Page 78 of Beneath Scales and Shadows
“I’m sorry you were dragged into this.” Guilt clawed at Sora’s throat. “It was never my intention for any of you to suffer.”
“The royal guards kept talking about prophecies,” Lyra interjected, leaning forward with scholarly intensity. “About the twice-born. About how Princess Jewels tried to eliminate you before the transformation could complete.”
A heavy silence fell across the room. Morgana, who had remained standing near one of the bedroom doorways, took a halting step forward.
“Is it true?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “What the guards were saying? That you’re my sister but... not?”
Sora met her gaze, seeing genuine confusion beneath the lingering jealousy. She glanced at Ignis, who nodded encouragement, his crimson eyes steady on hers.
“Perhaps you should all sit,” she suggested. “This isn’t a simple explanation.”
They arranged themselves around the room—Garth and Miranda on either side of Sora, Lyra perched eagerly on a cushion opposite, Morgana reluctantly taking a seat at the table’s edge. Ignis remained standing, too large and powerful for the delicate human furniture. Instead, he positioned himself behind Sora, wings folding neatly as his shadow stretched across the floor. The steady heat of him at her back, the low sound of his breath—somehow, it settled her nerves more than any words could.
“What I’m about to tell you will sound impossible,” Sora began, her fingers twisting together in her lap. “But I swear by the Moon Goddess that every word is true.”
She drew a deep breath, gathering courage—needing to pull the Band-Aid off in one swift yank.
“I am not the daughter you raised.” The words fell like stones into still water. “At least, not entirely. I died on Earth—the blue-green marble you see hanging in your night sky. When your true daughter drowned in the frozen lake, my soul was somehow transported here—into her body—at the exact moment of our deaths.”
“Earth?” Garth’s brow furrowed. “The Blue Knight?”
“Where I’m from, Artania doesn’t exist—or at least isn’t visible. And your Blue Knight is Earth, my world.” Sora gestured vaguely upward. “A planet of cities and sadly, destruction, where monsters exist only in stories and legends.”
Miranda’s hand rose to her mouth, eyes widening with shock. “Our daughter is... gone?”
The pain in her voice lanced through Sora’s heart. “Her body remains, but her soul has passed. Somehow, the Moon Goddess chose me to take her place, to fulfill some purpose here on Artania.”
Tears welled in Miranda’s eyes, spilling down her weathered cheeks as years of motherhood shattered in an instant. Garth reached across Sora, fingers wrapping around his wife’s hand, eyes glinting with a glistening shine.
“That explains why you were so different,” he said quietly with a frown. “After they found you by the lake. I thought it was just memory loss from the cold, but you were...”
“A stranger wearing your daughter’s face,” Sora finished, voice thick with regret. “I’m sorry. I never meant to deceive you.”
“The prophecy speaks of the twice-born,” Lyra murmured, eyes alight with academic excitement despite the emotional tension. “Souls from the Blue Moon, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself, who would restore balance to our realm.”
Morgana rose abruptly, pacing the small space with agitated steps. “So all this time, I’ve been competing with—what? A ghost? Some otherworldly spirit occupying my sister’s corpse?”
“No,” Sora said firmly, shaking her head. “I’m not a ghost or a spirit. I’m a person—a woman who died on Earth and woke here. This body may have once belonged to your sister, but it’s mine now.”
“And the scales?” Miranda asked, fingers trembling as she reached to touch the silver patterns decorating Sora’s skin. “These weren’t there before.”
“Dragon blood,” Ignis supplied, his deep voice rumbling through the chamber. “Dormant in your family line for generations, awakened by her soul crossing between worlds.”
“Dragon blood?” Garth’s head snapped up. “In our family?”
Sora nodded. “Somewhere in your ancestry, a dragon and human must have mated. The bloodline thinned over centuries, but it remained—waiting for the right circumstances to manifest again.”
A strange expression crossed Garth’s face—not disgust as she’d feared, but something almost like pride. “My grandfather used to tell stories of a great-great-grandmother who disappeared into the mountains for a season and returned... changed. The family considered it madness, but he insisted it was truth.”
“And now you’re what—becoming a dragon?” Morgana demanded, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“I’m becoming what I was always meant to be,” Sora corrected gently. “Not quite dragon, not quite human. Something in between.”
She exhaled slowly, steadying herself as her gaze lifted, locking with theirs—as she hoped they would understand. “I do have fragments of your sister’s memories. They come to me sometimes—guiding me, showing me how to navigate this world. But they’re becoming less frequent now as the transformation progresses.”
Miranda’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. Garth pulled her close, his own grief evident in the tight lines around his mouth. Sora wanted to comfort them but didn’t know how—what right did she have to ease pain she herself had caused simply by existing?
“I never asked for this,” she whispered, hoping for them to understand. “Any more than your daughter asked to die. But I’m trying to honor her sacrifice by doing what I can to help this world—to fulfill whatever purpose the Moon Goddess had in bringing me here.”
