Soren found he hadn’t been able to sleep much ever since waking up in chains. Yesterday’s meditation with Aurania had helped calm his mind a little, but he still found rest came in short, shallow stretches. Several hours past midnight, he finally gave up trying. The guesthouse was dim and quiet, the others seemed to be sleeping soundly enough, at least. Tamiyo had taken a bedroom to herself—Soren got the impression she was intentionally trying to give Raine and Inelius space.

  He was still figuring out what the dynamic was there.

  When he stepped into the main room, he found the two of them asleep together. Raine and Tamiyo had shoved all the living room furniture together and draped a huge blanket over it one of the previous nights, and now Raine and Inelius were snoozing peacefully on the makeshift bed.

  Raine’s arm was across Inelius’ chest, but a moment later she rolled away from him. Inelius stirred and tucked some pillows and blankets around her to make sure she was comfortable, then he looked over and saw Soren. His four eyes blinked a couple times, as if he was trying to ensure he wasn’t imagining things.

  “Sorry,” Soren whispered quietly. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.” He walked over to the kitchen.

  Inelius didn’t immediately respond, but Soren heard him crawl off of the furniture carefully.

  Soren sat on a lacravida stool at the kitchen island, then picked up the translator tablet and flipped it on.

  “I’m a light sleeper,” Inelius said a moment later, walking over to sit next to Soren. The barstool was slightly too big for him. “You too?”

  “Military training will do that to you,” Soren said. “But it feels different now. Not like I’m sleeping light because I’m on alert, more like something related to the Aether Dust.”

  They spoke in hushed tones, barely above whispers. They both looked at Raine and lightly grinned as they heard her begin faintly snoring.

  “It’s amazing how real synthetic life has become since I’ve been away,” Soren said.

  “Hmm,” Inelius responded in a contemplative manner, slowly turning back towards Soren. “I can only imagine what it was like in your time, but I don’t think of them as any different from someone completely organic. Doesn’t matter where she was made, she’s real to me.”

  Soren smiled warmly at him.

  “What?” Inelius asked.

  “You guys are just a cute couple.”

  “Well, we’re not actually, together together.”

  “Really?” Soren asked surprisedly. “I guess I just assumed since you’re always flirting and I came in to find you sleeping together.”

  This time Inelius smiled. “Nothing happened tonight, we just fell asleep talking. Not that I don’t want it to go there…” he gave Raine another long glance. “I just want to make sure it moves at a speed she’s comfortable with.”

  Soren regarded him for a moment, then said, “You’re a good man Inelius. She seems pretty comfortable around you. Go on, go back to her, I’ll find some way to pass the time.”

  Inelius looked back at him, then reached over and pulled a tablet over that was sitting at the corner of the counter. “Here, I’ll hook your translator up to this, it’s a digital archive, you can read about the lacravida if you want.”

  “Oh,” Soren said. “Thank you, that sounds really useful actually.”

  “The reading may be a little dry,” Inelius said as he stood up. “Just wake me up if you need anything.” Then he walked back over and carefully crawled back in with Raine.

  Inelius hadn’t been wrong, the reading was a little on the stale side, but Soren still found himself surprisingly absorbed. Learning more about lacravida culture made it easier to accept that they were, well, real. That he wasn’t living some dream with characters from myth, and more like he was surrounded by a people with history, structure, and rituals. Knowing how they saw the world helped quiet the surreal edge of his own displacement. Maybe, with enough effort, he would be able to keep his eyes on them when talking to them.

  Now that the shock of everything had started to wear off, he couldn’t deny how beautiful they were. But he still felt himself thrown off-balance by the openness of their sexuality, their casual intimacy, and their lack of need to wear much clothing. He didn’t want to come across like some awkward teenager gawking at every curve and gesture, and the more time he spent around them, the easier it was feeling to adjust. Most of them, at least.

  But Aurania…

  There was something different about her. It wasn’t just her looks, although her body was impossible to ignore. It was the presence she carried—effortless, commanding, drawing attention without ever asking for it. It was the way she carried herself: upright, unyielding, eyes sharp enough to make him flinch. And every time she spoke, it felt like she was testing him, pushing just hard enough to see if he’d bend. Maybe he was just imagining it, but there was no mistaking the authority in her voice, the confidence in her stance, or the quiet power behind every movement.

  It got under his skin in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Here he sat, a man with over a decade of experience in violent military campaigns and now seemingly imbued with the powers of a god. But with every glance, every word she spoke to him, he found he felt cornered, challenged, off-balance. Like a boy in high school attempting to ask a crush to prom. He couldn’t say it was a feeling he wholly wanted to escape. But it left his thoughts tangled and his instincts more alert than they probably needed to be.

