The features were elegant, almost delicate, yet carried a sadness.

"No..." Ariana whispered.

Her lips moved. The girl in the mirror moved with them.

She lifted a trembling hand. The reflection did the same.

"No. This isn't real." She stumbled backward until her legs struck the edge of the bed. "It can't be."

She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, nothing had changed. The stranger was still there.

Her breathing turned ragged. "This is a dream. It has to be."

She pinched her own arm — hard enough to leave a mark. Pain answered her, immediate and real. She crossed to the silver basin beside the mirror and splashed cold water across her face, and the droplets ran down the skin.

Still real.

Her heartbeat pounded against ribs that felt, somehow, slightly too narrow for it.

"If I'm not..." She couldn't finish the sentence, because she already knew the answer.

She wasn't Princess Ariana anymore.

The room around her bore no resemblance to the royal chambers of Aurora Palace. The furniture was finely crafted but simpler, without a single gilded edge. A bookshelf filled one wall, crowded with well-read spines rather than decorative volumes no one had ever opened. Fresh lavender sat in a vase by the window, its scent faint but constant. A violin rested in one corner, strings slightly dusty, as though it had gone unplayed for a very long time. On a small writing desk lay an unfinished sketch of the night sky, every constellation rendered with a care that bordered on devotion.

"Where am I? Who is this? Moreover what is this? " Ariana murmured, and stepped closer to the desk anyway, drawn to it.

Whoever lived here loved the stars. She reached toward the sketch —

A sharp pain exploded behind her eyes.

"Aah!"

She gripped the edge of the desk as fragments of memory that weren't hers tore through her mind, too fast and too vivid . A little girl running through a rose garden, laughing at no one. A stern nobleman's voice, cold as a closed door: *"You are an Ashcroft. Stand tall."*

A birthday spent alone at a table set for one, a single candle burning down to nothing while she waited for guests who never came. Whispers threading through a crowded ballroom, half-hidden behind fans and wine glasses:

*"Stay away from Lady Selene."*

*"She's cursed."*

*"Nothing good follows her."*

The visions vanished as suddenly as they'd come. Ariana sank to one knee, breathing hard, one hand still braced against the desk to keep from going all the way down.

"What... was that?"

Suddenly she heard,

"...Those were my memories."

The voice was quiet. Barely louder than breath.

Ariana went rigid. Someone else was in the room. She spun around, ready to face whoever had spoken.

No one. The chamber was empty.

"...Who's there?"

Silence. Then, again:

"I'm here."

This time the voice didn't come from behind her, or from any direction at all.

It came from within.

Ariana's eyes went wide. "No. No, I'm losing my mind."

"You're not." The voice was gentle. Tired and felt worn smooth by years

"I've been trying to wake up.But I couldn't."

Ariana pressed a hand flat against her own chest, as if she could feel where the voice was coming from if she just pressed hard enough.

"Who are you?"

A long pause stretched out before the answer finally came,

"...My name is Selene."

The room seemed to grow impossibly still.

Ariana closed her eyes. "Selene." She let the name settle. "You... own this body?"

"Yes."

"Then—" Her voice faltered. "Where am I? What happened to you?"

"I don't know exactly," Selene said. "I only know that one moment I was asleep, then I felt physicians visiting my bedside every morning— and the next, I wasn't alone in here anymore."

Ariana swallowed hard. "I'm sorry." The words escaped before she could even process them. "I never wanted this. I never wanted to take anything from you."

"I know." Selene's reply came calm, unhurried. "I can feel it. Your sadness. Your memories. They're visible to me — as though we're standing on opposite sides of the same door, and neither of us can quite close it."

Ariana lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, the weight of everything she'd believed about life, death, and the shape of the world settling over her all at once, far heavier than it had any right to be.

"I died," she said quietly, almost to herself. "I remember dying."

Selene said nothing.

"I had a family. My parents. My kingdom. My—" Her voice cracked clean through. "My fiancé."

The room fell silent again. Then, finally, Selene spoke, and there was no envy in it, only something quieter and sadder.

"Don't worry we have to fingure this out"

Somehow the sentence carried more grief

Ariana looked toward the pale bar of moonlight spilled across the floor. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For existing, here, in your place”

Another silence followed — softer this time, bearable and comfortable.

Suddenly a knock echoed through the chamber door.

"My Lady?" A woman's voice, warm with concern. "Are you awake?"

Ariana shot to her feet.

Selene's voice turned urgent. "Don't answer too quickly."

"Why not?"

"Because they'll notice, i never answer too quickly" Selene said,

The warning sent a chill through Ariana. Of course. Whoever Lady Selene Ashcroft was to this household, people here knew her — expected her, in all her particular habits and silences. One wrong word, one wrong gesture, and questions would follow that neither of them had answers for.

Another knock. "My Lady? The physician will be here shortly. We're coming in."

Ariana's pulse quickened. "I don't know what to do and how to be you."

"Don't worry I am here, I will guide you all through. I also don't know what happened but we will figure this out together" Selene answered, quiet and honest.

The door handle began to turn.

Ariana took one unsteady breath, and understood — for the first time in either of her lives — that she had absolutely no idea who she was supposed to be.