Chapter 65: Healing One More Day (Her POV)
Ahyona looks about nineteen today. Old enough to know better, young enough to remember what it feels like when the world ends and nobody notices. Her realm shifts around her. Colors pulsing with every small change in mood, light softening, sharpening, never quite staying still. It feels like sitting inside a heartbeat. She gestures to the bench across from her. I sit. My hands are already cold. For a while, she just watches me. Not the way the gods watch mortals, distant and amused. She watches like a surgeon watches a wound. Calm. Precise. Looking for where to cut. When she finally speaks, her voice is gentle.
"Why did you change your name?"
Not How are you? Not Tell me what happened. Straight to the jugular like always. She always asks the hard questions. I swallow. "I thought we were going to talk about… other things." Like we normally do.
"We are," she says. "This is part of them."
I stare at my hands. The faint glow of my runes under my skin. My fingers curl in on themselves. "I didn't want to be Anastasia anymore," I say. It feels flimsy the second it leaves my mouth.
"Why not?" Ahyona asks.
Because she died as a child and the thing the was created was not me. The thought comes too fast, too sharp. I shove it down. "It didn't fit," I say instead. "Not anymore."
One corner of her mouth lifts, almost a smile. "Try again."
I let out a humorless breath. "You're very annoying, you know that?"
"Yes," she says calmly. "Why did you change your name?"
I close my eyes for a second. "I don't think I was born Anastasia. I was born somewhere near Russia. I don't remember the village. I remember snow. A cracked window. My mother's hands." I swallow. "Anastasia means resurrection. I didn't pick that name. It was given to me by The Sacred Heralds Sect. I don't know if I had a name before that. So Anastasia is perfect for the Frankenstein monster they stitched together out of what was left of me."
"You knew the meaning," she says.
"I did." I huff out something that isn't quite a laugh. "I thought it was poetic. Fitting. I died, over and over, and they kept pulling me back into something new. New body. New role. New rules. New owner. Resurrection." My jaw tightens and my teeth grind. "Never mine."
"Who did you become?" Ahyona asks.
"Whatever they needed, the priests. The gods. The clients. The temples." My mouth twists. "Your Sacred Herald priests." She flinches almost imperceptibly, but doesn't interrupt. "They carved me. They rewrote my nerves. They smoothed out my mind when it got… too loud. Every time I started to crack, they patched me with magic and told me it was healing. 'You're calmer now. You're better. You're useful again.'" I laugh, sharp and humorless. "I was a very well-adjusted commodity."
The realm darkens for a moment, then steadies.
"And Annie?" Ahyona asks quietly.
My chest tightens. "Malvor started calling me that. At first because he thought Anastasia was too formal. Too heavy. Too… me." I shrug. "Annie was soft. Easy. Cute. It annoyed me."
"But you kept it," Ahyona says.
"I grew into it, or I grew around it. I don't know." I stare at the shifting floor. "Annie laughed. Annie teased him. Annie drank his coffee and wore his robe and rolled her eyes when he was dramatic. Annie could sleep in his bed and pretend the world wasn't broken."
"And you?" she asks.
"I made Annie," I say, voice thinning. "Piece by piece. Smile by smile. Joke by joke. I built her like armor and then forgot to take her off." I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood. "She was everything I was supposed to be, soft enough not to scare him. Strong enough to impress him. Quiet enough not to upset him. Steady enough to hold him when he fell apart." My throat starts to burn. I tip my head back and blink at the ceiling. "I thought she was the resurrection, I thought Anastasia died in the temples, and Annie was what came back. A better version of me. A kinder one."
"And then?" Ahyona asks.
Then Aerion. My stomach twists. "And then," I say carefully, "three gods decided I was a problem." I won't say their names. Not yet. They already live in my bones.
Ahyona doesn't push. "Tell me what you know about what happened to you," she says instead.
"I was taken from a party. From my life. From my skin." The words feel like chewing glass. "They said it was divine punishment. Deserved. I had earned the punishment. Whatever term made them feel like they were the righteous ones." I shake my head to clear the pain. "I remember… pieces. Hands. Voices. The feeling of being very small in a room that was too big. And knowing no one was coming." My voice goes quiet. "When it was over, I came home to a god tearing the world apart because he thought I'd disappeared."
Her expression flickers. She knows what happened. "He was already breaking, Malvor. My chaos god. He'd gone to the Pantheon. Demanded answers. Made threats. Threw tantrums. They told him it was legal. That he had no right to complain." I laugh softly. "He was still shaking when I came back. So I had to be steady. Had to be calm. Had to be Annie."
