Artemio continued, his tone now stripped of mockery, replaced by sothing far more dangerous—certainty.
"The day you were born, your destiny was cast in stone."
A flicker of confusion crossed her face. "Destiny? What is my destiny?"
"The vendetta, Lara...the blood feud." he cut in, his voice like steel, "as the eldest, you have to carry it out."
Silence.
The world around them—the distant voices, the sound of tools against stone, the rustling wind—seed to fade.
Lara felt it then.
Not just fear but sothing colder.
"...Blood feud with whom? Is it your enemy?" she asked, her voice quieter now, but no less steady.
Artemio studied her for a long mont, as if asuring how much she could take.
Then he said—
"Not just my enemy, Lara," he said quietly. "It’s yours too."
The answer landed flat.
And they both knew it.
Lara leaned forward, fingers curling against the edge of the table, her composure slipping just enough to show the crack beneath. "Can you stop hiding behind riddles?" she pressed. "Say it. Directly."
For the first ti since that afternoon began, Artemio changed.
Barely.
A flicker in his eyes. A subtle tightening at the corner of his mouth.
"You really don’t rember."
It was not a question.
Then he laughed—low, jagged, and wrong. The sound crawled under Lara’s skin, raising goosebumps along her arms.
"So you’re not pretending," he murmured. "I thought Yannis had already finished his work on you."
Sothing in the way he said it made her chest tighten.
Made everything feel worse.
Her thoughts snagged, looping back, clinging to his earlier words like a splinter she couldn’t pull free.
You were not ant to live as Lara Fuegerro...
Artemio’s words did not simply linger—they struck, reverberating through her mind like a shout hurled into a cavern’s depths.
...not ant to live as Lara Fuegerro...
Each echo grew sharper, more insistent, as though clawing past the surface of her thoughts—demanding that she rember.
Not hear but rember.
The words stopped richocheting.
It burrowed into her skull like a relentless drill, tearing through carefully constructed mories.
Then, they infected.
They spread through her mind like a fracture splintering across glass—silent at first, then violently expanding, splinter by splinter, until sothing beneath began to surface.
Not mories.
Sothing older. Sothing buried.
"You were not ant to live as Lara Fuegerro."
The voice twisted, deepened, multiplied—no longer Artemio’s alone, but a chorus of sothing vast and rciless pressing against the walls of her mind.
It did not ask her to rember.
It forced her to recall...
The child who was forced to steady trembling hands around the cold grip of a gun... the gun, too large for her small hands.
The command: Pull the trigger. The recoil that bruised her shoulder. A scream—cut short. The cold floors and the splatter of blood that wasn’t hers.
Orders she followed before she understood what obedience ant.
The girl who learned that hesitation ant death.
The teenager thrown into missions designed for soldiers twice her age—missions she survived when others did not.
All of it— peeled away.
No.
That was a life carved into her.
The her in the past.
A different na rose from the depths of her being, ancient and unyielding.
Lara Norse.
Daughter of Odin Norse—the War God whose na alone bent nations.
Sister to the empire’s undefeated generals.
Then another na...Lara Norse-Kromwel
Empress beside the founding sovereign of Azuverda. Mother to a lineage that ruled not by chance, but by right.
Blood of conquerors. Bone of rulers. A lineage that rose and dominated.
Power did not co to her.
It returned.
...
Her spine straightened, not with effort, but inevitability. Her body rembered the posture it always ant to hold.
Her gaze lifted—and when it t Artemio’s, sothing in the air shifted.
It was not the gaze of soone looking at her father. It was the gaze of soone assessing sothing... lesser.
Artemio felt it before he understood it.
An invisible pressure crushing him.
Artemio stilled.
For a fleeting mont, his breath caught—not from surprise, but from sothing far more unsettling.
Discomfort.
No... not discomfort but unease.
It felt as though the ground beneath him had tilted—subtly, but undeniably. As though the person standing before him was no longer beneath his command...
...but far, far above it.
Her presence pressed against him—heavy, suffocating—like standing before soone who had ruled long before he was born.
"Why are you looking at like that?" Artemio demanded.
His voice was firm. But not steady. The tremor, slight as it was, did not escape her.
"You are right... Father."
Lara’s voice was calm. Too calm.
Not the calm of obedience, but the calm of certainty.
"I was never ant to live as a Fuegerro."
For the first ti in years, Artemio felt the instinct to look away.
What the hell...?
Am I... afraid of her?
The thought alone angered him.
He inhaled sharply, forcing control back into his chest. This was absurd. He had raised her—broken her, shaped her, trained her to obey without question.
She feared him.
She always had.
"Father?" he repeated, the word now laced with contempt, as though rejecting it before it could settle. "What kind of address is that?"
His eyes narrowed.
His lips curled with disdain.
"I’ll overlook it—for now. Your mory clearly hasn’t recovered fully." His tone hardened. "But the next ti we speak in private, you will address properly."
A pause.
Then—
"Understood... General."
Lara’s voice carried no hesitation. No resistance. No emotion.
The indifference in her voice struck harder than defiance ever could.
Artemio’s jaw tightened.
This damned woman...
Didn’t she used to cling to him? Call him Dad—Daddy—like she always wanted to gain his approval?
Now—
There was nothing.
"...Never mind," he muttered, exhaling sharply as if to dispel the tension coiling in his chest.
But the unease remained. Clinging...persistent.
"Co here often," he continued, regaining his composure. "I heard you’ve been assisting the historians."
"I’ll try my best. Most of the ti, I will be in the northern and northeastern sector." Lara replied.
She finally relaxed. She had broken through her body’s instincts.
Her gaze lingered on him a mont longer.
It wasn’t curious but assessing.
As if she was deciding whether he was worth rembering at all.
And for the first ti—
Artemio Fuegerro understood sothing with quiet, creeping horror.
The girl he had raised... was she gone?
And whatever stood in her place...
had never belonged to him.
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