"Your mother's service to me exempted her from her family's curse," the calm voice returned after a few seconds of silence. "Her lineage was cursed for shedding innocent blood but she escaped her fate and ran to my sanctuary. I kept her safe in my sanctuary for many years, preserving her." I blinked because I was not expecting that.

"What – What do you mean by preserving her?"

"Time is a teardrop to me but an ocean to your kind. To me, she had spent less than a week in the sanctuary but she told me one day that she had spent decades. She had not aged in those decades...