SERAPHINA'S POV
I look around me again, at the colorful, bright streets, the laughter, the children, and the hardworking individuals casually passing by, and then I look back at her in disbelief.
"What? Is it so unbelievable?" she asks with a playful smile and a raised brow, mocking my lowered jaw.
"This is Astria?"
"Yes. This is what Astria used to look like. We are in a memory," she explains further.
It makes sense...
Actually, it doesn't, but I attribute the logic of me being here to nothing else but magic. Still, it's unbelievable, and I don't even ask whose memory we're in.
The peace, the tranquility, the normalcy... none of it looks or seems like what I imagined Astria would look like.
She chuckles beside me, having stood by, watching my expression for more than a second, forcing me to look at her again.
"Why are you laughing?"
"I'm sorry... you seem too surprised that this is the life they lived. I imagine it's different from the history books you've read about. You learned that we were witches and thought our streets would be littered with blood and chaos, yet it seems too normal for you to handle."
"N-no, it's not... That's not what I was... I'm sorry," I respond, hanging my head low in shame.
I immediately feel guilty for my reaction, judging these people just as harshly without ever really knowing what it was like, what they were like.
Regardless of the stories, the truth has always been that they were also people, with lives that deserved to be lived.
"Do not apologize. It's expected when learning about their history from the enemies."
"The enemies?" I raise a brow.
"The wolves - the children of Cyrus," she frowns.
There's a sudden and swift feeling of animosity oozing off her aura. It's fast and immediate, but I feel it like a chilly air around her that disappears as quickly as it came.
"We were a normal settlement of people, like the wolves and other supernatural beings, also like the humans. We had our own land and space and lived in peace, but there was always conflict with the wolves," she explains carefully, so I listen to every word of her tale quietly.
A history lesson that I can't ever get from anywhere else.
"At first, it was small conflicts, about sharing water supplies, then about land and settlements. It grew over the years to wars and endless conflict, and it was always just that between us."
I watch the effect of time lapse manifest itself in the world around me, the effects of war changing the shape of the village from peaceful to harsher conditions.
Still, there manage to be smiles around, even with the subtle air of fear amongst them.
I feel my heart break, the part of it that maybe feels a sense of belonging to these people, until I remind myself that it's all already happened.
There's no point growing attached to this memory.
"It went on for years, the hatred grew, its flames burned both sides in ways that could never be healed, but there was always a balance. We could never fully defeat them, and they could never fully defeat us either, and so we became natural enemies. And Astria's instinct became to vanquish wolves that stood in the way of our existence... and wolves only felt a strong desire to end us if we ever came into their way."
"Why did it become that way?"
"Why do lions need to hunt to survive? It is nature, Seraphina. An Astria cannot live among wolves without unlocking that innate desire to vanquish them. It can be seen as a curse without an origin, a darkness born into our hearts that can only devour," she explains, looking into my eyes with a seriousness that replaces the earlier lightness.
I want to argue, to deny her ideologies about the two tribes.
She can't possibly claim that just because they fought over things in the past, something like that could not be written in DNA.
I want to believe that generational hate and anger could never affect Artemis and me, not ever. But before I can voice my thoughts, the terrain shifts.
The once happy village is now up in flames.
The smell of blood and searing flesh fills my nose, the sounds of cries for help and mercy echo around us.
The sight of their devastation is overwhelming, leaving me speechless as I watch the fire consume everything.
"This is what happens when one ever thinks that the two could ever possibly mix, Sera," she says, her voice tinged with pain and sadness.
Tears fill my eyes, emotions that aren't mine swelling in my chest. The laughter and joy have vanished; I can tell that everyone is dead, everything is gone.
"Where are they?" I look at her, desperate for answers, feeling too much to contain. "They can't all be dead!" I plead.
She remains silent, her eyes reflecting acceptance. I can't accept this, even if it's already history, even if it's all already happened.
