The king’s hall was dim, lit only by the last flickering torches. He sat rigid on his throne, trying to quiet the unease that had been growing in him like a sickness.

  The doors creaked open.

  An old woman stepped inside — the same woman who had once served in the palace on the night the twins were born. Her back was bent, her breath thin, but her eyes held a strange, unwavering clarity.

  The guards moved to stop her.

  The king raised a hand.

  She walked slowly across the stone floor, each step echoing like a memory he had tried to bury. When she reached the foot of the throne, she bowed her head.

  Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “They live.”

  The king’s blood turned to ice.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The guards exchanged confused glances. The scribes froze mid?stroke. No one else understood the meaning of those two simple words.

  But the king did.

  He lurched forward, gripping the arm of his throne. “Who told you this? How do you know?”

  The woman did not answer.

  Her eyes widened — not in fear, but in something like release. Her body swayed.

  Then she collapsed at his feet.

  Dead.

  No wound. No poison. No struggle. Just gone, as if the truth she carried had taken the last of her life with it.

  The hall erupted in shouts, but the king heard nothing. His gaze stayed fixed on her still face, on the lips that had spoken the words he feared most.

  They live.

  That night, sleep refused him.

  Every time he closed his eyes, the same dream began to rise — a shape in the dark, a whisper from water, two shadows stepping toward him.

  Before the dream could finish, he tore his eyes open again, heart hammering.

  He tried again.

  The same beginning. The same shapes. The same cold rising in his chest.

  And again, he forced himself awake before the dream could show him the end.

  By dawn, his hands trembled.

  His breath was shallow. His eyes were hollow. And the whisper from the throne room still echoed in his skull:

  They live.

  The king rose with the weight of a man who knew the truth was no longer hiding.

  Something had awakened.

  And the dream he refused to see would soon return — whether he wanted it to or not.