Astelion POV
The door of the washroom slammed against the stone wall as I threw myself out into the corridor. My heart was a frantic, deafening drum inside my ears, drowning out the distant, chaotic roar of the kitchens. I didn't care who saw me. I didn't care if the palace guards noticed the raw panic tearing across my face. My eyes scanned the intersecting stone hallways until they locked onto the retreating, fluid silhouette of Miracle.
"Miracle! Wait!" I lunged forward, my boots skidding against the floor as I caught up to her. I reached out and grabbed her hand, my fingers clamping around her wrist with a desperate, trembling force.
"How did you know? Why? What do you mean?"
Miracle stopped, her posture remaining entirely fluid and unstirred. She turned her head, looking down at where my fingers gripped her skin, and then slowly brought her eyes up to meet mine. She didn't pull away. Instead, she turned her wrist, sliding her fingers up to gently hold my hand in return.
"Dear, I am a seer," she murmured, her voice a calm, low current in the middle of my storm. Her eyes held an unbothered weight that made the blood freeze in my veins. "All it takes is a touch. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."
Her gaze dropped slightly to my midsection, her expression softening into a look of profound, devastating pity.
"But do heed my warning. Having a child here... that child will belong to this timeline."
The implication hit me like a physical blow, stripping the air straight from my lungs. My mind flashed to the morning to the unmade bed, Kiono's deep, rumbling laughter, and the beautiful, fragile future of a son and a daughter we had dared to map out together.
A child of this timeline. A child tied to a world destined to burn.
"I can't return to my time," I choked out, my voice cracking as I shook my head in denial. "I won't."
"Fate has a funny way of working, dear," Miracle replied softly, her thumb tracing a soothing, slow circle over the back of my hand.
"And my eyes tell me that you will not stay here."
"No. No, please help me," I begged, the last remnants of my composure fracturing completely. I gripped her hand tighter.
"I don't want to leave. Please."
"There is nothing I can do," Miracle said, her voice dropping into a somber, final whisper. She gave my fingers one last, firm squeeze before slowly letting go, drawing her hands back into the folds of her long sleeves.
"But try to stay alive."
She turned and began to walk away, her figure effortlessly melting back into the shadows of the palace architecture.
A suffocating, blind panic started to set in. The stone walls seemed to close in on me, the air turning thick and unbreathable as the horrific realization settled into my chest: everything I had planned saving this kingdom, stopping Cion, building a life in the snow-capped mountains with the man I loved might not go the way I wanted.
I was running out of time. The clock was ticking, and the sand was slipping through my fingers.
I was terrified. I didn't want to leave.
Suddenly, chaotic, disjointed images began to explode behind my eyelids, flashing with the speed of lightning strikes. I saw Kiono—his blue eyes looking down at me with, his massive arms wrapping around my waist to shield me from the world.
Then, the vision snapped, and I saw the weeping, distorted face of my mother. She was crying, her mouth opened in an agonizing, silent scream as she reached her trembling hands out toward me through a swirling, fractured void, begging me to come back.
"Stop it," I whimpered, the mental pressure building behind my temples until it felt like my skull was about to crack open. "Stop!"
I grabbed both sides of my head, my fingernails digging into my scalp as a piercing scream ripped from the very depths of my soul.
My eyes flew wide open, but I couldn't see the stone walls anymore my vision was completely consumed by two blinding, iridescent pools of pure cosmic light.
My boots left the floor. I floated straight up off the floor, my hair uncoiling and whipping wildly around my head as if suspended in an invisible ocean.
The heavy wooden doors to the kitchen blasted open under the sudden, explosive shockwave of my telekinetic aura. Every cook, maid, and soldier in the domestic quarters froze mid-motion, dropping pots and trays as they turned to look at me in absolute, paralyzing horror.
A wave of terrified, frantic whispering broke out among the staff, their pale faces staring up at the monstrosity hovering in the hallway.
A guttural, language began to pour from my lips words I didn't recognize, syllables that vibrated with a dark, celestial power that shook the very foundations of the palace.
Then, the world shattered.
Suddenly, I wasn't inside my own body anymore. My consciousness detached, throwing me into a terrifying, out-of-body experience. I was hovering looking down at myself. I could see my own arched spine, my glowing eyes, and the terrifying vortex of raw energy churning around my physical vessel
but I couldn't stop it.
I was a passenger in my own destruction, screaming soundlessly as my magic tore the room apart.
Without warning, a magnetic pull snapped me backward. I felt myself getting rapidly drawn back toward my physical body, the sudden re-entry causing a sharp, blinding explosion of agony right through my brain.
My floating body shot upward, slamming against the hard stone ceiling of the corridor.
The absolute force of the impact fractured the stone above me. The world instantly went black, the roaring light in my eyes extinguished in a fraction of a second, and my limp, unconscious form plummeted heavily back toward the debris-covered floor below.