The air changed before we even saw the domes.

  It wasn’t a breeze; it was weight—like Sel?nrah had taken a breath and refused to let it go.

  We climbed the grand stairway of the Inner Palace without announcing ourselves. The guards crossed their spears, hesitated when they recognized our emblems, and stepped back as we pressed forward. Velka walked beside me, her fingers brushing my arm with an anxiety she’d never admit. Neyra counted the steps silently, and Caelia, behind me, scanned every corner as if expecting an ambush.

  The knot in my throat tightened.

  The corridor smelled of oil and polished stone. Oil lamps cast golden ovals on walls engraved with verses. We walked inside a prayer.

  The throne room doors opened before the herald could even speak.

  The clash of metal on marble echoed through the dome.

  Azhara Qamar al-Sel?n, Sultan of Sel?nrah, rose from her throne of lunar stone. Her gaze—used to commanding and restraining—froze for a heartbeat when she saw us enter unannounced.

  Around her, Zayrah, Mahtani, and Irsah moved as one.

  Zayrah lowered her spear to guard, Mahtani stepped forward, and Irsah narrowed her eyes, reading our intent.

  —What is the meaning of this? —asked Azhara, her voice calm but heavy enough to still the air.— No one summoned you.

  —Then consider, Your Highness, that we came to answer a call you chose to ignore, —Velka said first, her tone half-mockery, half-fear.

  Mahtani turned toward her, sharp as a blade.

  —Watch your tongue, Aurel. You stand before the crown of Sel?nrah.

  —And before the blood of Seravenn, —Neyra replied coldly,— which seems to know more about this desert than those who rule it.

  The air thickened.

  Zayrah struck her spear against the floor.

  —Enough! I will not allow insolence beneath this dome.

  Caelia stepped forward—steady, controlled.

  —We do not seek to offend, —she said,— but hiding the truth is also a form of aggression.

  The words hung between us and the throne.

  Azhara rose slowly. Her silver shadow spilled across the floor like a tide.

  —What truth do you imagine I’m hiding, foreigner? —she asked, with that calm that cuts deeper than rage.— What do you think I know?

  The knot in my throat turned to fire.

  —I’ve heard her, —I said at last.— Her voice. The one beneath the sand.

  Zayrah turned her spear toward me, pure reflex.

  —Are you accusing the Sultan of conjuring demons?

  —No, —I said, my eyes locked on Azhara.— I accuse her of knowing who that voice belongs to—and staying silent.

  —You don’t know what you’re saying, —Mahtani warned.— Measure your words, Shadow. You have no idea what’s at stake.

  —We do know, —Neyra replied, her voice firm, restrained.— That’s what frightens you.

  Velka let out a bitter laugh.

  —Enough riddles. Say it, Your Highness. Why does this land bleed?

  The crack of Mahtani’s staff against the marble was enough to silence us.

  The echo stretched.

  For a fleeting instant, Azhara’s eyes were not those of a monarch—they were the eyes of someone who had carried a burden too long.

  —Leave this place, —she said quietly.— You cannot comprehend what you ask.

  —Then make me understand, —I answered.

  The air tightened.

  My pulse was thunder in my throat.

  Without thinking, I drew Blood Crown.

  The blade breathed. A crimson glow flooded the marble, stretching long shadows across the pillars.

  The Guardians reacted instantly.

  —Lower your weapon! —Mahtani shouted.

  But I didn’t raise it at them.

  I held it inverted, the edge toward the floor, and stepped toward the throne.

  —I know that to everyone here, —I said, my voice trembling but firm,— this means nothing.

  The red light crawled up the steps, brushing the hem of the Sultan’s gown.

  —But I know it means something to you.

  I threw the sword.

  The sound of metal striking the throne was not a blow—it was truth laid bare.

  Silence.

  Azhara didn’t move. She only stared at the reflection of the blade—and in that reflection, something stared back at her.

  A tremor crossed her jaw.

  Zayrah started to speak, but Azhara lifted a hand. The three Guardians froze, confused.

