The ash still drifted in the air, like burnt snow, as the doors creaked open.
King Roland stepped in and stopped so suddenly that his boots scraped against the marble.
His eyes swept the room.
The shattered glass.
The burn marks licking up the pillars.
The throne still glowed red-hot beneath its ancient symbols.
And beside it was a pile of soft, grey ash.
Rose stood before it like a statue carved from fire and grief.
Her hair still glowed faintly, ember-red at the tips, her breathing ragged and feral. Everyone else: Coral shaking, Belle smirking; even Cherry was trembling. Hildegard was pale.
The guards, lying half-conscious, looked like they had survived the end of the world.
Roland’s throat bobbed once, hard.
"Wh... what just..."
His voice cracked.
"What happened?"
No one answered.
It was as if even the air feared Rose.
She slowly turned. Her eyes were still tinted with flames, glowing like two dying suns.
She stared at him, silent, shaking, her entire body trembling with suppressed rage and devastation.
And then, the fire began to fade, and she slowly moved towards him.
She looked as though she were coming to attack him, and he skipped a heartbeat.
But instead of receiving a blow, she fell into his arms.
Even though he could feel the heat of the fire that had now extinguished from her body, he held her close.
Despite it hurting.
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "We locked up our granddaughter."
And she began to weep on his shoulders.
He was confused as he looked around.
"What?" He asked as he gently held her hands to look into her eyes. "You’re mistaken. All our granddaughters are here and-
The eyes he saw haunted him.
"Auburn was an imposter." She said with venom.
He blinked in disbelief.
"What?" He asked again.
Rose regained her composure as she sniffed her nose.
"All this time. She was never our granddaughter. She was an imposter." She told him.
He blinked at her, lost for words. "Wh..... what are you saying?"
He scoffed at the eyes of everyone present.
Their silence told him something that terrified him.
"Auburn shifted. We saw it. We felt it." He said and turned to the guards he had come with, "Where is she? Let her come to our presence. Guards get Auburn."
No one said a word.
The eerie silence terrified him, and he looked up at the throne where
Roland swallowed again, staring at the ash.
"Is that... Auburn?"
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Rose inhaled sharply, her chest rising and falling as though keeping her wolf caged by sheer force of will.
She didn’t need to speak; he knew instantly.
He was shocked as he pushed her off.
He looked at her, his eyes trying to understand what she had just done.
Had she lost her mind again, that she had killed our own granddaughter?


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