You could not know what was hidden inside a place simply by arriving in it. So of course there were monsters. Of course there were ancient tombs, or ruins, or whatever it turned out to be. That was not evidence of anything except that this world was strange, which she had already known.

It proved nothing about whether the old woman was telling the truth.

Elara let her gaze drift.

Elara had gotten old too, if you looked at her. Elara remembered — hazily, the way you remember something that happened while you were half-asleep — that when she had first come into this body, it had been seventeen, maybe. Something like that. She could not be certain. The memory of those first weeks was blurred at the edges, unreliable, the kind of thing you could not fully trust.

Sometimes she still thought she was twenty-five, sitting behind a desk in an office somewhere, signing documents that actually mattered.

Then she remembered being seventeen.

Then something else.

She did the arithmetic without much enthusiasm. She should be twenty-four or twenty-five now, in terms of the body’s age. Add another three years on top of that, and she was probably around twenty-eight. Maybe. She was not sure. She had stopped celebrating her birthday a long time ago, and after everything — the wars, the throne, the years of fighting and rebuilding — most of the records had been lost or buried or simply forgotten in the chaos.

And if you did not remember your own birthday, and your family did not remember it either, how were you supposed to know? Official documents. That was the answer, normally.

Except that official documents for someone of noble or royal blood were handled carefully. Selectively. The kind of information kept close — birthday, bloodline, parentage — that was known only to the parents, recorded in private documents that Elara no longer had. Her mother was dead. The woman who had replaced her had her own reasons to change things, to shift dates, to quietly rewrite whatever needed rewriting. And the emperor — well.

The records that did exist did not all agree with each other.

So she genuinely did not know when her birthday was.

She had made her peace with that a long time ago.

The old woman looked at her, and there was something flickering behind her eyes — not quite anger, but close enough to it that Elara noticed. She had spent enough years reading rooms and reading people to know the difference between someone who was frustrated and someone who was afraid of being found out.

She filed that observation away and said nothing.

"You still do not believe me." It was not a question. The woman’s voice carried the particular strain of someone who had expected this conversation to go differently. "You need to understand — you carry part of it within you. The goddess chose you. The power runs through your blood. Everything I have told you is the truth, every word of it, and if you would simply—"

"Why should I?"

The woman stopped.

A beat of silence.

"Excuse me?"

Elara looked at her with the same expression she used when reviewing poorly written reports. Calm. Faintly tired. Not hostile, simply unmoved. "Why should I believe your story? You have given me nothing. No evidence, no documentation, nothing I can hold up and examine. So tell me — why, on the basis of what you have said so far, should I believe any of it is true?"

"Because I *am* telling the truth." The woman’s voice sharpened. "Why would I lie to you? What possible reason could I have?"

"Thousands," Elara said pleasantly. "Would you like me to go through them? I have time."

The woman said nothing. Elara took that as permission.

"First — I am rich. That alone is sufficient motivation for a significant portion of the world’s dishonesty. Second — I am young, beautiful, and rich, which makes me a considerably more appealing target than simply being rich alone. There is a certain category of person who finds that combination irresistible and constructs elaborate stories around it." She paused briefly. "Third — I have enemies. More than I can comfortably keep count of at this point, spread across several countries and at least two former alliances, and I genuinely cannot tell you off the top of my head which one of them might have sent you or what their current objective is. Fourth —" she tilted her head, "— I simply do not trust you. That is not personal. I would not take someone at their word without evidence even if it were my own father sitting in that chair. Evidence first. Belief after. That is how it works."

She folded her hands in her lap. "So. What proof do you have?"

The woman drew herself up with the dignity of someone who had not expected to need dignity today. "This is common knowledge," she said stiffly. "What I have told you is so widely known that even a child would know it. Even a dog on the street."

"Common knowledge," Elara said. "Accepted. Move on."

The woman’s expression flickered with something that was trying very hard not to be outright frustration. "Your mother was a mage."

"Also common knowledge." Elara’s voice was entirely flat. "Next."

"Your bloodline carries—"

"Common knowledge."

"The mark on your—"

"Printed in a broadsheet three years ago. Next."

The woman exhaled sharply. "Why," she said, and now the frustration had broken through entirely, surfacing without pretense, "why will you simply not trust me? You have been chosen by the goddess. The signs are all there. Everything I am telling you points to the same truth and you are sitting there looking at me as though I am trying to sell you something from a market stall—"

Elara raised her hand.

The woman stopped mid-sentence.

"Everything you have told me today," Elara said, with the same patience she used when explaining things to people who should already know them, "has been printed. In newspapers. Distributed across the empire and beyond. My neighboring countries know it. My *enemy* countries know it. Every word you have said to me could have been assembled by anyone with basic literacy and access to a public archive." She let that sit in the air between them for a moment. "If you have something that is not already public knowledge — something original, something that constitutes actual proof of what you are claiming — then I am listening. Speak. Otherwise, we are finished here."

She glanced at Mahir.

He was already moving, stepping smoothly to the woman’s side and guiding her toward the door with the practiced ease of someone who had done exactly this kind of thing many times before.

Elara watched them go without particular feeling.

Then the system appeared.

She looked at it.

It looked at her.

A pause.

"Wow, host."

"Wow," Elara said. "Look who finally decided to remember I exist. Eight years, and this is the occasion you chose. I am genuinely honored."

"For someone who cannot feel emotion," the system said, "you have a remarkable talent for making things feel unwelcoming."

"I was not trying to make you feel welcome," Elara said. "I was making an observation. There is a difference."