The cave was cloaked in a damp stillness, a chill that slithered through bone like an ancient invocation of fear. Moisture clung to the stone walls, whispering secrets time had buried deep within the earth as if the place itself remembered everything. Diana lit a fire with trembling hands, not merely to warm their bodies, but to soothe a heart that had pulsed too long in the shadows. The flickering flames reflected upon their faces like a mirror of what they had become, and what they had lost.
They sat near the fire. Provisions lay scattered carelessly on the ground, silent witnesses to a conversation that would fracture the silence irreparably. And when the light cast their faces into sharp relief, Daniel spoke, his voice hoarse and brittle, as if each word cost him a piece of his soul.
"Diana... tell me everything. From the beginning to the very end. Who is Saka? I want the whole truth no gaps, no shadows."
She didn't resist. She didn't flinch. Instead, she nodded, surrendering both heart and memory to the flames and began:
"As you wish… When I was just a little girl, I lived in a palace where fate dripped from every stone. I had an older sister named Saka your mother. She was unlike anyone I had ever known. With her golden hair and violet eyes, she seemed unreal. I heard our father kidnapped her as a newborn, just days old, and gave her to one of the handmaids. From that day on, she was neither noble nor servant something in between."
She paused, as if touching memories that still burned.
"She was raised by Kara's mother, long before she married. Saka grew into something angelic too beautiful, too silent. She became my world. She cared for me like a second mother. But the one who captured her heart... was Caris my brother. They loved each other as if fate had braided their souls. He promised her, once he passed the Awakening, he would marry her and defy the curse of immortality with love."
Daniel frowned. "But... didn't you say Caris never married my mother?"
Diana let out a bitter smile, a wisp of sarcasm in her breath.
"Life rarely gives us what we want, Daniel. Saka's beauty stirred unrest. My brothers coveted her, and none could bear that only Caris had won her heart. So they turned against him. They decided she would belong to no one especially not him. They conspired, and went to our father the King and convinced him to take her for himself. He married her in secret. Caris was sent to the borders five months before his Awakening, under the guise of training."
Daniel's chest tightened. The missing pieces of his past began to slot into place, but the picture they formed was darker than he ever imagined.
"Your mother," Diana continued, her voice like falling ash, "was forced into that marriage to protect Caris. She had no choice. And when he returned for his Awakening, all he found was despair. The woman he loved was no longer his."
He gasped, the truth striking deeper than he was prepared for.
"His fury drove him into what we call a 'Forced Awakening' a brutal, irreversible transformation. It binds immortality to the fire of life. The price is steep. A life of two centuries becomes one. A soul is halved to gain power beyond reckoning. And Caris... became something else."
Daniel said nothing. It was the first time he'd heard such things—things never written in the family scrolls or hidden in the palace archives.
"Caris," she went on, "slaughtered everyone in the palace. No one was spared not even the servants. I survived only because Father shielded me... and begged me to flee. I knew Caris would never allow a witness to live. So I ran. I threw myself into the pit of Kaliris the prison of monsters. Seventeen years passed... seventeen long years hiding from him. I couldn't fight back. And truth be told, I didn't want to. Because... Caris was right to do what he did."
Silence swallowed her words.
Daniel stared into the fire, seeing faces in the flames faces of the dead, of the betrayed, of the forgotten. And in that moment, he knew: the picture was complete. The final piece of a puzzle no one dared name had fallen into place.
And so he spoke, his voice calm but carved in iron.
"You still desire the throne, don't you? Revenge? I'll help you take the crown. I'll help you kill those who tore your family apart."
Diana's eyes widened. The words struck like thunder, but confusion followed close behind.
"How?" she asked, almost in disbelief. "And... I'm not seeking revenge. Everything that happened... was our family's fault."
Daniel smiled not with joy, but with a wickedness that chilled the air.
"He wants to send me to the frontlines just as they did to him. To taste death... like my mother tasted it the moment I was born. Tell me, Diana... how could I not seek revenge?"
She gasped. Horror overtook her face. She hadn't known... hadn't realized Saka had died in childbirth. Her lips quivered. Tears burst from her eyes without permission, and her cries echoed in the hollow cavern, a haunting confession in sound.
When the weeping subsided and her eyes were red and hollow, she whispered, her voice cracked by grief:
"What cursed family were we born into? Hasn't this pain endured long enough? I thought... I thought Saka and Caris might have found happiness in the end. Even if you were not his son... perhaps they would still raise children—children who could mend the wounds of time. But nothing turned out that way. And now, you're planning to kill your brother? Again? You would begin the cycle anew?"
He let her speak. Let her spill the sorrow of years. And when her voice faded into silence, he spoke again soft, but ominous:
"Caris and his children... will die in the coming days. This kingdom will be plunged into famine and ruin. But as with every night... a light must be born. And that light... is you."
Diana stared at him, her breath stolen. He hadn't spoken a hope. He had spoken a prophecy.
A prophecy soaked in blood.