Claire

The wind returned in her dreams. Not a whisper, but a song through soft grass beneath her feet. The scent of jasmine bloomed, sweet and sharp, guiding her. A voice, low and gentle, flowed like warm honey, guiding her through a breath cycle she’d never been taught but somehow remembered with perfect clarity.

“Let the pulse settle. Let the mana find its root. You’re not fighting it. You’re dancing with it.”

A smile touched her lips in the dream. Her skin glowed, meridians open and light, and a boundless strength suffused her. She was powerful here, stronger than she'd ever been in her waking life.

The man stood beside her, his form shadowed by the sun. He was tall and calm, his hand brushing hers as they knelt in a vibrant clearing. Together, they refined a technique, not learned from scrolls or inherited from ancestors, but created from shared understanding.

She turned to him, desperate to see his face, to etch his features into her waking mind. But his image shimmered, blurred, then vanished. She blinked, and he was gone.

Now, only the echo of an argument remained. Her voice, sharp with anger, tore through the dreamscape. His eyes, dimmed with a hurt that felt like a physical blow, held her gaze but offered no reply.

She struck him and watched him stumble back. Watched herself turn away, burning the bridge behind her.

Why?

The question screamed in her silent mind, but no answer came. The pain in his dream-eyes followed her, twisting into visions of fire and ruin. Buildings collapsed like brittle paper. The wind shrieked with the agony of a dying world.

The sky was dark, slick with ash. Bodies lay broken across shattered stone plazas and desecrated ceremonial halls. Sacred runes bled chaotic light as beasts, unlike anything she knew, roared from the rift between stars and soil.

She ran. Barefoot and bloody, clutching a random child that wasn’t there. Not anymore. Power surged through her, raw and untamed. Flames curled from her fingertips. Her aura cracked the earth beneath her steps. And it meant nothing. The sky wept blood. The heavens burned. Her power seared through the demon horde, but it never stopped. There was always more. And more. And more.

She stumbled.

Fell.

And when she looked down at her own hands, they weren’t hers anymore. Silver-threaded veins pulsed beneath skin, nails like obsidian claws, flesh rippling with sigils she didn’t recognize.

Her reflection shimmered in a cracked spirit-glass pane.

She was no hero.

She was no scholar.

She...she was something else.

A monster.

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Then came the black tower—rising behind her like a spear in the sky, singing with an unnatural, crushing pressure. The stone wept ink. The air screamed around it.

And a voice—

A voice she couldn’t quite remember but knew she would never forget: “You traded everything for power. And now you carry it alone.”

Claire bolted upright in her bed, breath ragged, a scream caught in her throat.

The sheets clung to her sweat-slicked skin. Her nightrobe was twisted tight around her waist. Her hair stuck to her neck in damp ropes.

Another dream. Worse than the last. More real. Her stomach twisted, a knot of cold dread. She swung her legs off the mattress and pressed her feet to the cold floor, grounding herself, reaching for breathwork, anything to dispel the lingering terror.

Nothing worked. Her cultivation was frayed. Meditation wouldn’t hold. Her meridians had been rejecting focus for days now—like her own body was pushing her away.

She touched her lower abdomen and flinched.

This wasn’t just mana imbalance. Wasn’t just nerves. Something was profoundly wrong.

She hadn't told Caleb.

She didn't want to see his face. Not now. Not when all she could see in her dreams was a man who wasn't him. A man she had loved—and betrayed.

But that was insane. She was married to Caleb. Proud son of Zhou, a warrior and heir.

And yet…Why did every time he touched her now feel like theft?

Why did she wake up crying for someone who didn’t exist? By mid-morning, she could barely stand.

A physician was summoned—a quiet man with sea-gray eyes and a spirit-threaded reading rod. He took her blood in silence, placing a single drop into the jade-lined analyzer rune and whispering a incantation.

She didn’t care what he found.

Maybe it would explain the nausea. The dreams. The tightness in her chest every time she looked in a mirror.

The healer returned to after noon as the sun warmed the area. She was in the garden pavilion, watching fish move through shadowed water. There were several servants attending her.

“Lady Claire,” he said softly, his eyes darting once toward the servants before lowering. “May we speak alone?”

She waved the others away.

He hesitated. Then: “Your meridian shifts are not due to illness. Nor deviation. They are… transitional.”

Claire frowned.

He swallowed. “You're with child.”

Silence followed the declaration. Birdsong filled the gap. A single leaf drifted into the pond.

Claire didn’t move.Not for several seconds. Then her lips parted.

“No.”

“It’s confirmed,” the physician said. “The markers are elevated. Your system is adjusting already. That’s likely the cause of your physical sensitivity. I can prepare an elixir to stabilize your flow if—”

“Leave.”

He stopped. She looked at him now, her gaze unwavering. “Leave. Right now. Tell no one.”

He bowed and fled.

Claire stood while her hands shook, a tremor running through her.

She walked to the edge of the pavilion and looked out at the gardens. The lantern tree. The koi pond. Everything serene. Controlled.

It felt like a lie.

She was pregnant.

And she already knew who the father was.

There was no mystery. No scandal. No second guesses.

It was Caleb.

The man who had wooed her with confidence and fire. The man who always seemed proudest when she stayed just a step behind him.

The man she now avoided. Not because she feared him. But because she feared herself.

Because every time she looked at him now, she felt wrong.

Like her body remembered something her mind didn’t.

Like this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

I had something else. Someone else. I loved him. And I destroyed it.

She gripped the pavilion rail until her knuckles turned white, the polished stone cold beneath her fingers.

A thousand memories that weren’t hers crowded the edges of her thoughts—half-formed and painfully sharp. A man’s hand in hers. His breath at her shoulder. Her own laughter, softer, warmer than anything Caleb had ever drawn from her.

And then—her own voice, screaming at him. Turning away. Burning it all down.

Why?

Why had she done it?

And why, now, did she feel like the universe was punishing her for a crime she couldn't remember committing?

Her stomach churned again, a wave of nausea. She didn’t cry.

Claire Wang did not cry.

She stood in the silence and held her breath, trying to decide if this was a beginning or an ending.

It felt like both.