Katrina's office was hardly an office at all. The walls were bare, the shelves empty, and the wide expanse of floor bore more resemblance to a training room than a place of administration. A single table divided the room, a modest spread of snacks neatly arranged on its surface.

Katrina had insisted that Lukas sit, and now he found himself seated across from her in the hollow quiet, the weight of things unsaid pressing heavier with every passing heartbeat. The last time Lukas had seen her, she had still been a girl. Now the woman sat poised, polite, her posture upright and her tone courteous as she offered him food.

Beneath that practiced civility lingered something distant, cold—a barrier Lukas could not find a way to cross.

Her presence radiated strength, sharpened by the years of ritual combat she had subjected herself to. The monthly tradition of releasing the imprisoned, fighting and defeating them—through it Katrina Drakos had grown stronger, harder, and in that hunger for battle Lukas recognized the same spark she had always carried. At least that much had not changed. But the silence between them was suffocating. Lukas searched for words and found none, while Katrina's calm veneer thinned until finally, she broke it.

"Show me," she said, almost like an order. Her voice was measured, but Lukas knew at once what she was referring to.

There was only one thing Katrina could demand of him, one wound that had never closed.

Katrina wanted to see her father's last moments.

She did not just want Lukas to tell her how it happened, she wanted him to show it to her.

Rodan had been missing for ten long agonizing years in which Katrina had to listen to endless rumors made regarding her father's disappearance and when she had finally found him, he had been torn away from her in an instant. Katrina had never known her mother. Her father had been the pillar of her world, and when he disappeared she had clung to the hope that he still lived. That hope had carried her for a decade, until the day she saw him again and her joy had been cruelly brief.

She had wanted to fight beside Rodan and Lukas against the so-called Hero from Another World but Lukas had denied her that chance. Rodan himself had asked Lukas to keep her safe, and Lukas had kept his word. He had sent her back across the seas to Linemall, far from the battlefield where her father's fate was sealed.

Lukas did not regret what he did.

Even now, given the choice, he would make the same decision again.

But none of that softened the look in her eyes as she repeated herself.

"I want you to show me, uncle." The edge in her voice cut sharper this time, anger breaking through her restraint. "I deserve to know. I deserve to see how he died." There it was—the venom that no amount of courtesy could disguise, the unspoken accusation that he had stolen something from her.

Lukas could not deny her again, not when it came to this.

Slowly, he drew in a breath, the Crown stirring at his call. Light flared, fierce and unrelenting. A halo of white fire blazed above his brow, flooding the barren chamber with brilliance until every corner drowned in its glow.

And Lukas did as she asked.

The moment the Crown's power bridged them together, Lukas felt it—the storm that raged within her.

Her emotions crashed into him in relentless waves: anger sharp as steel, grief so deep it threatened to pull him under, sorrow that clung like chains.

Lukas was not surprised by all of it. Seeing him could only remind Katrina of what she had lost, of the father she would never again embrace.

But beneath the grief, Lukas caught flickers of something else. Relief. Even a fragile warmth. Katrina still cared for him, she could not help it. Lukas was still her uncle, and no matter how much bitterness she carried, there was a part of her that remembered who he had been to her. He had come to the Seas when their world was crumbling. He had been the one to stop the Kraken when no one else could. He had led the search for Rodan, convincing the Lady Kaitlyn to grant them leave from Linemall and embark on that desperate journey.

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Yes, Katrina was furious with him for denying her the chance to fight at her father's side and yes, she still bore that wound to this day. But affection lingered, however conflicted, and it made the weight of her turmoil almost unbearable.

Lukas felt it all.

And he gave everything in return.

He opened his soul to her, tearing down the walls he so carefully kept around his mind.

Lukas let Katrina see, through his eyes, the last moments of Rodan Drakos.

She heard the words Lukas had spoken aloud, and the thoughts Lukas had buried beneath them. She felt the sweat on his skin, the fear threading through his veins, the desperate determination that kept him standing.

