[Leif's POV — The White Realm—Continuation]
For a heartbeat, she didn't answer.
Her eyes, green and calm, held mine in a silence that felt too deliberate—like the world itself was waiting for her permission to breathe.
Then she smiled. Slow. Familiar. Terrifying.
"Who am I?" she repeated softly, as if testing the words. "My child, you've known me since the day your heart first began to remember."
I frowned. "That's not an answer."
"It is," she said simply, walking closer—her bare feet never touching the ground. The air shimmered where she moved, and the light bent around her like it wanted to worship her. "You just don't understand it yet."
"I'm not here for riddles." My voice cracked through the stillness, too loud, too human again. "I want the truth. No more half answers."
She stopped a few steps away. The faint lavender scent curled around me—comforting, but wrong. Like a childhood memory that didn't belong to me.
