POV: Aria
She wasn’t supposed to be there.
Not here. Not alive.
My mother stepped from the hollowed heart of the sacred tree like she had been carved from its bark—pale, otherworldly, and silent. Her hair was no longer dark, but streaked with white. Her eyes weren’t hers. They glowed faintly, not with magic, but with something older. Something borrowed.
I didn’t realize I’d taken a step back until I felt Kael’s hand grip my wrist.
“Is that—?” he asked.
I nodded once. “It can’t be.”
Because she’d been dead. Buried in a grove outside the western ridge when I was just a girl. I’d left flowers. I’d carved her name into a stone with my own hands. I’d mourned her.
And yet here she was.
Breathing.
Looking at me like she knew.
⸻
The ground around the tree steamed where she stepped.
Sh
