The field shimmered like a half-finished painting. Gold light spilled through tall grasses, scattering in waves beneath a sky so soft it felt like silk draped across a wound.

A woman moved through it—slow, steady.

Her dress whispered in the hush. Cream linen, worn thin at the hem, damp with dew. She wasn't walking so much as gliding, as if her body had forgotten how to disturb the world.

Her head was tilted downward, eyes half-lidded. Not in sorrow—no. In something else. Something quieter. Her gaze was close to the earth, as though she was listening for the secrets buried beneath roots.

Why does she seem so familiar…?

The question hovered at the back of Elara's throat, but her mouth didn't move.

The wind stirred again. Soft. Kind. It swept strands of pale blonde hair from the woman's shoulders, catching the sunlight in threads too bright to stare at directly.

And Elara's breath caught.

Because she remembered now.

The woman—no. Not just a woman.

Her.

Hair like spun frost, that rare smile curving in a way no portrait ever caught. Her voice always half a step ahead, as if she knew what Elara would ask before she found the words. Her presence like safety wearing skin.

Mother.

Then—

A laugh.

Small. Giddy. Unfiltered by time.

Her own voice.

"Mother, hehe…"

It rose like a bell through the memory. And the world began to blur—not with fear, but motion.

The vision shook.

The grasses whipped past too quickly now. Her breath came fast, not with panic, but joy—her child-legs sprinting, her arms pumping. The dream couldn't hold still under her speed.

And ahead, the woman turned.

Just enough.

Just slightly.

Her face still blurred at the edges—but her mouth moved.

And a voice, impossibly soft, impossibly known, answered her:

"Ah… Elara…"

The name curled through the air like a lullaby with a sharp edge.

"Mother—hug!"

Her laughter rang out, high and breathless, laced with that wild, unchecked joy only children could make sound so whole.

Elara sprinted harder, arms wide like wings as her small frame barreled forward, her heart bursting in a way no pain had yet touched.

And the woman turned again—arms beginning to open, just enough to catch her.

Just enough to say: you are wanted here.

But—

The world blinked.

Not faded. Melted.

Colors bled. The golden field curdled at the edges. The wind stilled, then reversed—like a breath sucked violently inward.

And her mother's gaze shifted.

Up.

Too fast.

Too sharp.

Something unnatural in the way her neck twisted, the snap of it like bone beneath silk.

Her eyes locked with Elara's. Still soft—but hollow now.

Too hollow.

No—

The ground beneath her feet changed—grasses withering into ash, the sky bleeding to pitch.

Then—

CRACK.

Elara fell.

Hard.

Her knees struck something that should've been soil, but sounded like stone. Her hands scraped forward, catching herself just barely, her breath punching from her chest in a sharp, broken whisper:

"Ah…"

Her vision swam. But not from impact.

From tears.

Hot. Immediate. So full they didn't sting—they burned.

She lifted her head slowly. The wind was gone. Her heartbeat echoed in the silence like it didn't belong to her anymore.

"Mother… it hurts…"

She said it without thinking. Like the child she was, like the woman she became, like something in between.

But when her gaze rose fully—

She froze.

There.

Right before her.

A head.

Not attached to anything. Just resting upright, impossibly still.

Blonde hair, matted and wrong. Strings of it wilted, curling like dead roots in water.

And the face—

The face…

The eyes were missing.

Not closed.

Gone.

Just dark, empty hollows where they should have been, ringed in gray like rot. The lips curled in something too close to a smile, too wrong to be one.

Elara's breath strangled in her throat.

And then—

"Because of you…"

The voice came not from the head.

But through it.

Hair withered before her eyes. Skin cracked. The pale grace of that once-soft face corrupted by something deeper than age.

"It is because of you!"

The voice slammed into her—her mother's voice.

Twisted. Screaming. No longer gentle. No longer kind.

"IT IS BECAUSE OF YOU!"

The scream shattered the dream like glass hit with a hammer.

And Elara—

—woke.

"Haaaa…..Haaaa…"

Elara's breath came in ragged bursts, shallow and sharp, like her lungs hadn't remembered how to breathe until too late. She sat upright, the sheets tangled around her legs, her back damp with sweat that clung like guilt.

The room was dim. Quiet.

Too quiet.

The kind that didn't feel empty—but watchful.

She blinked, once. Twice. Her vision struggled to settle. Shapes warped at the edges, familiar walls bending into strange corners. She brought her hands up to her face—

—and stilled.

Her fingers trembled, flecked with the faint sheen of moisture. Not blood. Not frost. Just sweat.

But her skin looked wrong in the low light. Too pale. Too thin.

Like it didn't belong to her.

"...that dream again," she whispered.

The words scraped out of her, hoarse and small. Not like Elowyn. Not like the mask. But like her—the girl beneath the illusions. The one who still woke up some nights with the weight of a scream inside her ribs and nowhere to put it.

She stared at her palms. The tremble hadn't stopped.

That dream.

She swallowed hard. The taste of it was still in her throat—ash, grief, rot. Her heartbeat thundered, but her chest felt hollow, as though the sound echoed through a space too large.

It wasn't new.

It should have dulled by now.

But it hadn't.

This wasn't something born of banishment. It wasn't Isolde's cruelty or the court's knives. No.

It came from before.

Far, far before.

"…four," she murmured, as if the number itself were a spell.

She had been four the first time.

Too young to name fear, too young to understand why the dreams left her crying into her pillow, the image of her mother's hollowed eyes burned behind her lids.

Even then—

Even then, before the blood, before her exile, and her tragedy…

Even much more before that…..

Before her mother had died—

—Elara had seen that face.

The empty gaze. The blame.

"It's always been there," she said under her breath, her voice tighter now. Almost accusing.

Her fingers curled.

She drew in a breath that didn't steady her.

Didn't quite reach her lungs the way it should.

This dream—this thing—never left cleanly. It clung. It itched beneath her ribs, just beneath the skin, where nothing could scratch it out.

It wasn't fear.

It wasn't even pain.

It was friction.

Like something had been carved into her memory wrong, and her mind kept trying to rewrite it every time she slept.

And every time, it failed.

She pressed her palms into her eyes until light bloomed behind them, useless and searing.

It never helped.

"…I hate this dream," she muttered, her voice rough with sleep and raw with resentment. "It's bloody annoying."

Her words didn't echo. The room swallowed them whole.

Just like it always did.

She sighed—sharply, through her teeth—and pushed back the covers with more force than necessary. The air met her skin like a challenge: cold, thin, unwelcoming.

Good.

Let it bite a little.

She rose, moving like someone who'd learned to treat exhaustion as an inconvenience, not a weakness. Her limbs didn't falter, her spine stayed straight—but her shoulders remained a little too tense. Her breathing still just off enough to give her away.

Her eyes flicked toward the window.

Dark.

Still dark.

The sky beyond was a bruise, not yet touched by morning's edge.

Meaning: too early. Far too early.

"I didn't sleep much, it seems," she murmured, rubbing her thumb along the inside of her wrist—habit, not comfort. "Again."

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