Her words made no sense, scrambled in the chaos that the experience had left my mind. It was tangled in the words that still echoed in my head, Landon’s words, my mother’s voice.
In that moment, comprehension was the last thing I could manage. It didn’t help that her presence made my stomach churn with unease.
My legs moved before my mind, retreating slowly while still keeping my eyes on her.
I could tell she was blind, yet why did it feel like she was not just seeing me, she was seeing through me. Though her expression was inscrutable, I could feel her assessing gaze as though she was unraveling me with something more than eyes.
Bile raced up my throat, as I took another step back. The stars above gleaming and casting her with an eerie light.
I swallowed as I created more distance, my legs still unsteady.
My heart lurched as I hit a dead end, a wall with a heartbeat that thumped against me. My stomach plummeted when heavy hands clasped my shoulder.
I flinched, stiffening.
>"Breathe, Lili," Kaia’s voice threaded through the panic engulfing my mind.
Then it hit me, the scent; steel and snow.
My knees buckled with relief, but before I could fully collapse, Vladimir’s steady presence pulled me back. His hands remained firm on my shoulders, as if he understood that I needed something solid to keep me from dissolving entirely into the panic that still clawed at the edges of my consciousness.
"You’re safe," he murmured, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "Whatever you saw, whatever happened—it’s over now."
I turned slowly in his hold, my back now pressed against his chest as I faced the blind woman who still stood motionless beneath the starlight. The distance I’d created between us seemed pathetic now—a few measly steps that had felt like a desperate escape but had really been nothing more than a frightened animal backing into a corner.
"What the hell was that? Who is she?" I whispered, my voice hoarse and barely audible.
Vladimir’s grip tightened slightly. "Someone who sees more than she should," he said cryptically, his tone carrying an edge I’d heard before. "But she won’t hurt you."
The woman tilted her head as if she could hear our whispered conversation, that inscrutable expression never changing. When she spoke again, her words were clearer this time, cutting through the residual chaos in my mind with unsettling ease.
"The child carries old wounds," she said, addressing Vladimir directly. "Wounds that bleed into the present. She will need to face them, or they will consume her."
My stomach churned again at her words, at how accurately they seemed to describe what I’d just experienced. "What did you do to me?" I tried to sound menacing but my words came out weak and broken. "What did I see..."
"It was a test," Vladimir replied.
"The Sanctum breathes with the echoes of souls that enter and seek truth. The stars above are not stars, they are eyes that pierce the body and unravel the soul. They reveal what you hide in the deepest parts of your heart. These visions are not illusions, child. They are memories your mind has forced back to protect you."
I blinked, the first emotion that took me was hurt. "You didn’t tell me," I muttered.
Vladimir’s grip slackened slightly as if the words caught him off guard.
"You let me walk into this place and..." My voice faded, I had no strength to express hurt.
"Lilith," Vladimir started. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ ⓝovelFire.net
"Never mind." I straightened, subtly shaking his hand off my shoulder. He backed off, standing beside me now instead of behind me.
The woman smiled strangely, knowingly, like she knew something we didn’t know.
"The Moon Goddess must see you worthy of Ascension," she continued, her voice carrying the weight of ancient ritual. "For the power that comes with it must not end up in the hands of the unworthy. It could become the end of the world as we know it."
The words hit me like a physical blow. The end of the world. The responsibility felt crushing, impossible.
The weight of Vladimir’s stare on my back did not make it any better.
He might has well be holding a gun to my head...
"With each phase of the moon on your wrist comes a trial," she said, and I instinctively looked down at the crescent mark that had appeared there weeks ago, still tender to the touch.
Understanding dawned like cold water. "My first trial is guilt," I said quietly.
"Yes." Her blind eyes seemed to bore into me. "It is this emotion, at this current moment, that makes you weak."
The words stung because they were true. The guilt I carried—taking care of the family who would have peed on my grave, the guilt of surviving when I shouldn’t, the guilt of wanting more than I deserved to have. I felt hit by the accuracy of her assessment, but I stayed quiet and nodded.
"How will I be tested?" I asked.
"The trial will come to you, like every other thing in your life," she said simply. "You have your first tool."
"Kaia," I muttered, and felt her presence stir somewhere in the back of my mind.
The woman tilted her head. "How is she? It tells me if you were given a dagger or a scythe."
I didn’t think too much about it. "She’s obnoxious."
But i continued, "Ignores me at times." I hesitated. "But she comes through when I’m in trouble. I wouldn’t be alive if not for her."
My neck began to itch again.
"Like an elder sister?"
"Yes," I said without thinking too much.
The blind woman nodded, content. "The Moon Goddess supplements what we never had using the wolf—someone we always wanted. Some are charming, motherly, serious, paternal, playful."
My chest tightened, confused. "I had an elder sister." I told her.
But the woman’s next question cut deeper than any blade. "But was she ever an elder sister?"
The childhood of horrors flashed in my mind, my sister’s hollow eyes, her silence when I screamed, the cruel smile at cut my doll’s head, framed me for things I didn’t do and then... Caesar.
Charlotte was never an elder sister to me. Kaia, though she now shared my head, had been more of one than Charlotte had been for my whole life. All within three says. So I shook my head. "No, she was not,"
Just sitting and reading me like a book.
"The Moon Goddess has given you a sister, now unto a mate..."
Horror hit me like a freight train. "I don’t want one." I read enough books to know what it meant.
The woman simply smiled, a knowing grin splitting her face. A chill ran down my spine. "Your heat will have other things to say, child."