  The Sultan descended the steps.

  The crimson glow climbed her dress like a living current.

  With every step, the air smelled less of incense and more of revelation.

  —It’s been a long time, —she whispered,— since I last saw that light.

  —Your Highness, —Mahtani said, bewildered,— what are you saying?

  Azhara knelt before the sword. Her jeweled fingers, trembling, touched the hilt with reverence.

  When she spoke again, her voice was no longer that of a ruler.

  —I can’t keep denying it, —she murmured.— What you hear, what stirs beneath Sel?nrah… is no myth. It has a name.

  She lifted her gaze.

  —And it has spoken to me as well.

  The sword’s glow spread through the hall, painting the walls crimson.

  No one dared breathe.

  And in the reflection on the blade, for an instant, I swear a shadow—tall, still, and sorrowful—looked back at us.

  Silence still trembled when Azhara withdrew her hand from the sword’s hilt.

  The crimson light lingered, breathing over the marble as if unwilling to fade.

  — I never meant for you to know, — she said at last, her voice firm but carrying a tremor no queen should have.— But if you heard her, Lyssandra… then this secret no longer belongs to me.

  Zayrah frowned, stepping forward.

  — Heard who? — she asked carefully, her spear still in hand.

  Azhara lowered her gaze, as if weighing every word.

  — I don’t know for certain, — she replied.— In the oldest records, there’s mention of a voice sleeping beneath this palace… a presence that holds the desert in place so it doesn’t sink into oblivion.

  Her fingers folded over her chest.

  — They call her Nerys. Though that name… might only be an echo of something older.

  Neyra tilted her head, skeptical.

  — And who exactly is she supposed to be? A goddess? A weapon? Another desert illusion?

  Azhara gave a faint, sorrowful smile.

  — Perhaps all of those. Perhaps none.

  She raised her eyes, carrying the weary calm of someone who has borne a myth for too long.

  — Some say she was one of the Thirteen—women who gave up their names to seal the first wound of the world. Others claim she was their echo… one of the voices that remained after their bodies dissolved.

  I… only know that she speaks to me. — Her tone faltered for a heartbeat.— And now, she speaks to you as well.

  Caelia studied her intently, without lowering her guard.

  — Is she alive?

  — I don’t know. — Azhara shook her head slowly.— Sometimes I feel her breathing, the ground pulsing when she whispers my name.

  Other times… she’s only a murmur warning me when the desert begins to bleed.

  She looked up at the vaulted ceiling, where the sword’s light still shimmered faintly.

  — If her voice returns after centuries of silence, it must be for a reason. Perhaps she’s calling us. Perhaps she’s condemning us.

  Velka let out a dry laugh.

  — Well, at least we’re not bored. — Her tone tried to sound mocking, but the tension broke it halfway.— So what do we do with her ghost? Pray to it?

  — No. — Azhara turned sharply.— We protect her.

  She crossed the hall, her gown dragging echoes across the floor.

  With a trembling hand, she tapped the side of the throne.

  A hollow sound replied. Then a deeper one, and the stone groaned.

  The throne slid backward, revealing a narrow opening spiraling down into darkness.

  The air that rose was different—damp, heavy, laced with a faint murmur.

  — No one beyond my blood knows this path, — she said, lighting an oil lamp that cast golden ripples along the walls.— Beneath the palace lies the Sanctuary of Silence.

  Her gaze stopped on me.

  — There, beneath marble and sand, rests what remains of her… if it rests at all.

  Caelia clenched her fists.

  — Then we must go.

  Azhara nodded.

  — Yes. But don’t expect answers—only echoes.

  She descended the first step.

  — If Nerys truly calls to us, it will be through you. The Shadows have always been the mirror of what we refuse to see.

  Velka sighed, peering into the opening.

  — How reassuring. — She turned to me.— If this goes wrong, I swear I’ll haunt you from beyond.

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  — You’ll do it alive, — I answered, without smiling.

  Azhara lifted the lamp. The light trembled, reflecting on each of our faces.