"Help me!" A weak, frail voice of a small child cries out from somewhere.
My eyes search frantically through the rubble, leaving her behind. I follow the tiny voice until I see a small girl caught under a pile of burning wood, her hands outstretched towards me.
I rush to her, falling to my knees, trying to lift the wood, but my hands pass through it like smoke. I can't touch her or anything else.
Panic sets in, my heart breaks further, more tears pour from my eyes as the emotions inside me become unbearable.
"Why can't I help her!" I yell, and the lady is suddenly beside me again, her composure steady despite the suffering child.
"This is a memory, Sera. You can't save anyone here, not even her," she explains, her voice strained with evident pain.
The little girl struggles, coughing, her eyes reflecting acceptance as her hand drops and the light in her eyes fades slowly.
She dies right before me.
I watched the life leave her and could do nothing. The pain ripples through me like a torrent, breaking my physical form.
"Why are you doing this!" I scream, needing an outlet for all the pain, anger, and hate inside me.
"Because you need to know."
I cry, wailing, mourning the death of this little girl who could have grown up, lived a full life, fallen in love, and died having lived every bit of her life to the fullest.
I sense that her life would have been beautiful, but it ended before she got the chance. I wail until all my energy is drained, and only tears fall.
"Why did this happen?"
She hesitates before speaking, her response not as immediate as usual.
"An Astria dared to mix with the wolves. She dared to push the restraints of destiny... of her nature and theirs."
The realization hits me - they were enemies, and perhaps if they had remained so, this tragedy might have been averted.
The world around us slowly fades into darkness, and I'm no longer kneeling before a corpse, but floating in an abyss.
"Sera..." She whispers from behind me.
I don't respond. I can't.
Everything hurts - my heart, my head, everything. I don't want to accept it. I watched her die but don't want to accept that we can't mix at all.
Maybe they did it wrong, and Artemis and I can be different.
"Sera, you must face your destiny."
I face her now, meeting her eyes, understanding the purpose of all this. Wiping my eyes clean, I speak with more conviction than ever.
"Artemis and I are different. This isn't going to happen to us."
"Is that what you think?"
"Yes," I respond fiercely.
Her face turns grim, annoyed by my possible naivety.
Her patience and calmness seem to cease with my refusal to accept what the wolves have done to us and what they continue to do.
"You can't deny the truth any longer. The wheel of your destiny has already begun spinning. You killed a man," she says, calling me out on my dark secret.
I hide my face.
"Th-that was in self-defense, he tried to kill me!"
"Of course he did. Wolves are creatures that cannot fathom anything else besides their own order. They call it a loyalty to their nature, pack mentality, they say, but only those who have dealt the burn of this 'nature' understand that it's only a disease. Why do you think you were targeted for so long while your personality and theirs clashed? An Astria does not bend to the tides, and they are the opposite."
"Artemis is different!"
She laughs at me, her laughter echoing all around the emptiness.
"He has already informed you of what will be, the prophecy, your destiny to put an end to our enemies. You will be the end of him," she announces.
I freeze in place, looking at her with wide eyes.
"Your dreams are not just dreams; they are every possible outcome that has a possibility of happening. Your powers are showing you the future."
Right in front of me and around us, images are splayed out like screens, each one playing different scenes where Artemis dies, all by my hands.
Each vision is a dream I've had, and a few are ones I haven't seen yet.
In all of them, I either strangle Artemis with my bare hands until the life seeps out of his body, or I rip his heart out. Each scenario is vulgar and gruesome, and I can't look away.
"Stop it," I beg, feeling my mind crack and break. "Stop it!!"
"You cannot fight your destiny; you cannot fight what you are," she insists.
"No!! I won't do it, I won't kill him," I declare with desperation.
"You have no choice," she ends the conversation with those words, and then everything goes quiet.
I stop floating in the abyss and suddenly drop, falling from a height I can't see, screaming until my consciousness snaps back into my body.