CHAPTER 115: THE BLUE STONE
CHAPTER 115: THE BLUE STONE
POV: Kristine
I held the blue stone tightly in my palm the entire way back through the hidden passage.
It was still warm from Eli’s hands.
That warmth affected me more than I expected.
As I moved through the narrow corridor inside the palace walls, I kept thinking about him—about the boy we once found in a tribe full of barbarians, where he learned how to fight and survive. Even back then, Eli had those sharp, watchful eyes. The kind children only get after learning too early that no one is coming to save them.
And now he was risking his life to save all of us.
I thought the heat inside the stone came from some hidden power Malda placed there.
But it wasn’t the stone.
It was the vision.
The moment my fingers closed around it through the crack in the wall, something opened inside me.
Not death.
Not blood.
Life.
Eli’s life.
I saw him as older—taller, stronger, smiling in a way I had never seen before. Safe. Truly safe. I saw shelves filled with herbs and healing tools around him, something similar to the medicines in Tara Forest. People trusted him. Needed him. He wasn’t surviving anymore.
He was living.
The vision hit me so hard I nearly lost my balance in the passage.
I stopped walking and pressed the stone against my chest while I forced myself to breathe.
Eli survives.
The certainty of it shook me.
Kairu would live.
Eli would live.
For the first time since arriving on OX, hope stopped feeling dangerous.
I continued moving through the palace.
Back through the kitchen corridor.
Back through the narrow crack in the wall.
Back up the hidden stairs behind the harem chambers.
Sira’s contact had relocked my room from the outside exactly as promised. No one would suspect I had left.
I lay down slowly on the sleeping mat.
The silver sword rested beside my thigh.
Malda’s vial pressed against it beneath the cloth wrapping.
And the blue stone remained inside my hand.
I stared into the darkness.
Everything Malda told me replayed over and over inside my head.
A child of two worlds.
Me.
The words still felt unreal.
Suddenly my entire life on Earth made painful sense. The feeling that I never belonged anywhere. The constant restlessness. The strange loneliness I could never explain no matter how many people surrounded me.
Even my desperate lie about being pregnant to escape my father—it all felt connected somehow, like invisible hands had been pushing me toward this path long before I understood it.
I wasn’t broken.
I wasn’t misplaced.
I had simply been born for another world.
And my real father…
The king of Brodax.
Dead before I could know him.
I closed my eyes tightly as grief crashed into me again.
It felt strange mourning someone whose face I had never seen.
But the grief was real anyway.
I pressed the stone harder against my chest and let myself feel it for only a moment.
Just one moment.
After this, I silently promised him. After Zedrak dies, I’ll grieve you properly.
Then I opened my eyes again.
No more weakness.
No more confusion.
The pieces finally fit together now.
Zedrak destroyed my father’s kingdom.
He hunted my mother.
He spent years searching for the child hidden from him between worlds.
Me.
Then his twisted oracle corrupted the prophecy and convinced him my son would become his downfall.
But the prophecy was never about Kairu.
It was about me.
A cold smile touched my lips in the darkness.
You spent all these years fearing the wrong person.
The blue stone pulsed warmly in my hand again.
I suddenly became certain its warmth wasn’t random.
It was connected to Kairu.
To the east tower.
To my son.
Part of me wanted to stand and test it—to turn slowly in circles and feel where the heat grew strongest.
But I didn’t need proof.
I knew where he was.
And for the first time in days, I knew exactly where I was too.
Everything was finally clear.
Tonight.
Four hours after midnight.
That was when everything would end.
Or begin.
I didn’t sleep.
But this wakefulness felt different from the fear-driven exhaustion of the past few days. My body wasn’t trembling anymore. My thoughts weren’t scattered.
I felt sharpened.
Focused.
Like the silver sword waiting beside me.
Outside my chamber, soft crying echoed through the harem common room.
Not screaming.
Not panic.
Just quiet suffering.
The kind that repeats every night in places like this until it becomes part of the walls themselves.
I listened to it for several seconds.
Then, without fully understanding why, I stood up.
I used the small knife Sira’s contact gave me to work the lock from inside. The mechanism clicked softly.
The hallway beyond was dark.
The crying continued.
I followed the sound into the common room.
One of the women sat alone near the far wall with her knees pulled against her chest. Her shoulders shook silently.
When she noticed me, she immediately wiped her tears away like she had been caught committing a crime.
I sat beside her quietly.
I didn’t touch her.
I didn’t know if she wanted that.
So I just stayed there.
After a while, her breathing steadied.
“Thank you,” she whispered without looking at me.
I stared ahead into the darkness.
“We’re getting out of here tonight,” I said softly.
Her head snapped toward me.
“What?”
“I can’t save everyone directly,” I admitted. “I don’t have enough people. I don’t have enough time. But when the gate opens, you run.”
The woman stared at me like she couldn’t decide whether to believe me.
“All of you,” I continued quietly. “You run as far from this palace as you can. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”
Tears filled her eyes again.
“When will the gate open? ” she whispered.
I looked down at the blue stone glowing faintly against my palm.
“When you hear the silver sword,” I said.
Silence settled between us.
Not hopeless silence.
Waiting in silence.
The kind that comes before storms.
Or revolutions.
I returned to my room moments later and locked the door again behind me.
Then I sat against the wall with the stone pressed against my chest and the sword beside me.
I closed my eyes.
And waited for midnight to finish passing.
Tonight, a king would fall.