"You didn't tell him?" Ahyona asks.
"Some of it, not enough." My lips press together. "There is no version of that story that doesn't break him. So I gave him… the edges. Not the center."
The realm dims again. "And you?" she asks.
"What about me?" I say, sharper than I mean to.
"Who was there for you?" she asks.
The question snags something deep in my chest. I laugh. It's a broken sound. "No one, I had work to do. He was falling apart. The Pantheon was on the verge of war. There were runes to activate, deals to make, gods to appease. I didn't have time to fall apart."
Her eyes soften. "So you didn't."
"So I didn't," I echo. "Not then. Not ever."
We sit in silence for a moment. My heartbeat feels too loud.
"Asha," Ahyona says slowly, "do you realize you've never mourned anything?" The words land like a hammer.
"I... what?" I manage.
She doesn't look away. "You lost your childhood. Your home. Your autonomy. Your body. Your name. Your humanity. Your safety. Your illusions. Your version of love." Her voice stays soft. It makes it worse. "And every time, someone needed you to be fine. So you were."
I want to argue. I can't. "You never mourned being taken from your family, you never mourned becoming a shrine worker. You never mourned the runes. You never mourned the way my temple's healers were told to smooth your mind instead of listening to it." Her jaw tightens slightly, guilt flashing under her eyes. "You never mourned the night three gods decided you were less than human. You survived, over and over. But you never grieved."
The tears spill before I can stop them. "I didn't have time," I whisper my voice cracking. "Someone always needed something. The priests. The clients. The gods. Malvor. There was always another crisis. Another disaster. Another thing that would fall apart if I did."
Ahyona's voice is quiet. "So you became the one thing that was never allowed to break."
My chest caves in on itself. "I don't know how to mourn, I don't know how to stop. If I stop, everything I've been holding up will fall." I held back the hot tears pooling in my eyes.
She leans forward. "Everything already fell, Asha. You just refused to look at the rubble."
A sob rips out of me, sudden and sharp. I press my hands to my face, but it doesn't help. Tears pour hot and relentless. Ahyona waits. She doesn't move closer. She doesn't look away.
"Do you know what a tribunal is?" she asks.
Cold slides down my spine. "They said it the night they took me. Aerion. Navir. Ravina. They said 'tribunal.' I thought it was… posturing. A scare tactic."
"It wasn't," Ahyona says. The lodge changes. The walls darken to deep storm colors. The beadwork above us flares, then shudders. The heartbeat in the floor grows louder, angry. "You were mortal in our system, three gods sitting in agreement forms a tribunal. A legal body. Their word is law."
Old Law hums through her words, something older than the lodge, older than the Pantheon, older than light. "Malvor tried to appeal. He never had a chance. Aerion made sure his hands were already bloodied so the law would never listen."
My heart sinks. "I know they said it was legal. I just thought that was… justification."
"It wasn't," she says quietly. "To the Pantheon, what they did to you was legally sanctioned divine justice."
Something inside me tries to curl in on itself and disappear. "So that's it?! That's the great truth? It was legal?"
Her gaze sharpens. The air crackles around us. Lantern flames stretch thin, then snap back, like they almost went out. "Legal, is not the same as just. It is not the same as moral or right." The words hit hard enough to make me flinch. "You were a mortal woman. They were three gods. They decided you were guilty of something. Whatever lie they dressed it in. They used Old Law to violate you."
A tremor shakes the floor. The heartbeat of the lodge roars. For a moment, the colors lurch, deep red, bruised purple, a flash of bone-white fury. "That is not justice. That is power." My vision blurs with fresh tears.
"The others," she continues, quieter now, "didn't know the details. They saw Malvor's tantrum. They saw Aerion's handiwork. They saw 'tribunal' and they had to follow the law. We are all bound by Old Law. We cannot break it." She exhales, and it sounds like she's swallowing glass. "I was one of them. I knew it was wrong. But I didn't know how wrong. I didn't know what was done to you."
Tears spill hot and furious. "So I was legally broken," I say. My voice shakes. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No," Ahyona says. The realm steadies slowly around us, colors shifting into something raw and honest. "It's supposed to make you angry at the right people." I stare at her. "For your entire life, you've aimed all that anger inward. At Anastasia. At Annie. At the body that survived. At the girl who didn't scream. At the woman who kept smiling."