  He just wasn’t sure what to do with the feeling.

  After several hours of perusing the archive, Soren felt the need to stretch his legs. He had made tea to drink while he read and left enough to pleasantly surprise his companions when they woke up. Then he decided to venture out without disturbing them. The recent events had been stressful enough and he had no doubt that the coming ones would be equally heavy. They would need their rest.

  The air outside was cool and he could faintly smell moss, clay dust, and pollen from somewhere off in the jungle. Berilinsk was just barely beginning to stir, the black sky dotted by stars lightly shifting to dark blue. He was able to move with quiet footsteps on the stone, the tailor who had made his clothes had done surprisingly well forming shoes to his human feet, despite her having hooves herself. He frequently saw where the quake had left its marks, but not ruins. The town had proved more resilient than he initially thought possible for somewhere that had never experienced a ground shift before. Scaffolds and patchwork repairs adorned many buildings, uneven streets bore fresh lines of chalk and repair notes, and carts lay tucked near worksites full of tools. The communal nature of the town was fascinating to him, they all had such trust for one another.

  He found himself heading towards Silvara’s Hall, it was one of the few places he knew in the village, but he decided to take some of the back streets to get there. His presence was still likely to cause some unrest depending on who he ran into, so he didn’t want to cause more disruption than needed.

  As he walked up a winding and narrow path tucked between some buildings on the left side and trees on the right, a cat hopped out of a bush and scurried up an alley. He found himself surprised once more, as the cat looked almost identical to any normal cat he may have met on Earth. They hadn’t changed much in 8,000 years, it seemed. He decided to follow the cat, more out of curiosity than anything, and after it wound through several small pathways, it darted between two crates under a sagging overhang. He spied several other cats all circled around a cracked stone bowl, snacking happily on food that someone had left for them. He kept his distance so as not to spook them, then decided to continue on towards Silvara’s Hall.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  But as he turned to leave, he paused.

  He could feel eyes on him, he just wasn’t sure from where. He was finding that he had some increased perceptions but was still unsure how to completely focus them. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to quiet his mind. After a few moments, he found her. Not physically, but he could at least sense rough proximity. And as quiet as she liked to be, he could sense how unsettled Riza’s nerves were by looking at him. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel, it wasn’t the greatest feeling; making people nervous just because they looked at you. Then he realized she probably understood that feeling better than anyone.

  He still couldn’t tell exactly where she was at, so he just kept his eyes closed and said out into the early morning air, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your wrist. And your armor. And your weapon.” Then he opened his eyes and continued walking.

  She didn’t respond. But he felt her watching almost the entire way to Silvara’s Hall.

  He walked up the steps just as the sun was beginning to threaten the horizon. The front doors weren’t locked, surprisingly, and he found no guards to block his path either. Not that he had any ill intentions, but the ease of which he was able to move through the town was so foreign to the authoritarian control he had grown up around.

  Stepping through the antechamber and into the main room, he found it empty save for a lone lacravida. She was staring up at the same mural he found himself drawn to, and she turned to look at him when she heard the door close. He froze when he saw her face, as he thought he was looking at someone else.

  While Aurania and Samara looked undeniably related, looked like they had fused. Where Samara had golden curls and Aurania’s hair was light brown with a reddish hue, this woman wore dark brown waves. It was accented by a long white headdress that almost made him think of a nun, but it was not as concealing. Her robes looked very ceremonial but had no more modesty than any other lacravida robes he had seen. The fabric was long, flowy, and a mix of indigo, white, and beautiful golden embroidery. A high slit revealed all the way to her hips and they hugged her form to show off the insane proportions all lacravida seemed to have.

  “I know I’m new to your people,” Soren said carefully, “But if you’re not related to Aurania and Samara, I will be very surprised.”

  She gave a graceful nod with a warm smile. “You are correct, Soren, I am Matron Serava. Aurania is my little sister, Samara my eldest.” She radiated an aura of deep wisdom.

  Soren was slowly walking toward her as she spoke, but a moment after he heard her words, he froze. He didn’t need the translator to understand her. Not because his understanding had improved enough—she had intentionally used words he knew, the same way Tamiyo had been. He studied her for a moment longer. “You’re very intuitive,” he said quietly.

  Serava smiled again. “My role in the community is to provide clarity to those who need it.” She eyed him thoughtfully for a moment. Then, with a hint of sarcasm, she added, “especially the blind.” She turned back to the mural.

  He relaxed a little and walked to stand next to her. “Are there any more of you silver-tongued sisters I need to be worried about?”

  She laughed lightly. “No, just the three of us. Wouldn’t want you to feel outnumbered.”

  Soren let out an amused breath. “Aurania does that by herself.” He looked up at the mural. Painted across curved stone in sweeping strokes, the image showed elongated forms, stylized anatomy, and a cosmic filigree blooming from the center like divine vines unfurling across creation.