  — Follow me.

  And as her steps vanished into the dark, a whisper rose from below—perhaps from the stone, perhaps from the sand—murmuring a name.

  Not mine.

  Hers.

  The first step sounded hollow—like something had just awakened.

  The air below wasn’t air. It was memory.

  A pale blue mist wound along the walls, lighting ancient carvings of faceless women, worn crowns, and hands offering light to the dark.

  Azhara’s lamp flickered, and for a moment I thought I saw shapes moving inside the flame.

  Velka walked behind me, her hand resting on my shoulder. She didn’t speak.

  Neyra whispered numbers under her breath—her way of not getting lost—but even her voice felt distant, as though she were counting echoes instead of steps.

  Caelia, steady as ever, kept her face tense, her eyes adjusting to the shadows as if trying to anticipate every danger.

  And yet… even she seemed to hear something.

  The air thickened, heavy and slow, as though the sand itself carried tears.

  With every meter, I felt the scar beneath my clothes pulse in rhythm—not mine, something older.

  And between each heartbeat came a word. Not a language, but a feeling.

  Like someone calling my name without speaking it.

  —This place… —Irsah murmured, her voice a trembling prayer— remembers more than it should.

  Zayrah, a few steps higher, answered quietly:

  —The stone of Al-Rahad never forgets. It just waits for someone foolish enough to ask.

  Velka took a deep breath.

  —Then why do I feel like it’s staring at me?

  Azhara didn’t turn.

  —Because it is. Memory is an eye that never closes.

  We kept descending.

  At times, I felt something brush my fingers—a warm current, as if the wall exhaled.

  The lamp flickered again, and the carvings began to move.

  Thirteen figures of women, carved across ages, turned toward us. They had no faces, but from each flowed an emotion: fury, tenderness, fear, hope… sadness.

  Velka stepped back.

  —Lyss… tell me you see it too.

  I nodded.

  —Yes.

  Neyra reached out to touch the wall.

  The surface shivered, alive, and an echo swept through the corridor:

  “We did not choose to remember. But someone must.”

  We froze.

  The echo came again, softer this time, like the voice was sinking back into the stone.

  Azhara pressed the lamp against her chest.

  —Nerys isn’t a voice from the past, —she whispered.— She’s the past itself, refusing to die.

  My throat tightened.

  There was sorrow in the air—but it wasn’t foreign.

  It was mine.

  As if something in my blood recognized it, as if what slept here remembered me, too.

  The corridor opened into a vast chamber of blue stone, where the air was no longer air but song.

  A note—gentle, endless—vibrated without a source.

  Velka exhaled, almost a prayer.

  —This isn’t a sanctuary, —she murmured.— It’s a wound that never stopped singing.

  And as Azhara lifted the lamp to reveal what awaited at the far end, I understood that no step taken downward could ever be climbed back the same way again.

  The sanctuary wasn’t a place.

  It was a memory—and it had been waiting for us.

  We stopped before them.

  The doors of the Sanctuary.

  Tall, carved from pale blue stone, covered in inscriptions that glowed faintly from within.

  From their seams, a thin mist drifted outward—soft, azure, alive.

  The air itself trembled around us.

  Azhara stepped forward and raised her lamp. Its golden light clashed with the blue shimmer of the doors, turning to a melancholy hue, almost lunar.

  She looked at the four of us, one by one, her voice faltering only slightly when she spoke:

  —This is where I stop.

  The queen… must remain to answer when the world comes asking.

  —She turned to her guardians.— Zayrah, Mahtani, Irsah… with me.

  The three bowed without a word. There was no ceremony, no oath—only the quiet reverence of those who know that speech might shatter what is sacred.

  Azhara lingered a moment longer.

  —What lies beyond these doors does not belong to me. —Her gaze, vast and weary, found mine.— But if she calls to you, answer. Listen. Do not fear her voice… or her sorrow.

  And then she was gone.

  The lamp’s light faded with her steps, until only the blue glow of the threshold remained, breathing softly against our skin.

  Velka was the first to break the silence.