Her eyes soften, even as the power in the room hums like a storm on the horizon. "But you were never the guilty one, Asha, Not once. Not in any of it."
My breath shudders out. I can't stop shaking. Something… shifts. The anger doesn't vanish. It turns. Away from me. Toward them. Toward a system older than stars that said this was allowed.
"You brought up Yara," I manage. My voice is barely a sound. "What about her?"
Ahyona's lips press together. "Yara has always liked to see what people are made of. She pushes. She tests. She breaks surface calm on purpose."
"Did she know? About… all of this?"
"She knew you were cracking," Ahyona says. "She knew Malvor was blind to it. She knew you were wearing Annie like armor. She wanted to see who you were without it."
I feel sick. "So the threesome—"
"Was not an accident. Not entirely. She wanted you exposed. Not your body, your truth."
My nails dig into my palms hard enough to hurt. "She used me."
"She tested you," Ahyona replies. "It was cruel. It was reckless. It was Yara. But Asha," Her gaze pins me. "You didn't break. You burned. You came back from that night and chose a new name. A new self. You went to Luxor, tried to destroy yourself, and still came home and said, I am hope."
"I didn't feel like hope, I felt like I was back in the well, drowning, and no one could hear me. I was already in a grave of my own making."
"Graves can grow flowers," she says softly. "You are allowed to be both."
That does it. Something inside me finally gives way. Not in a sharp, dramatic snap, but in a long, low crumble. Stone turning to dust. Walls I didn't even know I'd built sliding down. I sob. Ugly, heaving sobs that tear through my chest and drag sounds out of me I don't recognize. I fold in on myself and let it happen. I don't describe what they did. I don't have to. My body remembers. My mind remembers. My magic remembers. For the first time, I let all of them grieve. For the child sold. For the girl carved. For the loss of innocence. For the mind smoothed and silenced. For the woman no one defended. For the lover who had to be strong when she should have been held. For Annie. For Anastasia. For all the names I wore to keep other people comfortable.
The lodge doesn't comfort me. It witnesses me. The beadwork above us shimmers like tears caught in starlight. The heartbeat in the floor matches mine, then steadies, like it's lending me its rhythm for a while. Ahyona doesn't touch me. She just stays. Present. When the storm finally starts to ebb, I'm exhausted. My throat hurts. My eyes burn. I feel… empty.
Somehow heavier at the same time. Ahyona leans forward, resting her forearms on her knees. "You have mourned everyone but yourself," she says quietly. "Today, for the first time, you mourned you."
I wipe my face, shaky. "What do I do with that?"
She gives me the softest smile I've ever seen on her. "Now, we begin to heal you as Asha. Not as an offering. Not as a tool. Not as a god's favorite. As a woman who chose her own name."
My chest aches. "Why Asha?" she asks again, more gently now. "Tell me the truth this time."
I take a breath. It shudders on the way out. "Because Annie died. Anastasia was given to me. I didn't want a name someone else carved into me. I wanted one I claimed. One that meant something they couldn't cut out." My voice drops to a whisper. "Asha means hope."
Ahyona's eyes soften. The realm brightens, just a little. Lanterns steady. Colors warm. "Hope," she echoes.
"Not the gentle kind. The kind that survives anyway. The kind that's stubborn and ugly and refuses to stay dead. The kind that's left at the bottom of the box after everything else escapes. Pandora opened hers. Old story. All the evils in the world spilled out. Pain. War. Hunger. Fear. And at the very bottom, when everything else was gone… there was hope." The word feels bigger in my mouth now. Truer. Heavier. "I'm tired of being the box, I want to be what's left."
Hope hums under my skin. Faint, but real. Like a rune no one else carved. For a moment, the lodge feels less like a wound and more like a cocoon. Ahyona sits back. "Next time, we'll talk about where you feel safest. And why, when I say 'earth,' your magic hums like it recognizes home."
Tairochi's name brushes the edge of my mind. Thursdays. Stone. Stillness. Breathing. His hand steady on my back, his realm humming under my palms like a promise: You do not have to hold everything alone. I let out a long, unsteady breath. "Okay. Next time."
As I stand to leave, Ahyona speaks one last time. "Asha?"
I glance back. She holds my gaze. The realm around her settles, heartbeat slow and sure. "What happened to you was legal. But it was not just. It was never your fault."
For the first time, a tiny part of me believes her. It hurts. It also feels a lot like that last thing at the bottom of the box. Hope.