Chapter 198 - 197: The News that travelled to The Boarder

Two months passed in the strange, suspended rhythm of wartime waiting, letters arriving in uneven bursts, news from the front growing steadily more encouraging as Seraphine’s and the princess’ forces began claiming several ground, and Eleanore’s pregnancy advancing steadily alongside Stella’s, the two of them leaning on each other through the long, uncertain stretch of separation.

They fell into a quiet routine together, tea in the mornings, slow walks through the garden in the afternoons when their energy allowed it, evenings spent trading letters aloud to each other when the news was good enough to share and sitting in comfortable silence when it wasn’t.

It was during a quiet afternoon, resting in the same greenhouse alcove that had once held such different memories, that a stray thought finally surfaced in Eleanore’s mind, one she realized, with mild surprise, she hadn’t consciously registered until just now.

The system hasn’t appeared in weeks.

No notifications. No quests, no tasks, no shimmering panels demanding she solve some new crisis. Not since Adena’s confession, not through Thornberry’s arrest, not even through the news of her own pregnancy—nothing. It struck her now as strange, given how persistently it had intruded on her life for months prior.

Why did it stop?

The question nagged at her for the rest of the day, an itch she couldn’t quite reach, until finally, restless and unable to shake it, she found herself standing in Caelestis’s room that evening, staring at the loose floor tile she’d noticed months ago and never once thought to investigate.

She knelt carefully, mindful of the pregnancy, and pried the tile free with more effort than she expected. Beneath it sat a small, weathered box, tucked away like something meant to stay forgotten.

Her hands trembled slightly as she opened it.

Inside, resting on a faded scrap of cloth, was a single lock of hair, tied with a thin ribbon gone brittle with age.

The moment her fingers brushed against it, the world around her dissolved.

There was no sensation of falling, no disorientation, simply one instant in Caelestis’s dimly lit room, and the next, standing in an endless, featureless white space that stretched in every direction with no walls, no floor she could properly identify beneath her feet, no sound at all beyond the sudden, unsteady rhythm of her own heartbeat.

"Hello?" she called out, voice swallowed instantly by the vast emptiness. "Is anyone here?"

Nothing answered. But somewhere at the edge of her awareness, she felt it—the same faint, familiar hum that always preceded the system’s notifications, except stronger now, closer, like she’d finally stepped through some hidden door the system itself had been quietly guarding all along.

The voice came before the shape did—soft, achingly familiar in a way that made no logical sense, warm in a manner Eleanore had never actually heard before but somehow recognized instantly, the way a person recognizes their own reflection in an unexpected mirror.

"There are things in this world people were never meant to fully understand," the voice said, gentle and sad all at once. "I’m sorry you had to find your way to this one alone."

Eleanore turned, and the white space around her seemed to ripple, folding inward until a figure emerged from the nothingness, a woman, elegant and soft-featured, with the same sharp cheekbones and warm eyes Eleanore had seen echoed a hundred times in Caelestis’s face.

"You’re—" Eleanore’s breath caught. "You’re his mother."

"Serenya," the woman said, offering a small, tearful smile. "Though I suppose you’ve never had reason to know that name until now."

Eleanore didn’t think. She simply closed the distance between them, and when Serenya’s arms wrapped around her, solid and warm despite the impossibility of it all, something in Eleanore’s chest broke open completely. She wept into a stranger’s shoulder who somehow didn’t feel like a stranger at all, and Serenya held her just as tightly, her own tears falling freely against Eleanore’s hair.

"I’ve watched you," Serenya murmured. "As much as I’ve been able to, from wherever this place actually is. I’ve watched you love my son back to life, watched you fight for this family in ways I never got the chance to fight for it myself. I am so grateful you found each other."

"I don’t understand any of this," Eleanore said, pulling back slightly, wiping at her eyes. "The system. This place. You. None of it makes any sense."

Serenya’s expression sobered, the warmth giving way to something more urgent, more careful. "I don’t have long here, Eleanore. This connection isn’t meant to hold for more than a few minutes, so I need you to listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you."

Eleanore nodded, steadying herself.

"The system that’s been guiding you, the notifications, the quests, all of it. It isn’t some benevolent force helping you navigate your life. It’s dark magic. Old, powerful, dangerous magic, and it was given to you by a man who intended it as something far more sinister than the tool it’s appeared to be."

"A dark magician," Eleanore said slowly, the pieces beginning to shift into place. "The spy. The man who’s been circling me."

"Yes," Serenya confirmed. "Though circling isn’t quite the right word anymore. He’s been waiting. The system embedded in you carries a fragment of his own power, something he split from himself long ago, for reasons I was never able to fully uncover before I died. He placed it in you, though I still don’t fully understand why you specifically were chosen to carry it."

"Why would he give away his own power?"

"Power like that isn’t given away without purpose," Serenya said grimly. "I believe he intended it to grow, to mature within a host over time, gathering strength through the very experiences it seemed to be helping you navigate, every quest, every task, every reward it offered you was, I suspect, also feeding whatever fragment of himself now lives inside you."

Eleanore felt something cold settle deep in her stomach. "It’s been growing this entire time. Inside me."