"Divine mercy is rarely gentle. For those marked by heaven, salvation often arrives dressed in absolute ruin..."
- First Priest of Lumina.
Long before the empire knew her name as the Holy Saintess, Yennifer was merely a nameless girl born in the jagged valleys of the Southern Crags.
The settlement was called Red Ridge, a isolated village of timber cutters and sheep herders wedged between two towering gray cliffs.
It was a poor place, but it was quiet, far removed from the grand politics of the imperial capital.
That quiet ended during the height of the southern border purges.
A coalition of warlords and splintered mercenary bands had taken control of the mountain passes.
Among them, a ruthless martial doctrine began to spread like a contagion.
The commanders believed that affection, family ties, and domestic comfort made soldiers weak.
