The dream begins the same way:
A bell tolling in the distance. Snow falling sideways. A church door creaking open on its own.
But this time, Haera doesn't watch from afar.
This time… she steps inside.
---
The church is empty.
Except for the altar.
And on it — her.
Not as Haera.
Not even as Lilienne.
But as Solenne — the first.
The original.
The girl who broke the soul pattern before it was ever written.
---
Solenne wears no crown. No gown. Just a simple shift of linen, her dark hair braided over one shoulder, her hands folded peacefully.
She is dead.
But not peacefully.
Her skin is bruised where rope once held her down.
Her lips are bloodied.
And her eyes — though shut — still shine with defiance.
---
Haera walks forward, breath trembling.
Each step feels like stepping into flame.
And when she reaches the altar, the bell tolls again.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then a whisper, curling like smoke around the rafters:
> "This is where you disobeyed the stars."
---
Haera turns.
A figure stands in the doorway.
He is tall, robed in black stitched with threads of silver, and where his face should be — only light.
Blinding. Hollow. Eternal.
The Watcher.
Seraphiel.
---
"You killed her," Haera says.
"I unmade her," the Watcher replies, voice like wind through bones. "She would not submit."
"She remembered too much?"
"She felt too much."
---
He walks forward slowly.
"Love is not the currency of eternity. Order is."
"But you gave us love," Haera says, eyes wide. "You placed us in each other's paths across lifetimes."
"I gave you connection. You turned it into obsession."
---
Behind her, Solenne's body begins to fade.
Dust to light.
Light to ash.
Gone.
And in her place: a mirror.
The same one from Chapter 6 — cracked down the middle.
Only now, Haera sees it clearly.
Each shard shows a different version of herself, in different deaths:
A queen poisoned by her council.
A healer burned as a witch.
A girl who walked into the sea and never returned.
A scholar who slit her own wrists with pages torn from a book.
A bride who never made it to the altar.
---
"You've always ended the same way," the Watcher says.
"By choice," Haera whispers. "Not yours. Mine."
---
The mirror begins to bleed light — harsh, golden, painful.
Cairos appears behind her suddenly, out of breath.
He grabs her hand. "Don't look too long."
But Haera does.
And in that final shard, the smallest one tucked in the corner — she sees herself alive.
Old. Wrinkled. Laughing.
Holding the hand of a silver-eyed man by a river. At peace. At last.
---
"I want that life," she says.
The Watcher tilts his head.
"Then you must survive this one."
---
The dream shatters.
She wakes up on the floor of her dorm, bleeding from the nose.
The feather is gone.
But carved into her palm, as if seared by fire:
> "Solenne never died for nothing."
---
Haera doesn't know how she'll win yet.
But she knows one thing now:
The Watcher is not a god.
He's a coward.
And she — in every lifetime — is the girl who remembered too much.