"Ready?" I asked Sakura, my hands on the double oaken doors of Sunset's Edge.
She nodded as the battle blazed behind us.
I pushed the doors open and unlike at the spatial bubble Seraphiniel lured us in, the hall was exactly as I thought it would be — full of dust, cobwebs, furniture, skeletons of dead bodies, and Seraphiniel sat upon the High Chair of the Lord of the Edge.
She kept the appearance of Neera, yet while I still felt rage and disgust for her use of her body, it was because of her desecration of her memory, not because of the pain of failing to protect her — and the rest of my family. That dishonor was cleansed the moment I slew the Wraith that killed them and buried their heads with the honor they deserve.
"Hi big-brother." She sing-songed with Neera's voice. "I see you brought your date." She gestured towards Sakura. "Does she really have to glow like that?" She continued, gesturing the Temporal etchings on Sakura's skin, her sandy gold wings and the Temporal Vow on her chest pulsing with power. "I just wanted to talk."
"Then talk, Seraphiniel." She said with a voice so calm it surprised me.
"Temper, temper. You're being like Yunjin here. All flame and no thought."
"You can use nothing against me now, Seraphiniel." I said. "You hold no power over me anymore, so tell me what you know, why was I 'Chosen'?"
Then she laughed, not the innocent laughter of my sister. But the sinister chuckle of a Counter. "Chosen? Oh you were not exactly Chosen, Seren. You were just born at the right time at the right bloodline. A divine screw up!"
"What do you mean by that?"
She stopped laughing and sighed. "I see that this form has no effect on you anymore. Well, no use in insisting on using it then." Black sand then swirled around her and her form changed. A black hooded figure with no face underneath its hood appeared, and as its wings formed out of black sand, eye patterns formed in it in the same way how golden temporal patterns formed on Sakura's wings. Yet these eyes were real eyes, the eyeballs twitched and moved and a few of them focused on us.
"That's disgusting." I muttered. "I can see why you take the form of other people."
"Do not mock me, Solari. Not when your bloodline is a blasphemy to the divine order." Seraphiniel spoke and the voice was layered, like she's speaking in the past, present, and future – the past whispers, the present speaks, and the future screams.
"What are you talking about?"
"It's time you learn of the progenitor of your house —" a pause. The air in the room held as the castle, no the world seemed to stop breathing as a secret as old as time is about to be revealed. "— Helios Solari: the man who married the First Angel who Ascended."
"Helios Solari." Sakura whispered behind me. "He married a highborn noblewoman ten thousand generations ago if I'm not mistaken. So what are you talking about, Seraphiniel?"
"Oh Exactly what I meant. Tell me, dear Sakura — do you even remember which house Helios married into?"
"I..." Sakura stammered as if drawing a blank. "No, I don't."
"Exactly," Seraphiniel's voice beamed with twisted pride. "And do you remember what Valamar did to the One who Ascended First?"
"He erased her name from the cosmos with a Command."
"Exactly!"
"Wait, hold up!" I said, my primitive mortal brain trying to catch up with the revelations. "So you're saying my great-grandmother from ten thousand generations passed was an angel?"
"The Angel, Seren." Seraphiniel said. "The First Angel who Ascended, the First Angel who Rebelled, and the First Angel who Fell —" she paused again, and the whole cosmos held its breath. "— the Angel of love, trust, and sacrifice: Garam Solari."
Time stopped, as if stunned. Which what Sakura exactly was, and even worse, me.
"How do you know this?" Sakura growled. "If Valamar erased everything about her, how do you know this?"