"Some visions are not meant to be seen. But she saw it anyway."
---
In the oldest city still standing — beneath the salt-stone cliffs of Seravai — a woman lay dying.
Her eyes were sealed shut by ancient cloth.
Her lips hadn't spoken in 70 years.
And still, when the sand trembled that night, she whispered a name no one had uttered in three generations:
> "Aurelya."
The desert wolves outside her shrine stopped howling.
The priests fell silent.
For the Last Oracle of Seravai had finally spoken.
---
Siyara and Maari had ridden three days to reach her.
The Oracle's breath was thin, her skin translucent like parchment stretched over bone.
Yet when Siyara entered the chamber, the old woman smiled through her silence.
> "She sees you," whispered the priest beside her.
> "She's blind," Siyara said.
> "Her eyes are shut to this world. But wide open in another."
---
They placed Siyara's hands upon the Oracle's heart.
And the moment skin touched skin — a thousand visions burst like firecrackers in Siyara's mind.
---
She saw:
A young version of herself with a golden veil… being crowned in a temple of ash.
A child version of Rhaelor, forced to swear an oath in blood before he could even walk.
A battlefield where they were on opposite sides — again and again and again.
And the moment they first broke the cycle… by falling in love.
And then…
She saw the Oracle.
Standing in the past.
> Watching the day the gods cursed them both — not out of malice, but envy.
> Two mortals who dared to defy the flame by choosing love over fate.
> "They will burn," the gods had declared.
> "And their ashes shall bind them until one forgets… and one remembers."
---
Siyara staggered backward.
> "We were punished for love," she gasped.
Maari caught her. The priest wept quietly in the corner.
The Oracle, still silent, held out her final gift:
A single scroll, sealed with red wax.
> "What is it?" Siyara asked.
> "The last vision she ever had," the priest answered. "One she was forbidden to reveal. Until now."
---
That night, Siyara broke the seal.
It read:
> "One shall awaken. One shall remember. But the cycle will not break…
Until the sword is turned against the gods themselves."
---
End of Chapter 14: The Oracle Who Wept for Them
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