  —Well… —she tried, but her voice trembled like a dying flame.— Just so we’re clear, this wasn’t my idea.

  Her laugh wanted to sound light—but cracked halfway through.

  Neyra opened her mouth to reply, yet no words found their way out.

  Only a strand of breath escaped her lips.

  Caelia stood to my left, tall and rigid, her face carved from stone—but her hands, hidden behind her, were trembling.

  Her fear was different: disciplined, contained.

  The fear of someone who moves forward knowing every step could be her last.

  The knot in my throat burned.

  The scar pulsed harder now, a heartbeat that no longer felt mine.

  Something beyond that door knew my name.

  Velka swallowed.

  —If this goes wrong, Lyss… promise me you’ll at least make the story sound pretty.

  I looked at her—unable to smile.

  —We’ll write it together in the end, alright?

  She nodded.

  The four of us stood before the threshold, breathing as though the air itself might give us courage.

  The blue whisper thickened, almost like a low chant, and the ground beneath us began to hum softly, as if waiting for our decision.

  Caelia was the first to move her hands.

  —On three, —she said, her voice rough.— Not for bravery. For destiny.

  We nodded.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  We pushed.

  The doors opened—not with the sound of stone, but of something breathing.

  And from within poured a light that didn’t blind; it remembered.

  The blue mist rose to envelop us, erasing the world’s edges.

  For an instant, I thought I heard something beyond the light—

  A voice.

  Not loud. Not human.

  Just a sigh that said:

  “At last.”

  We couldn’t tell whether the blue light came from the walls or from her—suspended in the center like an unanswered prayer.

  She was beautiful and terrifying at once, as if time itself had forgotten her out of mercy.

  Her skin was moon-smoke; her hair, rivers of living silver that moved without wind. Every strand seemed to be a memory refusing to die.

  We approached slowly, our steps swallowed by the mist that coiled around our ankles like a sleeping creature.

  Velka whispered:

  —By the gods… is she… human?

  No one answered.

  Neyra observed every detail with the mind of someone desperate for logic; Caelia, with the instinct of one who knows the sacred doesn’t like to be touched.

  And then she opened her eyes.

  The blue light grew pale before her gaze.

  There were no pupils, no shimmer—only depth, an ocean that had been watching since the dawn of all things.

  Her voice came as a restrained tremor:

  —Lyssandra?

  My name left her lips like a forgotten word the world remembered too late.

  My throat closed.

  —Y-Yes… I’m me.

  But even as I said it, I knew I was lying.

  Nerys studied me without hurry, without judgment. Every second under her gaze peeled something invisible away from me.

  Finally, she spoke with the calm of someone who already knows the answer:

  —No… you are not Lyssandra.

  —But almost.

  Her translucent hand rose and brushed my abdomen, right where the scar pulsed with its own heartbeat.

  The touch was barely there, yet fire rushed through me, as if awakening a second breath beneath my skin.

  —This… —she whispered—. This mark. It is the proof.

  —Lyssandra’s blood runs through you. Her fire. Her purity.

  That word—purity—hit harder than the heat beneath my ribs.

  —What does that even mean? —I managed—. A descendant of who? Of what? What am I?

  Nerys closed her eyes for a heartbeat, and when she opened them again, her gaze was no longer only ancient; it was human, wounded.

  —Lyssandra was my equal. My friend.

  —Her voice quivered like glass submerged in water.—

  Together, we sealed the wound of the world when everything broke.

  I was Sorrow.

  She was Wrath.

  And with us—eleven more.

  The air shifted.

  The mist formed shapes—feminine silhouettes woven from sand and light. Thirteen presences, each distinct, united by the same reverent stillness.

  Their faces dissolved before we could comprehend them, but something deep inside me knew their names, even though I had never heard them.

  —The Thirteen Mothers —Nerys murmured—. Not because we bore life… but because we offered what we were.

  —Her voice echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling.—

  Lyssandra gave up her wrath to protect this world.

  I gave up my sorrow so it would never forget what was lost.

