I woke to whispers that shouldn't exist—soft words falling from my daughter's lips like snow from a clear sky. In the frost-kissed clearing where we'd made camp, hours and miles from the Moonwell's ruins, Ashara sat upright in her blankets, speaking to the air with the focus of prayer.
At first, the words seemed meaningless. Babble of an overtired child processing too much. Then I heard myself.
"The cage was small and smelled of copper. Mother said it was for my own good, that the dreams would stop if I learned to be quiet. But the dreams came anyway, pooling in the corners where even silence couldn't reach."
My childhood. A memory I'd never shared, never spoken aloud. The week my mother had locked me away when the visions first started, terrified of what her daughter was becoming. Yet here was Ashara, reciting it word-for-word as if she'd lived it herself.
"Aria?" Dorian appeared at the tent flap, weapon already half-drawn before he saw the source of the voice. His face went pale. "How does she—"
"I remember all the versions of me you buried."
Ashara turned to us then, and her silver eyes held too much. Not just knowledge—recognition. As if she could see through our skin to every choice that had led to this moment, every path we'd taken and abandoned to give her life.
"She's accessing timeline bleed," Dorian said quietly. "Memories from the versions that didn't make it. We need to bind it before—"
"No." The word came sharper than intended. "No more binding. No more sealing. She has a right to remember what shaped her, even if it wasn't... traditionally real."
"Aria, she's not even two years old. This kind of knowledge could—"
"Could what? Break her?" I laughed, bitter and tired. "We've already broken everything else. Laws of reality. Divine plans. The natural order. Why not this too?"
Ashara hummed then—a lullaby I recognized but had never sung. My grandmother's tune, passed down through blood but lost when she died before my birth. The trees around our clearing bent inward, drawn by the melody like moths to flame that remembered burning.
"Why did you try to give me away in one of the dreams?"
The question hit like ice water. Ashara watched me with those too-knowing eyes, waiting for an answer to something she shouldn't know to ask.
Because I had considered it. Once. During the Mirror trials when the weight of keeping her safe had nearly crushed me. For one desperate moment, I'd imagined handing her to someone stronger, wiser, better equipped to protect her from the forces trying to claim her.
The thought had lasted less than a heartbeat before shame killed it. But she knew. Somehow, she knew.
"Walk with me," Dorian said, not asking. He took my arm, gentle but insistent, leading me away from our daughter who remembered too much.
The moon overhead still bore its new scar, bleeding silver light through the wound we'd carved in heaven. Under its damaged gaze, I felt exposed down to my bones.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked when we were far enough that even supernatural hearing wouldn't carry.
The answer came without thought. "That I broke her by saving her. That we unstitched too many timelines to give her one that makes sense. She's trying to piece together an identity from fragments of lives she never lived, and I don't know how to help her sort real from... alternative."
"Maybe that's not our job." He pulled me close, and I let myself lean into his warmth. "Maybe she needs to sort it herself. Build her own understanding from all the pieces."
"She's too young—"
"She unmade a god with her tears. Young doesn't mean the same thing for her." His hand found mine, grounding me. "We guide. We support. But ultimately? She decides what to keep and what to release."
We stood there in the broken moonlight, two mortals who'd defied heaven and lived to regret the complexity of victory. When we finally returned to camp, Ashara had fallen back asleep, curled small and innocent in her blankets.
But her hand was marked with soot.
I knelt beside her, carefully lifting her tiny fingers to see what she'd drawn. The symbol made my breath catch—a spiral with three dots at precise intervals. The Mark of Remembering, used by lunar priestesses to preserve dream-truths across incarnations. My mother had worn it. Her mother before. A sign of those who walked between waking and sleeping, carrying knowledge across the veil.
"How does she know that?" Dorian asked, voice barely a whisper.
"She shouldn't. It's not just memory—it's inherited knowledge. Bloodline information that usually takes years of training to access." I traced the mark without quite touching it, feeling power humming beneath the simple design. "She's not just remembering random fragments. She's choosing what to keep."
The implications sat heavy between us. If Ashara could consciously access memories from timelines we'd prevented, if she could pull knowledge from bloodlines stretching back generations, if she could decide what parts of her fractured identity to claim...
"She's building herself," I realized. "Not from what we give her or what prophecy demanded, but from every possible version. Taking pieces. Leaving others. Creating someone entirely new."
"Is that good or terrifying?"
"Both. Always both with her."
Ashara stirred but didn't wake. The mark on her palm flickered once with inner light, then faded to ordinary soot. Whatever she'd been doing, it was complete for now. Filed away in the strange architecture of her impossible mind.
I tucked the blanket higher around her shoulders, marveling at how someone so small could contain so much. Every timeline we'd prevented. Every memory her blood carried. Every possibility she'd rejected and accepted in equal measure.
"She's going to be extraordinary," Dorian said softly.
"She already is. The question is whether the world will let her choose what kind of extraordinary." I pressed a kiss to her forehead, tasting moonlight and memory. "Whether we can protect her long enough to figure out who she wants to be when all the voices in her head are her own."
The mark had faded, but I knew it would return. Along with other signs, other memories, other pieces of the infinite puzzle she was assembling from the shards of shattered fate.
My daughter, the god-killer. My daughter, the memory-keeper. My daughter, who remembered too much and was somehow still choosing to remain mine.
The moon watched through its scar as we settled in for what remained of the night. And somewhere in her dreams, Ashara sorted through lifetimes like a child organizing toys, deciding what to keep and what to let go.
Building herself one impossible memory at a time.
🌙💎 If you're enjoying Aria's rise, drop a Power Stone and add the book to your Library! Your support helps the Moon Queen burn brighter 🔥🌕
📚 New chapters DAILY!