"Alden… Caera… my children… "Are you here?"
As soon as she heard the words, Caera froze.
The voice.
It pierced through centuries of solitude.
She knew that voice.
She didn't understand how, but something in her chest broke — because it confirmed her doubt.
The boy beside her wasn't just some remnant or coincidence.
He was him.
He was her brother.
He had been barely a few months old when she last saw him — pudgy fingers, round eyes and always laughing when she traced glowing shapes in the air.
He loved the lights. Always trying to reach for it.
"Caera, you'll overstimulate him with too much mana exposure," her mother used to scold her always whenever she did that, with a soft mix of worry and affection lingering in her tone.
But now?
Now she looked at the woman in front of her — green-haired, frail and sitting before the mirror like a ghost.
Her mother.
After all these centuries.
She looked… drained.
