Page 128 of Tides of Shadows

The vision came.

I saw blood-soaked hands plunged into an open chest, fingers closing around a heart. It lay still in their grasp, heavy and lifeless. The heart did not move. It was dead.

Then I felt it.

A spark.

Power coursed from those hands into the heart, it struck like lightning. The heart convulsed, then shuddered again, and suddenly it beat. Blood surged, warm and urgent, spilling anew through veins.

The bloodied hands laid the heart back into the chest and began to close the body whole. It was a miracle. A gift from the gods. Slowly I watched as hands joined tissue after tissue—bones, tendons, muscles, skin. When it was done, only a thin white line remained. The vision pulled back and I saw her.

Selene. A medic girl from White City. The one that left. She left.

She stood in a small white chamber, stark and clean, like a city infirmary. Her hands were stained to the elbows with blood. When she closed the body, she went to wash them in a basin.

Her eyes glowed faintly.

It was her. Now I could see it. She was the fourth heir.

Together they rose, four forces divine,

In balance and bond, the world aligned.

Could we stop the Plague together? Could we hold back whatever was being forged in the desert?

I had to find her.

Epilogue

We sat in her study, the air thick with the scent of aged parchment and flickering candle wax. Another grueling session of training, but this time, the roles were reversed. I was the one trying to breach her defenses, to slip into the fortress of her mind. Each attempt felt like slamming against an unyielding mountain—cold, immovable, ancient. Thought after thought, memory after memory, she flicked me away like a speck of dust from her gown. Frustration built inside me, a storm churning in my chest, until I gathered every ounce of my will, channeling the water’s relentless flow, and pushed harder. Just a little longer. Just enough to glimpse something real.

And then, I was there.

Not in real life but witnessing a moment stolen from time.

Minerva stood in her chamber, her silver hair catching the dim light from the window. Aidenar leaned against the balcony railing, gazing out over the misty valleys below, his posture rigid with unspoken resolve.

“You know what’s waiting for you out there?” Minerva asked, her voice laced with concern, the lines around her eyes deepening like cracks in weathered stone.

Aidenar didn’t turn, his silver eyes fixed on the horizon.

“The same as everyone—blood, pain, maybe death. But it’s enough that Cineris fights for us while we hide in our castles.” His tone was steady, he was reconciled with what was to come.

Minerva crossed her arms, studying him with a mix of pride and worry.

“How do you feel with your power? You’re training too much. I’ve heard you leveled half the forest the other day.” There was a note of admiration in her words, grudging but genuine.

He trained without me? So, it wasn’t just the mines keeping him occupied.

Aidenar clenched his fists, his knuckles whitening against the stone railing.

“I have it under control. I need to be ready when I face them. I won’t let him walk away alive.”

“Don’t fight with emotions,” Minerva warned, her voice firm like a stone. “What you did with Dorthal... You think I didn’t see it. How much you enjoyed it. How power draws you in.”

Aidenar scoffed. “Don’t be dramatic.”

Minerva pressed on, her tone frigid. “Why do you think the gods’ names were forgotten? Their faces hidden?”