Nothing was hidden. Nothing was softened. She had demanded truth, and Lukas gave her all of that and more.

Katrina trembled as the vision unfolded.

She saw her father standing tall against the Hero From Another World, defiant until the end. She saw the clash of their powers, the fury and desperation of that battle. And she saw the instant it ended—saw the Hero drive his fist into Rodan's chest to rip her father's beating heart out. The sound tore through her, and Katrina broke. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks, and a strangled sob escaped her lips. She covered her mouth, but nothing could stop the grief that poured out of her.

But Lukas had shown her more than her father's death.

He had shown her himself.

Every thought, every memory and...every hidden truth.

She saw the man he had been before he became Lukas Drakos.

She saw what the Hero had once meant to him, what connection bound them beyond this single life. And in that revelation came confusion—raw, disoriented, overwhelming. Her wide, tear-streaked eyes fixed on Lukas, searching, questioning. Yet even through the shock, she felt his love. There was no mistaking the adoration Lukas had for her. The bond he carried for her burned as strong as his love for Rosalia, for Jesse, for his mother.

Seven years apart had not diminished the love Lukas had for her. Distance, silence and bitterness—it had never changed the fact that Katrina was still his niece, that she was his brother's daughter and that she was family.

Katrina wept, but Lukas held nothing back. She needed to know. And she needed to feel, beyond all doubt, that she was loved.

Katrina shook her head, as if trying to physically dispel what she had just seen, what she now knew.

The vision still lingered in her mind—the clash, her father's fall, and the truth that had struck her even harder than all of it.

Lukas was not only her uncle.

He had once been someone else entirely.

He had been Julien Fronterra. A man from another world, a world where magic was nothing but myth. And the Hero who had ended Rodan Drakos' life…had once been his father. Lukas had once come from the same world that they had summoned this Hero.

The enormity of it spun in her thoughts, disorienting, almost unbearable.

How could any of this be real? How could the uncle she loved and hated in equal measure, the man who had saved her people and stolen her chance to fight beside her father, carry such a truth within him?

Katrina's tear-streaked eyes fixed on him, searching. But Lukas did not look away.

His gaze was steady, unflinching, as if daring her to see all of him and still turn from him if she must. He had carried this truth for so long, and now it was laid bare before her.

Her voice came out a whisper, ragged and fragile. "Why are you showing me all of this?"

Lukas' expression softened, and his voice held no hesitation. "Because I have nothing to hide from you. You said you had a right to know, and you do. You are my niece, Katrina. We will always be family. That will never change. I need you to know that I trust you completely, even if you cannot say the same for me."

The words struck something deep within her. For a long, trembling moment, Katrina sat in silence.

Then she shook her head again—not in rejection, but in something closer to disbelief.

"You will always be my uncle," she said quietly, her voice steadier now though it wavered with the weight of her emotions. "No matter who you were before, no matter that you once lived as a man in a world without magic. None of that matters to me. And it doesn't matter that the Hero was once your father. You are Lukas Drakos. You are my uncle, and you will always be family. I love you for who you are, and for everything you have done for us."

Her words filled him with warmth, yet Lukas could feel the knife-edge that lingered behind them.

"But…" Katrina's voice cracked, and she clenched her fists in her lap. "I don't know if I can forgive you. You sent me away. You took that chance away from me, Lukas. You decided that I would not stand at my father's side, and you took that from me. I know you did it to protect me, I know you wanted to honor his wishes…but it was not your decision to make. It was mine."

The silence that followed was thick and heavy, but not as suffocating as before.

Katrina lifted her gaze to him again, and though her eyes still shimmered with tears, there was no hatred there—only pain and honesty. "I will continue to serve you as my Lord. I will continue to trust you. But whether I will ever be able to forgive you…I cannot answer that. Not now. Not when it still hurts this much."

Lukas nodded slowly, accepting her words. For now, that was enough. Lukas could live with that.

The distance between them remained but now that distance no longer carried the bitter chill it once had. And perhaps that was enough.

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