Golden Melody (Editing)

Another future

The room was dim, curtains drawn to soften the light. Miexha lay motionless on the bed. Sarah sat beside her, holding her daughter’s fragile hand between her own.

Even for a being like her—a Zenips queen cursed to feel nothing—her chest ached in a way she couldn’t explain.
She brushed Miexha’s hair from her forehead, whispering in a trembling voice that contradicted her cold eyes.

“I was never meant to love, yet I wanted this… I wanted a child,” Sarah said quietly.
“I thought creating life would fill the void the curse left inside me. I didn’t think of the consequence—of what she’d suffer for my desire.”

Her voice cracked. The air trembled slightly, reacting to her restrained power.

“Maybe this is my punishment,” she continued,
“to long for something I can never keep. A child too weak to survive the curse of her own blood.”

A familiar presence emerged from the shadowed corner. Damian Duke—once King of Zenips, now an exile—stood watching, his eyes faintly glowing with that timeless calm only he possessed.

“Enough,” Damian said, his tone low but commanding.
“You already have what you longed for, Sarah. You have a daughter. Your regret changes nothing now. The only thing left is to protect her.”

Sarah looked up, her composure fracturing.
“Protect her?  From the curse we passed on to her? From the world that will hunt her once they realize who she is?”

Damian’s expression didn’t waver. He moved closer, the air pulsing with invisible power as his tentacles retracted beneath his coat.

“Miexha is not ordinary,” he said quietly.
“She carries the core fragment of our mother—the fragment of creation itself. That makes her more than a hybrid. If she survives the awakening, she will surpass us all.”

Sarah’s breath caught.
“Surpass even… Marie?”

“Yes,” Damian affirmed.
“The core gives her the power to alter the thread of the future itself. And the Sin of Pride grants her dominion over the wind—the breath of fate. If she learns control, she will not just live… she will save what remains of this world.”

His gaze softened—just a flicker.

“You spoke that prophecy once, remember? The one you feared.”

Sarah looked away, her composure fracturing.

“The savior who ends the war and births a new dawn…”

“Only if she lives,” Damian finished.

Without hesitation, he knelt beside the bed and drew a line across his wrist. His blue blood shimmered like liquid sapphire, glowing softly in the dimness.

“Then let me give her that chance.”

He guided the glowing blood to her lips. The light pulsed once—twice—then spread through her veins like silver fire.

“My blood will stabilize her,” Damian murmured.
“She won’t die…. Wherever she drifts through time.”

The silence afterward was sacred. Only the faint hum of energy filled the room.

Sarah looked down at her daughter, then up at the exile king. Her voice softened into something perilously close to faith.

“Hope is for mortals,” she whispered.
“But if she carries even a trace of mine… then I hope she finds her way back.”

Damian rose, shadows following him like a cloak. His expression unreadable, but his words carried a quiet promise—

“She will. Because the future belongs to her now.”