For a long moment, Aria couldn’t breathe.
The woman standing before her—wreathed in flame, eyes glowing the same molten gold Aria had seen in her own reflection—should have been ash. Should have been buried with the ruins of the Eastern Wilds.
Her mother was dead. Aria had watched the funeral pyres burn.
Yet here she stood.
Alive. Changed.
And burning.
“Mother?” The word scraped from Aria’s throat like a forgotten prayer.
The woman stepped forward, her expression unreadable. “You’ve awakened, just as they said you would.”
Aria stared in disbelief. “They told me you died when the war reached the capital. That you burned with the rest of the palace—”
“I did burn,” her mother said calmly. “But I didn’t die.”
Behind her, the other figures knelt in eerie silence, the sigils on their f
