The orphanage of Evervale sat at the edge of an emerald forest, where the trees glowed faintly under the moon. Here, children without names or pasts learned to survive under the watchful eye of Matron Claria. Among them was Mia, a girl whose hair shimmered silver-white and whose eyes gleamed like fresh spring leaves.
No one knew who had left her swaddled in a blanket woven with sigils of the old Creation Force. The matron had tried to hide the cloth, but even at four years old, Mia would crawl into the storeroom and clutch it to her chest, as if it contained the memory of a mother she had never met.
By the time she was ten, the others whispered she was "blessed," though not always with kindness. When she tended the cracked garden beds, flowers sprang from the soil without seed. When she cried, saplings shivered awake along the fence. Sometimes, in her dreams, she heard a voice—calm and vast as the ocean—calling her home.
One afternoon, Matron Claria found her kneeling by the pond, hands cupped over the water. Tiny motes of golden light drifted from her palms.
"Mia." The matron's voice was carefully even. "You mustn't do that where the others can see."
Mia looked up, her eyes wet with confusion. "But…I'm only helping the fish." She opened her fingers to reveal a carp no bigger than her thumb, restored from death to life. "It was lonely."
Matron Claria's face softened, but the fear never fully left her eyes. "Someday, child, others will come to take you away. They'll say you belong to the world—that it needs you. But here…you belong to us. Remember that."
Mia pressed the carp back into the pond. She watched it flicker away beneath the lily pads, her reflection trembling in the ripples. In that wavering image, she glimpsed again the strands of golden energy spiraling from her chest—an inheritance she had never asked for, yet could never cast aside.
That night, she woke from her dreams with the voice still echoing in her mind:
Mia…wake, little one…you are the child of Creation itself…
Her heart fluttered like a trapped bird. She pressed a hand to her breast, feeling the warmth there—both a promise and a burden she would carry into the coming storms.