Chapter 135: The Lost Era 3

Lara’s POV

She stood frozen in place.

Because anguish was what held her in place, half of it.

The other half was something far more dangerous — desolation.

Cold air pressed against Lara’s skin, thick with the scent of ancient stone and something older — a stillness that did not belong to the living.

Not the shallow kind born from loneliness or loss, but a vast, hollow certainty carved into her bones. A remembrance of the past. A grief so intense it suffocated her.

This place…

This chamber had once been part of her world.

Not as an explorer. Not as a trespasser. But as someone who had stood there with authority. With intimacy. With belonging.

Her gaze drifted across the rows of black stone sarcophagi lining the chamber walls, each one carved with imperial insignias and names worn soft by time.

A tremor passed through her fingers.

Those… those wouldn’t…

Her breath hitched.

Would they contain the remains of my children? My grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

The thought was absurd but not impossible.

And yet her heart recognized the space the way a body recognizes pain before the mind understands it.

Slowly — as if pulled by invisible threads — her eyes lifted to the massive coffin resting on the raised dais at the center.

Black obsidian. Veined with gold. Unmistakably sovereign.

The imperial coffin.

She remembered it too clearly.

Beside it stood another, slightly smaller — elegant, severe, unmistakably meant for someone who had shared the emperor’s power… and his solitude.

Her chest tightened.

An emotion she did not want to name coiled inside her ribs.

Not fear.Not hatred.Not even sorrow.

Something far more intimate.

Something dangerously close to love.

A crushing weight pressed down on her lungs — grief layered with exhaustion, with longing, with a pain so old it felt geological. As if entire lifetimes had collapsed into this single moment.

Memories did not return as images.

They came as sensations.

A warm hand covering hers.

The sound of distant court music.

The faint scent of incense and steel.

Laughter that had once filled a palace now buried beneath centuries.

Her knees weakened.

A tidal wave of grief surged through her, violent and unstoppable, like a storm tearing open a sea that had been sealed for ages.

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

If he’s here… If they’re here…

The thought shattered before it could form.

Darkness rushed in from the edges of her vision.

Her body gave way.

“Larissa.”

Ares moved before the sound of her name fully left his mouth.

He caught her mid-collapse, one arm bracing her back, the other locking around her shoulders with instinctive precision — the reflex of a man who had pulled comrades out of gunfire more times than he cared to count.

Her weight in his arms felt disturbingly fragile.

Not physically but emotionally.

As if something inside her had cracked.

Liam, Logan, and Lucas rushed forward, boots echoing sharply across the chamber floor.

“What happened?” Lucas demanded, alarm threading through his voice as he crouched beside them.

“I don’t know,” Ares said, his gaze fixed on Lara’s pale face. “Maybe claustrophobia. She might just need air.”

But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true.

This wasn’t panic. This looked like grief.

Deep, devastating grief — the kind that comes from losing something irreplaceable.

“Then I’ll take her outside,” Logan said immediately, already reaching forward. “I’ll carry—”

Lara’s fingers tightened weakly against Ares’ sleeve.

Her lashes fluttered.

“I’m… fine.”

Her voice was hoarse, as if dragged through broken glass.

She drew in a shaky breath. Then another. Forcing air into lungs that still felt bound by invisible chains.

The world steadied.

She straightened slowly, though Ares did not release her until he was certain she wouldn’t collapse again.

“I just… lost my composure for a moment,” she said, carefully smoothing her expression into something controlled.

It was a lie.

Ares could hear it in the way her voice trembled at the edges.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

Their eyes met.

For a split second, something raw flickered in hers — a depth of sorrow so profound it made his chest tighten unexpectedly.

“Yes,” she said. “Please don’t mind me. You should continue looking around.”

No one moved.

Lucas folded his arms, frowning. Ares remained exactly where he was, his presence solid and immovable at her side.

She exhaled softly, knowing she had lost that silent argument.

Without another word, Lara stepped toward the dais.

Each step felt like walking toward an execution.

The marble stairs were cold beneath her feet as she ascended, her body moving with the slow inevitability of someone drawn by fate rather than choice.

She stopped before the imperial coffin.

Alaric Kromwel.

Her fingers lifted, trembling almost imperceptibly, and traced the engraved name.

The moment her skin touched the stone, a sharp ache pierced her chest.

Not pain but recognition.

Her expression softened — not with reverence for a historical figure, but with something heartbreakingly personal.

A grief so intimate it felt like trespassing to witness.

Behind her, Ares’ brows knit together.

Something was very wrong.

Why was her reaction so intense? Why did her sorrow look less like respect for a long-dead ruler and more like mourning someone she had loved?

His jaw tightened.

A dark, irrational discomfort coiled in his stomach.

Who are you grieving, Larissa?

Lucas tilted his head, studying her openly.

“Sis… why does it feel like you know him?” he asked, unease creeping into his voice. “You’re acting like… like this is personal.”

Lara’s hand stilled on the coffin.

For a fraction of a second, she didn’t answer.

Because the truth hovered dangerously close to the surface.

Because I do.

She forced a small breath through her nose and withdrew her hand.

“I read about him once,” she said, keeping her back turned so they wouldn’t see her expression. “I got… invested in the story.”

There was a tremor in her voice she couldn’t quite erase.

Lucas blinked.

“Huh? I topped history class every year. How come I’ve never heard anything like that about the founding emperor?”

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