She fell naked from the heavens.
Not with thunder. Not with fire. But with silence.
No wings. No light. Only shame. Only betrayal.
The earth did not catch her. It opened like a grave, and Gorgona crashed into its cold chest, gasping like something reborn without permission. Wind hissed over her bare skin. The snakes in her hair writhed for the first time, newborn, angry, whispering names she did not know. Names that sounded like curses. Names that might've once been hers.
Her knees bled on the stones. Her breath steamed in the mountain air.
She was alone.
Truly, brutally alone.
Once worshipped by gods, now forgotten by mortals. Once draped in silk and divine flame, now clothed in dirt and shadow.
She wandered.
For days, she wandered.
At first, she screamed for Nyxa, the silent goddess who had once laid a hand on her brow and called her daughter. But there was no answer. Only the empty echo of a world that no longer remembered she existed.
So she walked.
She climbed past black ridges and into the hills at the edge of the world, where no village dared settle, where wolves howled without fear, and trees twisted from the cold. There, among crags and forgotten cliffs, she built her home with Will.
The earth bent to her sorrow. Stone split beneath her voice. Mountains shifted when she wept.
She hollowed a house from the hills, carved a cave so vast and still it swallowed her whole. Moss grew where her tears touched. Springs dripped from her fingers, healing no one. She sewed herself a black dress from thread pulled from thornbushes, long-sleeved and floor-length, woven with moonlight and grief.
She'd been naked when the gods cast her out. Stripped of glory. Thrown down like a discarded myth.
Now, she wrapped herself in mourning.
The snakes settled. Her body hardened.
But her heart,
Her heart did not know how to stop loving.
Even after what they'd done.
Even after what she'd become.
⸻
The news came slowly.
First through the wind, whispers from towns far below. From travelers' dreams. From the desperate fires lit at night by foolish wanderers.
A monster lives in the hills.
Her gaze can kill.
Her head is a nest of serpents.
They say she was once a goddess.
They say she still is.
Some came in search of her.
Brave men. Cruel men. Those who wanted to touch the divine. To own her. To slay her. To use her.
They never returned.
And it wasn't because she wanted to kill.
At first, she tried to speak. To warn them. To beg.
But the moment their weapons rose, her mercy died.
She turned them to stone.
With tears in her eyes, she turned them all to stone.
And afterward, once the silence returned and the snakes stilled, and the mountain wind swept through her hair like grief's ghost, she would crouch beside their frozen forms, smashing them with her fists. Crying out like a broken god.
"I spared your world!" she once screamed, her voice echoing through the crags.
"I destroyed the gods' final weapon because I loved you!
I refused to set your cities ablaze—and this is how you repay me?
With arrows? With fire? With fear?"
Her voice cracked. Her hand bled against shattered stone. Dust clung to her face..
"Oh, humans... how delusional you are," she whispered. "How small."
She stood. Her black dress caught the wind. The snakes shifted, their tongues flicking with quiet sympathy. She had learned to live with them. To talk to them. They were not beasts, not truly. They were voices. Companions. Curses. Friends. Born of divine punishment, but still hers.
They coiled gently around her shoulders as she walked the ridges, hands clasped behind her back, lost in memory.
She missed the temple. The scent of incense. The coolness of marble. The way moonlight once kissed her skin like a lover.
She missed being touched without fear.
She missed being looked at without dying.
⸻
One evening, as fog crept low over the valley, she heard it again: movement.
Soft. Careful. But not careful enough.
She froze. Eyes narrowed. The snakes rose like sentinels, silent and still. Gorgona slithered behind a ridge of stone, pressing her ear to the earth.
Voices.
Three of them.
Men.
"She's supposed to live near here. They say you don't see her until it's too late."
"Just don't look her in the eye."
"Shut up. We fire, we leave. Easy."
She rose. Not suddenly. Not with panic.
But with a righteous fury building in her chest.
She stepped out from behind the rock. Dressed in black. Hair alive. Eyes glowing with the moon's fury.
One man loosed an arrow.
She didn't flinch.
She moved too fast.
The arrow turned to smoke before it reached her.
And her scream,
It wasn't human.
It wasn't divine.
It was the sound of grief twisted into rage. The sound of a woman who once held the stars in her palm, and now lived in shadows.
Her eyes locked onto them.
Stone.
Stone.
Stone.
They froze mid-step, mouths open in silent terror. Faces still youthful, now immortalized in agony.
She stood there afterward, trembling. Tears slid down her cheeks. Her arms wrapped tight around her chest.
The wind howled. She didn't move.
She simply sat, atop a rock worn smooth by her presence, and stared into the distance. Into a world she could never return to.
The snakes settled.
One flicked its tongue near her ear.
"You did nothing wrong," it whispered.
Another hissed softly, wrapping itself around her neck like a scarf.
"They were going to hurt you again."
She nodded, slowly. Almost like she believed them.
"Still," she whispered to herself, "I never wanted to be this."
She closed her eyes and hummed, an old temple melody. One she used to sing while lighting sacred candles. The notes were cracked, but still beautiful.
The snakes swayed gently to the rhythm. The mountain watched in silence.
And far below, humans told stories of a monster in the hills.
But they would never know that monster once chose mercy.
That she once loved them more than the gods ever had.