In the heart of the capital of Eldoria, tucked between a noisy forge and a rowdy potion shop, stood a small restaurant called The Golden Ladle. It wasn't elegant, nor fancy, nor known for any great chefly brilliance — but it was famous for one thing:
Mirna.
The warm, bright-eyed waitress who worked there.
Knights, merchants, mages, and travelers all came partly for soup...and mostly for Mirna.
Among the regulars were two knights who visited so often the other customers joked they should start paying rent.
Haldrick Von Rocksfield — tall, heroic, annoyingly handsome.
Jemie Herrias — shorter, sharper, sarcastic but loyal as a warhound.
Both of them adored Mirna.
Both of them tried to hide it.
Neither of them succeeded.
Mirna liked them too — the brave Haldrick with his earnest smile, and the witty Jemie who always tipped extra. But there's a hidden rule in Eldoria about knights:
If two knights fall for the same girl, the one who moves first wins.
Haldrick moved first.
And eventually… he won.
Mirna found herself blushing, smiling, and then, a few months later, holding a letter from the physician confirming what she already suspected:
She was pregnant.
She cried that night — happy tears, nervous tears, dreams of a small home, a family, a peaceful future. She even rehearsed how she would tell Haldrick, practicing in front of a mirror with a soft, shy smile.
Haldrick never got to hear it.
Because just weeks after the news…
the demon armies broke through the northern border.
Haldrick, Jemie, and their entire knightly unit were summoned, barely given an hour to gather their gear before marching out to a war that was supposed to end quickly.
But wars never end on time.
Months passed.
Mirna's belly grew.
The war dragged on.
Still no letters.
Still no word.
Still no Haldrick.
Still no Jemie.
Mirna's hope slowly cracked, day by day, with every sunrise that didn't bring him home.
By the time her daughter was born — a small, quiet baby with soft black hair and a strange sense of calm — Mirna's heart had already broken in half.
She named the child Junah.
But instead of joy, all Mirna felt was betrayal.
"They left".
"They ran away when they heard about the baby".
"He abandoned me".
"He abandoned us".
No one corrected her. No one told her that Haldrick and Jemie were alive, fighting every day, unable to send word. No one told her that the war had swallowed them whole.
Mirna, filled with fear and heartbreak, fled the capital with her newborn. She moved to a distant village in the countryside — a place too far for knights, wars, or memories.
And from that day on…
Mirna blamed Junah.
She never hit her — but her words?
Sharp.
Bitter.
Constant.
Every mistake became Junah's fault.
Every stress became Junah's burden.
Every bad day became Junah's curse.
Most children break under that.
Junah… somehow didn't.
That's because, deep inside her young mind, Junah wasn't exactly a child.
She was the reincarnation of a 29-year-old teacher from modern Earth — someone who had died in a stupidly tragic road accident, the kind you'd read about in a newspaper under the headline: "Unlucky Timing." (cough ²) truck...(cough)
Her soul kept its memories, its humor, its sarcasm — and so every time Mirna scolded her, little Junah didn't crumble.
She just turned it into… a sitcom.
A dramatic inner soap opera.
Her mother yelling?
Internally, Junah imagined thunder crashing, dramatic violin music swelling, and herself gasping in overacted shock like a telenovela character.
Her mother complaining?
Cue laugh track.
Cue Junah imagining herself dramatically fainting onto an imaginary couch.
On the outside, she remained chill, calm, blank-faced.
On the inside?
Chaos.
Comedy.
And a teacher's weary sighs of "Ah shit, here we go again."
But despite the humor she used to survive, something quietly bloomed in Junah's heart — a private spark, a dream.
Magic.
Not the kind taught in academies with long spell chants, complicated diagrams, and strict posture rules.
Not the kind her village mages practiced, muttering incantations until their throats went dry.
Junah's magic was… different.
It started with small things.
When she was four, the river water rippled toward her hand like it wanted to play.
When she was five, leaves swirled around her when she wished for wind on a hot day.
When she was six, a faint glow appeared in her palms whenever she felt lonely.
No teacher.
No spellbook.
No chants.
Just instinct.
Junah didn't "cast" magic.
She willed magic — and it obeyed.
Every spare moment she slipped away to the forest river, where no one could see. She experimented by trial and error, treating magic like a stubborn subject in school:
Push it.
Pull it.
Focus on it.
Feel its shape.
Try again.
Fail again.
Try anyway.
By age seven, she could draw water upward in twisting ribbons.
By age eight, she could compress wind until it hummed like a blade.
By nine, she discovered she didn't need gestures — just intention.
And no one taught her this.
It was as if her soul remembered something the world had forgotten.
Junah didn't brag.
She didn't show off.
She didn't even tell her mother.
She just kept learning quietly, sitting by the river with an expression as calm as the water — while inside her head, she was screaming things like:
OH MY GOD I CAN DO MAGIC WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING, IS THIS NORMAL?! IS THIS A CHEAT CODE?!
On the outside, she remained chill.
On the inside, she had no idea she was practicing a type of magic so rare that most people believed impossible.
A girl blamed for everything.
A girl who hid her pain behind a blank face.
A girl teaching herself chantless magic in secret.
A girl with no idea that this ability alone would one day shake the foundations of kingdoms.
And a girl who had no idea that her life was about to collide with a destiny larger, stranger, and more explosive than anything she'd ever imagined.
Because soon…
Very soon…
The world would come looking for Junah Von Rocksfield.
And nothing — not her chill face, not her sitcom brain, not even her carefully hidden magic — would be able to keep her out of the storm that was coming