Chapter 163 The Future Never Lies

Chapter 163 The Future Never Lies
EYSA -

Eysa's eyes opened to a dark ceiling. Dax lay asleep beside her and their daughter, Vanessa, rested beside them in a wooden cradle that Kaol had gifted them.
The salt air and the name Dominik haunted her mind. The Soul Chamber breathed at the edge of her mind, allowing Eysa’s heart one fragile moment to relax before black water splashed against her fingers, cold enough to burn. Beside her, Vanessa’s cry broke the silence.
Eysa's heart sped once more as the walls around her thinned, and she was pulled back into her Soul Chamber.
The silver light turned red at the edges, and the dark stone hall across the sea formed again beneath her feet. Pillars stood around her as sea mist broke against the thick stone.
This time, Eysa stood closer.
Broken symbols lay scattered across the floor, pieces of Latara's mark chipped from older stone and arranged in a circle around the woman her daughter had become. Monks in ash-colored robes knelt beyond the fragments, chanting in a language that scraped the air raw. Their hoods hid their faces, but their hands were bare, and each palm had been cut open.
Blood dripped onto the broken marks.
Vanessa stood in the center of the circle with her wrists bound in front of her. She was older than the newborn crying somewhere beyond the vision. Her dark hair had been pulled loose and hung in scattered wisps around her face, and a bruise colored one cheek. The torn edge of her gown clung to her shoulder where rain or seawater had soaked through the cloth.
Eysa smiled when her daughter didn't kneel.
Even bound, she stood with her chin lifted and her feet planted against the stone.
A monk stepped up behind her and caught her bound wrists. "The daughter of the false queen stands beneath the sign. The blood taken from our god returns to him through her."
Eysa tried to move, but the vision held her in place.
Her daughter pulled against the monk's grip. "Your god is dead."
The chant faltered at her words, and the monk's mouth twisted under his hood. "Then we'll take what death failed to keep."
The torches leaned toward the circle, and the sea wind pushed through the arches, snapping the dark banners along the walls. Beyond them, waves struck the cliffs with such force that the spray lifted into the open hall.
A door opened at the far end. Dominik entered in dark armor. A black cloak hung from one side, fastened with a clasp shaped like a crown. He crossed to the edge of the circle, and the monks lowered their heads as he passed.
Vanessa turned toward him, and Eysa didn't miss the look they shared. There was fear in her face, but not the kind Eysa expected from an enemy. There was also hurt and anger. Something had been shared and broken between them before this moment ever arrived, and the wound still bled.
Eysa could feel it as if it were her own.
Dominik looked at her bound wrists first, then he looked at the circle, and his jaw flexed.
Brother Cahlin stepped from the shadows, older now, his grey robe marked with red along the sleeves. "You came. Good. I had hoped you wouldn't disappoint your father." He lifted his hand toward Vanessa. "The bloodline is ready."
Dominik's eyes didn't leave Vanessa. "I gave orders that she was not to be bound for rites. Justice, yes, but not rites."
"The rite is justice," Cahlin said. "You brought her across the sea, just as you said you would."
"I brought her for trial." Vanessa flinched. "Not slaughter."
Dominik's hands flexed at his sides, and his lips thinned. Cahlin saw it and smiled. "Don't soften now, my lord. You have tasted her lies, and she called it love. I know this, but Landis's blood still lives in you. This is the hour your father waited for."
Vanessa swallowed, and every hard line in her face cracked for one breath. She looked at Dominik in surprise.
"Dom," she whispered, and the sound moved through the Soul Chamber with more force than the chanting.
Dominik's eyes closed.
Cahlin lifted a curved blade from the altar beside him. Its edge was dark, not with fresh blood but with old staining that had sunk too deep to wash away.
"Her blood opens what her mother stole. Her death pays the debt that makes our god whole." The other monks picked it up and chanted it as Cahlin looked at Dominik. "Your father's spirit will know peace."
"My father is dead," Dominik said, and Cahlin paused. Dominik finally opened his eyes. "And a dead man does not ask deranged monks to murder women on their behalf."
The chant broke apart, and Cahlin took a step back. "You forget who raised you." He gestured to the group of monks surrounding them.
"No." Dominik stepped into the circle. The broken pieces of Latara's mark shifted under his boots. "I remember exactly who raised me."
The monk holding Vanessa dragged her back, and another seized her hair, forcing her throat bare.
The curved blade flashed toward her, and Dominik moved.
He caught the blade with his bare hand, and blood ran down his wrist at once. The edge sank deeper as Cahlin tried to pull it free, but Dominik held it fast. His face didn't change, though his fingers closed hard enough that blood dripped onto the broken symbol at his feet.
Vanessa stared at him.
Dominik looked past the blade to Cahlin. "You told me her bloodline owed me a death."
Cahlin's breath shook. "It does."
"Who said it had to be hers?"
The hall erupted. A monk lunged for Vanessa from behind, and Dominik tore the blade from Cahlin's hand with a motion that opened his palm to the bone. He turned the weapon and drove its hilt into the attacking monk's throat. Soldiers in dark armor moved from the arches, but not all of them obeyed the same master. Steel rang against stone, and banners ripped in the wind.
Dominik caught Vanessa by the bound wrists and pulled her behind him. She stumbled into his back. "You waited long enough."
His mouth thinned, but he didn't turn. "I needed to know which men were mine."
Her brow pulled tight. "I thought you'd changed your mind."
"Such little faith, little Crown." he said.
She gave a breath that might have become a laugh in other circumstances.
Cahlin staggered backward, cluthcing his bleeding hand. "You would betray your father for his enemy's daughter?"
Dominik finally looked back at Vanessa. The hard control in his face didn't soften, but something in his eyes changed when they found hers.
"I was raised to hate her blood," he said. "Not to become the thing that murdered mine."
The vision shook as Vanessa looked at Dominik like the words had cut through the last chain between them, and Eysa saw him clearly then.
Dominik. Landis's blood. The son from across the sea. The man who would steal her daughter, the man her daughter would love, and the man who would one day betray his own kingdom to keep her breathing.
The Soul Chamber filled with Vanessa's newborn cry, and the vision tore apart once more.