  And the magic that still flows is the consequence of our surrender.

  I swallowed hard.

  —Then… I’m part of you.

  Nerys shook her head slowly, tenderly.

  —Not part. Echo.

  The thread that endures between what we were and what may yet be.

  Her gaze rested on me, steady and solemn.

  —You are blood, yes… but also choice.

  The purity you carry is not a gift; it is an inheritance that demands purpose.

  My throat tightened, my chest expanded.

  Nothing around us moved.

  Only her voice, resonating within me, as if it had been waiting there all along.

  —Nerys… —I whispered—. Why now? Why me?

  She looked at me, and for an instant, her smile seemed to break the age of stone.

  —Because the sands have begun to sing again —she said, so softly I barely heard her—.

  And you… are the one meant to remember the melody.

  The light around us dimmed, not fading, but holding its breath.

  Nerys did not vanish.

  She dissolved into reflections, remaining in every wall, every breath.

  The mist kept pulsing.

  Her voice lingered, suspended—alive.

  It was not an ending.

  It was the beginning.

  Silence breathed with us.

  Every particle of blue light trembled as if it remembered an ancient song.

  Nerys did not fade. She remained suspended, her immense eyes fixed on us, and her voice resonated like a thread woven between past and present.

  —Do not mistake this —she said softly—. The purity of blood does not measure the greatness of the soul.

  Lyssandra left her fire in a direct line, yes… but without you, that fire would turn to ash.

  The echo matters as much as the root. A root without branches dies.

  Velka frowned, her voice trembling with a hint of irony.

  —Then what are we? Imperfect copies?

  Nerys shook her head, her tenderness heavy and eternal.

  —No. You are different chords in the same melody. Lyss burns with the untouched Wrath, but you carry fragments of the original chorus.

  The blue mist stirred around her.

  When she lifted her arms, the walls of the sanctuary responded.

  Traces, names, and figures ignited on the stone, one by one, until thirteen symbols began to pulse—each with its own light, its own emotion.

  —Thirteen of us —she whispered—.

  Thirteen hearts to contain the world’s first emotions.

  Thirteen souls who chose to stay behind, so humanity would remember how to feel.

  Her words became a chant without music, and the lights on the stone pulsed in rhythm.

  Her voice deepened, almost reverent, as she spoke the names:

  —Lyssandra, the Wrath that burned fear away.

  Zahra, the Pride that never bowed.

  Ariane, the Hope that cut through shadows.

  Elena, the Despair that refused to yield.

  Saphine, the Remorse that learned to forgive.

  Irhena, the Desire that loved even the abyss.

  Mireya, the Compassion that embraced the enemy.

  Valenne, the Envy that wished to be more than human.

  Rhiannon, the Faith that did not falter before silence.

  Nerys, the Sadness that gave pain its name.

  Sylja, the Obsession that held the world together in her hands.

  Ilse, the Coldness that preserved calm among screams.

  Ysara, the Distrust that saved what no one else could see.

  The lights flared. The air filled with echoes, with laughter and weeping older than memory.

  The walls seemed to pulse, and the entire sanctuary breathed in time with those names.

  Nerys lowered her gaze; her eyes were an ocean of centuries.

  —You carry pieces of that legacy —she said gently—. Not less, not more.

  The power you inherited does not make you equal to us, but it does not make you small.

  Without your hands, without your steps, the echo would fade forever.

  Velka swallowed hard.

  —Then… our magic didn’t come from Seravenn?

  —No —Nerys replied, her voice caressing the cracks in the stone—.

  Seravenn, Al-Rahad… they are all footprints of what we left behind.

  Your magic was not invented. It was remembered.

  Caelia drew a slow breath.

  —And if that echo still lives… it means you never died.

  Nerys smiled, the purest sadness I had ever seen.

  —No one dies while someone still remembers why they existed.

  Her light spread around the four of us.

  The air grew heavier, yet warmer.

  For the first time, I understood that we were not inheriting a story—

  We were continuing a prayer that had never been finished.