Chapter 30

*Aria*

The wind shifts the moment I step past the threshold of what used to be my home.

The path behind me—newly carved by the forest, woven in light and moss—fades gently, as if to say: this is yours now. The air changes. Thicker. Warmer. Electric. Like it remembers.

Calling me home, urging me to fix what is broken.

My foot hits the soil, and pain crashes into me.

Not physical, but emotional. Ancient. It floods my chest like a scream buried for decades. The land is aching. The very air feels like grief—layered, lingering. It's the memory of fire and blood, of final breaths and broken promises. The magic in the soil curls around my ankle like a question. It asks, "Will you heal us?"

My own magic answers.

A pulse of warmth escapes my skin, meeting the aching pulse of the earth. And then—relief. Not mine. The land's.

I can feel it, like breath released after a long-held silence.

I stay there for a moment, breathing with the land. Listening. Feeling.

Then my gaze lifts, and I see them.

The ruins.

Scattered across the hilltop like bones. Pale columns broken by time, pieces of shattered stained glass buried in moss. A few fragments of the once-great Nightshade stronghold still stand—a partial tower, an archway now being covered in flowering vines, a low wall engraved with old runes.

I feel the pull—gentle but relentless—drawing me closer.

So I walk.

Behind me, my people linger, murmuring and watching as I move through the grass that has begun to regrow. It reaches up and caresses my calves, a silent thank you. The path I walk glows faintly with silver, each step renewing life. I hear someone quietly crying. Another murmurs a prayer. But no one follows. Not yet.

This part is mine to walk alone.

I need to do this.

Sera watches from a distance, eyes bright but unreadable.

As I move deeper into the ruins, the past presses in. Not memories—I was born in a cave, after all. But echoes. Imaginings. Possibilities.

I see what could have been.

Children laugh in the garden, music dances through the hallways. My mother is on a sun-drenched balcony, my father standing tall beside her, fierce and gentle. Wolves race through open archways, the smell of rosemary, and the light of a dozen moons spills through colored glass.

It should have been mine.

It should have been ours.

Instead, it is broken.

But not lost.

Not anymore.

I reach the center of what used to be the great hall. The heart of it all. The stones here are scorched in places, blackened from battle. The archways are split. But there's something strong beneath it still—like roots that refused to die.

The pulse beneath my feet grows stronger.

Like a heartbeat calling me.

I drop to my knees, placing both palms flat against the stone. My magic hums and shivers. The crest on my shoulder burns—not in pain, but in awakening.

Then I feel it.

A pull toward the far wall, half-swallowed by newly grown ivy and time. A broken hearth. A collapsed bookshelf. And a trunk.

Old. Iron-bound. But still intact.

I crawl toward it, heart hammering in my chest. When my fingers touch the lid, a soft glow spreads beneath my skin. The lock gives way.

Inside, wrapped in faded velvet, lies a journal. Its leather cover is scarred, its edges curled with age, but the moment I lift it into my hands, I know.

It was hers.

My mother’s.

The weight of it nearly takes my breath away. I sit carefully on the stone floor, cradling the journal like it is something precious... because it is, and open to the first page.

*To the child I may never get to meet,*

My vision blurs. My breath trembles.

And the world falls away.

Only the beating of my heart, the pulsing of the crest on my shoulder, and the whisper of the forest remain.

She left this for me.

A record. A goodbye. A hope.

I flip through the next few pages slowly, carefully. Her handwriting is elegant, fluid—each letter holding weight. Each word is a breath of the past.

She writes of the court, of the tension in the days before the betrayal. Of how she feared Kael’s father would act in violence, not diplomacy. Of secret meetings with the guardians loyal to the old ways. Of love—deep and fierce—for the man who stood at her side, my father.

Of her hopes and fears for me.

I read the line again and again:

*I have never known a love as wild and overwhelming as what I feel for the life growing inside me. She is light in the dark. She is everything.*

I press the journal to my chest, the ache in my heart cracking wide open.

I feel the tears stream down my cheeks, but I don't wipe them away. I can't take my hands off this journal. The only thing I have from my family, from her.

Everything that was taken from us. Everything we lost. It pulses in my blood now. Like a living memory.

But alongside it—hope.

Love.

For the ones who helped put me back together when I had nothing left in me to give. For the ones who believed in me even before I did. For the ones who followed me here. For the wolves who never gave up. For Ronan. Corren. Talon. Amy. Sera. For the guardians who risked it all to help my mother, to save me.

For the mother who gave me everything.

Around me, the ruins don't feel broken anymore. They feel like seeds.

And I am the storm that will bring them back to life.

My hand drifts to the ground beside me, brushing over the moss. A spark of magic leaps from my fingertips, and in its wake, a small bloom unfurls—a silver-edged violet. It opens toward me like a bow.

Sera’s voice reaches me softly from the entrance.

"She knew you’d return one day. The forest remembers. And so does your blood."

I don’t look up. I just whisper, "I remember now, too."

I close the journal carefully. Tomorrow, we build.

Tonight, I'll allow myself to feel and remember.