  At the heart of the composition stood a single figure, tall and imposing, rendered in deep crimsons and burnt gold. His posture was straight-backed but not militant, more priest than soldier, and his arms were outstretched in a gesture of revelation or warning. Celestial motifs bloomed behind him in a fan of radiant arcs, as though he stood between the stars and the world below.

  Aurania had called it The Mother’s Inheritance. Around his feet, stylized lacravida stood gazing up at his towering form. They didn’t appear to fear him, but showed perhaps awe, or grief, or recognition. And from his hands, spiraling artistic helixes unmistakably evocative of DNA rained down.

  As if beckoned by Soren’s last words, Aurania stepped through the doors of the hall he had entered minutes earlier. “Good morning Serava,” she said warmly. Then she turned to him and said, much colder, “What are you doing here?”

  He looked her in the eyes, subtly scared to look anywhere but. “You already knew I’d be here.” It wasn’t constant, but he’d started to notice that he could always sense when Aurania was nearby, like a faint pressure in the air. He got the feeling the mental link was giving her the same sense for him. Despite not altering her dialect, he wasn’t having much trouble understanding her today.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said flatly.

  “I—” he began, but a door at the other end of the hall opened and they all turned to see Samara enter the chamber.

  As she walked towards them, Samara eyed him carefully. When she spoke, she chose words he understood, just like Serava had. “Good morning,” she said in that honeyed maternal tone. “I wasn’t expecting Soren to be joining us.”

  “Nor I,” Aurania barked sharply. Without even looking at her, Soren could tell she crossed her arms when she said it.

  Soren gave a respectful nod to Samara, almost a bow. “Apologies ma’am, I didn’t mean to intrude.” He looked back up at the mural. “I just… felt drawn to this painting. Something about it has been bothering me.”

  “Alright then,” Samara said, sounding slightly amused. “Do tell.”

  Soren looked around the hall to ensure they were still alone. “Well, it’s good that the three of you specifically are here and no one else, I’m guessing what I’m about to say has the potential to upset some people.”

  “You upset me almost every time you open your mouth,” Aurania said. “Spit it out.”

  He glanced at her but ignored the jab. “Serava, would you be willing to tell me what you know about this mural please?”

  She looked him over with wry amusement. Then she grinned a little and said, “The Mother’s Inheritance depicts our creator imbuing the lacravida with the gift of life and fertility. Our sacred mythos tells of our unique ability to mate with various species and how we ushered life into the universe.” Then she looked back at him curiously.

  “Thank you,” Soren said. “You said mythos, so I want to be as respectful as possible. Serava, I’m guessing you’re something of a spiritual leader among your people?”

  She nodded warmly, “That is correct.”

  “And how much of the mythos do you believe to be fact?”

  He felt a slight tone shift. The weight of the three women staring at him felt like physical pressure.

  After a moment, Serava said, “It’s a hard question to answer, but most myths are rooted in facts. That doesn’t make them less sacred.” She tilted her head. “Why do you ask?”

  Turning to Samara, Soren said, “I did some reading last night about Berilinsk. This hall is named for your ancestor, Silvara Enderchild, correct?”

  The mother Chieftess’ expression had slightly shifted from warmth to suspicion. “Yes.”

  Finally, he looked at Aurania, her face portraying how thin her patience was wearing. He pointed up to the central figure in the painting. “Do you recognize him?”

  Aurania glanced up at the painting then back at Soren and snapped, “Of course I recognize him, I’ve seen this painting almost every day of my—”

  She froze mid-sentence, then her gaze slowly shifted back to the mural. Her eyes grew wide and snapped back to him. “Explain. Now.”

  Soren looked at Serava, then Samara. “So we determined that somehow, there has been a sort of… mental link, established between myself and Aurania. A couple nights ago, she witnessed one of my memories in a dream. The memory replayed in my head at the same time as she saw it.” He paused, looking again at the two older sisters. Judging by Serava’s face, this was the first she had heard of the mental link at all.

  “In this memory, we saw someone I used to know.” He looked up at the painting again. “This man had thinning, wiry hair swept back because he had a tendency to run his fingers through it when thinking. He would work for hours and hours, forgetting to eat, leaving him with a gaunt frame that exposed his sharp cheekbones. In the end, it gave him an almost haunted appearance.”

  Soren looked around at them one more time and saw they were all glaring at him with anticipation.

  “I don’t… I don’t entirely know the connection yet,” he continued. “But the man I studied under almost 8,000 years ago—the man everyone knew as The Professor…” Soren looked up at the face that had betrayed him.

  “That man’s name was Tywin Enderfield.”