The vision deepened.

It wasn’t our world anymore.

This was before. Before heirs, before betrayal, before the wars that fractured the continent.

This was the seed.

Seems like she sent me to the past… Why? What does she want me to see? fn132a This text is hosted at find·novel/fn132a

The air shimmered, heavy with the tang of magic not yet tainted by blood.

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I found myself standing in a stone courtyard, open to the stars. Torches burned low in iron sconces. The walls were draped in vines so thick they seemed alive, whispering in anguage I almost understood.

And there he was.

Totti Lycaon.

Not the grieving father I had heard about in old stories. Not the ruler weathered by responsibility. He was younger–radiant, dangerous, the kind of man whose smile cut deeper than his de. His presence was power made flesh, and yet… there was calction in his eyes, like a predator pretending to nap while it measured the pulse of its prey.

Opposite him stood Severine.

Not the gray woman I had met. Not yet the bitter witch who haunted my halls. She was younger–almost fragile, her hair the color of spun straw, her eyes bright and unscarred by cruelty. She held herself like someone who had been told all her life she was destined for greatness but had never been shown how to wield olliit. /li/ol

She was still innocent enough to believe.

“Do you know what you are, Severine?” Totti asked, his voice velvet over iron.

Her lips parted, hesitant before a nodded. “A witch.”

“A white witch,” he corrected, stepping closer. “The rarest of all. You carry the kind of power that makes the heavens themselves take notice. You could weave spells no coven dares whisper.”

Her breath hitched. She didn’t deny it–because she wanted to believe it.

And Totti knew.

He circled her slowly, like a hawk studying a dove. “Do you think the gods gave you this power to heal scratches? To light hearths? To stir soup pots? No. You were meant to change the world. But power… power needs a hand to guide it.”

16:47 Sat, bOct /b4

Her chin lifted. “And you would guide me?”

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Totti smiled, all teeth and promise. “I would teach you how to use what you already have. I would stand at your side as the world bows.”

I wanted to scream.

To warn her.

But the vision held me prisoner.

Severine nodded, her youth and hunger blinding her to the trap. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

Her smile then was radiant, unguarded, hopeful.

And Totti’s smile-

Gods.

It was the smile of a man who had just taken the first step toward damning an entire bloodline.

The courtyard flickered, the stars overhead trembling.

Mika whimpered inside me, fur bristling. ‘We should not be here. This is where it begins.

I knew.

This was not love. This was not a partnership. This was the moment a young witch was tricked into writing her own chains.

The origin of every curse.

And I was watching it unfold.

Looks like Severine wants me to see why I shouldn’t trust Lycan.

*****

The courtyard blurred again, and when the shapes returned, time had shifted.

I stood in a long hall lined with candles that bent toward a single figure: Severine. She was younger still, her face open and trembling with hope. She wore white linen, simple, unadorned, like the apprentices of the old witch circles. Her hands were inked faintly with half–learned sigils, the marks of a girl still in training.

And yet she looked like every inch of her wanted to be chosen.

Totti Lycaon stood before her. Not the weary patriarch the world remembered in whispers, not the shadow whose sons wouldter tear the continent apart. No–this Totti was at the height of his prime, broad- shouldered, dangerous, beautiful in the way predators are beautiful. His eyes gleamed not only with power but with the certainty that he deserved more.

16:47 Sat, bOct /bb4 /b

But what startled me wasn’t his strength.

It was his tenderness.

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He touched Severine like she was ss. Like she mattered. He brushed a strand of straw–colored hair from her cheek and murmured words that carried the rhythm of vows.

“My Severine,” he whispered. “Do you know what you are to me?”

Her breath caught. “A… a witch.”

He shook his head slowly, his mouth curving in that kind of smile that drowns reason. “Not a witch. The woman who will make the world kneel beside me. The woman I love.”

Her knees almost buckled. I saw it–the way she swayed, as if a lifetime of being overlooked had just been rewritten in one word. Love.

I wanted to shout. To tear through the vision and seize her shoulders. ‘Don’t believe him. Don’t give him your heart.’

But Severine’s heart was already his.

And Totti knew it.

He leaned closer, his voice low and urgent. “There is something only you can do, Severine. Something no one else has the courage or the gift to attempt. If you do this, no council, no pack, no king could deny us. We will be eternal.”

Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “What do you want me to do?”

He paused–long enough to make her desperate for the answer.

Then he drew from his cloak a parchment scrawled with symbols I didn’t recognize. Forbidden script. ck and raw.

“You’ve heard of the heart of a mermaid,” he said. Not a question. A temptation.

Severine’s lips parted, shock flickering across her face. “It’s a legend.”

His smile cut deeper. “No, my love. It’s real. And it’s here. Hidden in the vault of your own coven’s headmistress. Sealed by wards only a white witch could pass without burning.”

Her hands trembled. “That is forbidden. It would mean betraying my-”

He caught her hands in his, kissed her knuckles as if to erase the thought. “It would mean freeing us. Don’t you see? With that heart, with your power and mine together, nothing will chain us. No one will treat you like a servant ever again. You will be my queen. You will be remembered forever.”

Her face crumpled. Hope warred with fear. “You love me?” she whispered, raw, searching.

And Totti Lycaon–curse his name–nodded with all the conviction of a man telling the sweetest lie. “More

16:47 bSat/b, Oct 4.

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than life. More than power itself. I love you, Severine. That is why I ask you. Because only you can help us be what we were meant to be.”

I felt the bond between them tighten–not a true bond, not fate, but a tether of lies and desperate need.

Severine’s tears spilled, and still she nodded. “Yes. I’ll do it. For you. For us.”

And in that moment, her doom was sealed.

The vision twisted again, showing her creeping barefoot through vaulted corridors of stone, wards dimming as her white magic parted them. Her hands clutched a crystal vessel that pulsed faintly with blue light, like the ocean itself had been caged. The heart of a mermaid.

Her eyes shone with triumph as she whispered, “I stole it from my master’s vault. For you.”

Totti kissed her like a victor, like a thief, like a man who had just bound an innocent girl to a chain she would never see until it was toote.

And Eine–me–watched with my stomach sick, because I finally understood:

Severine hadn’t been born bitter.

She had been made.

By a Lycaon’s smile.

By a lie called love.

bAD /b

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