Family- III

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"She died before I could say goodbye," Aranya continued, her voice hollow. "I held her body for hours. Then I took our son and sealed the house. Burned every record. Every scroll. We became a myth. Ghosts. Forgotten. I made it that way."

"But the boy," I managed to say. "What happened to him?"

"He lived," she said, with both pride and sorrow. "Longer than anyone should. He studied the old arts. He found rituals. He wanted to finish what we started. But watching both his mothers die changed him. He hated me for staying. He hated himself for watching. And he hated your line because the demon was sealed into my blood, but it passed into yours."

I stumbled back slightly.

"He's alive now."

"Yes. And he's waiting."

I swallowed hard. "Why are you showing me all this?"

"Because you deserve the truth," Aranya said. "You're not cursed because you're weak. You're cursed because you were strong enough to carry something no one else could. And that strength… it doesn't come without scars."

She stepped closer again, and her fingers brushed my temple.

"Circle of thorns. Salt to guard. Thread to bind. Fire to finish."

She smiled again.

"You will meet him soon. He will ask you to betray me. Don't."

The air grew colder.

She stepped back, her form already flickering.

"Wait!"

"You're waking up," she said, already fading. "We don't get to stay. Not yet."

"Aranya!"

I tried to stay, i wanted to know more.

But she was gone.

And I opened my eyes.

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The dream didn't fade all at once. It stayed behind my eyes even after I woke, warm grass under my knees, Aranya's soft voice, her words still humming in my skin like an aftershock.

Aranya, who had once held an entire bloodline together with her bare hands, who had loved another woman enough to fight death beside her… and who now looked at me with a kind of grief that never left.

I blinked hard and sat up on the library floor. The paper from the scroll I'd been studying was stuck to my elbow.

Miss Kaur was already downstairs, hair wet from a shower, sleeves rolled up, sorting through ancient protective runes like she hadn't nearly bled out last week. As if she didn't still carry a curse around her wrist like a viper waiting to wake up.

She glanced at me over her tea. "You saw her again?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. "She talked about... her wife and her child...showed me her memories of them and how happy everyone was in the beginning."

Miss Kaur's fingers paused. She looked at me like I hit her memory or as if she got a deja vu.

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