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The visions did not stop.
Maribelle clutched her chest, gasping as images flickered through her mind like firelight—flashes of a kingdom overgrown with golden vines, a castle carved from the heart of a great tree, and a throne made of brambles and ruby-red fruit.
And at its center—herself.
Not as the girl she was now, but someone else.
Someone regal, draped in silken gowns the color of summer berries. Someone powerful. Someone with a crown woven from vines and thorns, its weight pressing into her skull as a hundred voices whispered her name.
"Queen Maribelle."
Her breath came in short, uneven gasps.
The weight of the name settled into her bones, as though it had never truly left her.
This isn’t real, she told herself. This isn’t—
But when she looked down, she saw it.
The strange, ember-colored strawberry still hung from its crimson vine, glowing faintly in the evening light. And beside it, something new had begun to emerge from the soil.
A crown.
Vines twisted and coiled together, sprouting from the earth like they had been waiting for centuries to rise again. Sharp thorns lined its edges, gleaming like polished gold.
Maribelle stared, her pulse pounding.
This was not just a memory.
This was a remnant.
A piece of what she had once been.
The realization terrified her.
She stumbled to her feet, backing away from the pulsing glow of the vines. Her head ached with the weight of knowledge she did not yet understand.
She had lived another life before this one.
A life that had not ended naturally.
A life that had been stolen.
Maribelle ran.
She did not know where she was going—only that she needed to be away from the thing growing in her garden. The village streets blurred past her as she moved, her feet carrying her not toward her cottage, but toward the one place that might hold answers.
Mistress Elira’s door was already open when she arrived, as if the old woman had been expecting her.
“I remember,” Maribelle whispered, breathless. “I… I remember something.”
Mistress Elira nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. “Then the seed has done its work.”
Maribelle grasped the edge of the doorway, her nails digging into the wood. “You knew. You knew who I was before—what I was.”
The old woman sighed. “I suspected.”
Maribelle’s vision swam with the weight of it all.
The kingdom. The crown. The power that had once been hers.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“What happened to me?”
Mistress Elira studied her, her gray eyes heavy with something Maribelle could not name.
“You were betrayed.”
The word cut through the air like a blade.
Maribelle’s breath hitched. “By who?”
Mistress Elira hesitated.
And in that hesitation, Maribelle knew.
She saw the answer in the woman’s eyes before she even said it.
“The man in the fog,” Maribelle murmured.
Mistress Elira nodded solemnly.
Maribelle’s pulse pounded in her ears.
He had been there when the memories stirred. He had spoken as though he knew her.
"Not in this life."
Not in this life—but perhaps in the last.
She swallowed hard. “Who is he?”
Mistress Elira’s gaze darkened.
“Someone who once swore to protect you.” A pause. “And the one who led you to your downfall.”
Maribelle shivered.
Her past was not just something lost.
It was something stolen.
And now, after all this time, it was returning.
She could feel it.
The land had remembered.
And so had he.
ns 15.158.61.16da2
