"I didn’t read it in textbooks," she said. "It was... written more like a novel."
Her voice was steady — almost too steady.
As if she had rehearsed that exact explanation in her head long before anyone asked.
Ares’ gaze sharpened.
A novel.
The word echoed in his mind with quiet dissonance.
Technically plausible. Emotionally hollow.
It sounded like the kind of answer people gave when they wanted to close a door without making it obvious there was sothing behind it.
And then — unbidden — a mory surfaced.
A classified dical report he obtained from Hope Hospital. It was stamped restricted.
Subject: Larissa Reyes — Post-coma neurological observations.
He had only skimd it at the ti, more out of obligation than concern.
Now every line ca back with unnerving clarity.
Patient exhibited disorientation upon waking. Spoke of unfamiliar titles and identities. Repeated references to being an "empress." Possible confabulation due to traumatic brain injury.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Could it be true?
When Larissa Reyes first regained consciousness, she had babbled about palaces... royalty... a life that did not exist.
He had dismissed it as post-traumatic confusion. Hallucinations. A brain trying to stitch itself back together after damage.
But now—
His gaze slid to the imperial coffin.Then back to her rigid shoulders.
The resemblance between the delusion in that report and the emotion she was displaying right now was... uncomfortable.
Could her mind really be that damaged?
Did she read sothing... and convince herself it was her past?
Or worse—
Was she still lost inside that fantasy?
Ares didn’t like the thought. Not because it made her fragile. Because it made her unpredictable.
And unpredictable people were dangerous — to themselves and to everyone around them.
Yet what he saw before him did not look like delusion. It looked like mourning.
Raw, private and devastating.
The air around her felt dense, almost viscous, as if grief itself had weight and mass. Even Logan, normally incapable of silence, had stopped speaking.
Sothing hung there. Unsaid. Unmovable.
Ares beca acutely aware of every small detail — the faint tremor in her fingers, the unnatural stillness of her back, the way her breathing seed too shallow for soone claiming to be fine.
She looked like a person holding herself together by sheer force of will.
And that unsettled him far more than panic would have.
Because panic was honest. This... was concealnt.
For reasons he could not logically justify, a slow unease crept down his spine.
Not fear of the tomb. Not fear of hidden traps or ancient chanisms.
Not even fear of what might be inside the coffins.
It was her.
Larissa Reyes — standing perfectly still before the emperor’s remains like a widow at a grave no one else knew she had lost.
The realization struck him with quiet force.
Whatever haunted her...it was not buried in this chamber.
It had walked in with her.
It breathed. It rembered. It suffered.
It was alive inside her.
And Ares had the unsettling suspicion that if it ever surfaced completely—
Nothing about Larissa Reyes would remain the sa.
Nor, perhaps, would the world around her.
...
Lara tore her hand away from Alaric’s coffin as if the stone had burned her.
Before she could stop herself, her gaze drifted to the sarcophagus beside it.
Empress Lara Kromwel.
Her na.
Not Larissa Reyes.
That na.
Her throat tightened violently.
If she lifted the lid... would she see bones arranged in royal repose? Gold ornants corroded by ti? Silk turned to dust?
Would she be staring at the remains of the woman she had once been?
My own skeleton...
A violent shudder ran through her, crawling up her spine like icy fingers. The chamber suddenly felt too small, the air too thin, the weight of centuries pressing down on her ribs.
No.
She stepped back abruptly, almost stumbling off the dais, as if distance alone could sever whatever invisible tether bound her to that coffin.
Her shoes touched the lower marble with a soft, final sound.
Don’t look. Don’t touch. Don’t rember.
She turned away before the urge to open it could consu her.
Instead, she walked toward the first sarcophagus lining the chamber wall, forcing her breathing into sothing steady, controlled — the discipline of a woman who had survived far worse than grief.
The inscription was carved in bold, ancient lettering:
Heimdal Kromwel.
Beside it —
Astrid Kromwel.
Her father-in-law. And the mother-in-law she had never t... yet knew by heart.
A strange ache settled in her chest. It was neither sharp nor overwhelming.
It was quiet and familiar.
As if she were standing before the graves of relatives she had visited countless tis.
Behind her, the chamber buzzed with excited voices.
Archaeologists clustered together, whispering loudly, caras flashing, hands trembling as they recorded every detail.
"...the greatest discovery of the millennium...""...imperial lineage confird...""...intact burial site—unprecedented..."
On the opposite side, Liam and Logan were already deep in discussion with Philip Hardy, their tones low and tactical — periter control, personnel rotation, mariti surveillance, extraction protocols.
Normal concerns. Present-day concerns.
Lara barely heard any of it.
To her, the noise felt distant — like sound filtered through water.
She moved from coffin to coffin.
Slowly. thodically.
Her fingertips hovered just above the stone surfaces, never quite touching, as if afraid contact would unleash sothing she could not contain.
At each one, she paused, closed her eyes, not in respect. bit in search.
Fragnts stirred at the edges of her consciousness — a laugh here, a voice there, the echo of footsteps in palace corridors, sunlight through tall windows, the scent of ink and steel and winter air.
Nothing complete. Just impressions, like trying to recall a dream that dissolves the harder you chase it.
Ares watched her from a distance, unease coiling tighter in his gut with every step she took.
She didn’t look like a visitor.
She looked like soone walking through a family mausoleum.
Lucas shifted beside him, his usual restlessness subdued.
"...Why does this feel creepy?" he muttered under his breath.
Ares didn’t answer. Because he felt it too.
Lara stopped at a pair of coffins set slightly apart from the others.
Her breath caught.
The nas were engraved side by side.
Aldrich Kromwel. Althea Kromwel.
Her vision blurred instantly.
Her firstborn. And his twin sister.
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