Silence ruled where bells once sang.
The wind moved through the ruins of Lumeria's capital with a voice like mourning—low, unending, heavy with ash. It slipped through broken archways and shattered windows, stirring cinders that still clung to the stones days after the fire had died. No birds circled the sky. No banners stirred upon the towers. Even the clouds above seemed reluctant to pass over the city, hanging in gray suspension as if unwilling to witness what had been done.
Princess Seraphina Lumeria stood at the edge of what had once been the eastern gate, her boots half-buried in soot and powdered marble. She had crossed the threshold alone.
The gates no longer existed.
Where iron-bound doors once rose high enough to humble visiting kings, there was only a blackened outline scorched into the stone—an absence shaped like violence. The walls on either side had collapsed inward, crushed not by siege engines, but by something far more precise. Each fracture was clean. Intentional. As though the city had been unmade rather than destroyed.
Seraphina did not weep.
She had learned, in the long days since the flames receded, that tears required a belief that something could still be salvaged.
Her cloak—once white, now gray with travel and dust—hung heavy against her shoulders as she stepped forward. Each footfall echoed too loudly in the emptiness, the sound ricocheting down streets that had once been crowded with merchants, priests, children running beneath colored awnings. She remembered those streets. She remembered the smell of baked bread drifting from the lower districts at dawn, the way sunlight used to catch on the gold-threaded banners bearing her family's sigil.
Now the air tasted of char and old smoke.
Stone buildings leaned at unnatural angles, their upper floors collapsed inward like broken ribs. Scorch marks traced deliberate paths along the streets, carving lines of destruction that avoided some structures entirely while reducing others to slag. This was not chaos. It wore the shape of order.
Seraphina felt it even if she could not yet name it.
She passed a fallen statue near the square—Saint Altheon, patron of mercy, his stone face split cleanly down the middle. One hand had broken away entirely, lying several paces from the rest of him. The other still clutched the carved symbol of the gods, cracked but intact.
Her fingers curled slowly at her side.
"They were supposed to protect us," she whispered, though no one stood close enough to hear.
Her faith had not broken. Not yet. It trembled, like a flame in wind, but it still burned.
She walked deeper into the capital.
The palace rose at the city's heart, or what remained of it. Once a marvel of white stone and high spires, it now resembled a carcass picked clean. Entire sections of the outer walls had collapsed inward, burying courtyards beneath rubble. The main tower still stood—but only barely—its upper half burned black, its windows hollow and sightless.
Seraphina slowed as she approached.
Each step grew heavier.
This was where her mother had walked beside her during festivals, correcting her posture with a gentle tap of two fingers. This was where her father's laughter used to echo during council feasts, booming and unrestrained despite the presence of nobles who feared his authority. This was where she had been born, where she had learned to read, to pray, to rule.
The palace gates had been torn apart, not forced open but erased. The stone around them had melted and reformed, warped into shapes that made her stomach turn. Whatever power had struck this place had done so without hesitation—and without resistance.
Seraphina crossed the threshold.
Inside, the grand hall lay in ruin.
The ceiling had collapsed, allowing pale daylight to spill through in fractured beams. Dust drifted through the air like falling snow, settling on shattered columns and overturned benches. The long table where her father once presided over council meetings had been split cleanly in two, as though cut by an invisible blade.
She moved toward it slowly, her breath shallow.
Memories pressed against her mind unbidden—her father's voice, calm and steady as he explained the weight of a crown. Her mother's quiet smile from the shadows, watching them both.
Gone.
Her boots struck something solid. She looked down.
A circlet lay half-buried in ash, its gold dulled by soot. One of the gemstones had cracked, spiderweb fractures crawling through the blue surface. Her mother's.
Seraphina knelt.
For a long moment, she simply stared at it. Then, carefully, she reached out and lifted the circlet from the floor. Ash smeared her fingers. The metal was cold—too cold.
Her breath hitched, just once.
She closed her eyes.
The image of fire rose behind them immediately. Not wild, not roaring as she had imagined in her nightmares—but focused. Bright. Almost… radiant. Light that burned instead of warmed. Light that left nothing behind.
"Astaroth," she breathed, the name heavy with poison.
The Dark Sovereign.
The monster the world whispered about in fear-filled prayers. The shadow blamed for a hundred ruined lands. The enemy of the gods themselves.
Hatred settled into her chest, solid and sharp, eclipsing the grief just enough to let her breathe.
She stood, clutching the circlet against her heart.
"I will kill you," she said to the empty hall. Her voice did not shake. "I swear it."
Above her, far beyond the broken roof, something shifted in the sky.
A faint glow lingered behind the clouds—soft, pale, almost holy. It should have been comforting.
Instead, it made her skin crawl.
Seraphina did not notice.
She turned deeper into the palace, into the shadows where the truth still slept.
The corridor beyond the grand hall narrowed into a passage Seraphina had walked a thousand times in her youth. Once, it had smelled of polished stone and incense carried from the inner sanctum. Now it breathed dust. Each step stirred fine ash from the floor, the sound of it whispering beneath her boots like the hush of a crowd before judgment is passed.
The walls bore scorch marks that did not spread like fire should. They curved. Bent. The blackened stone traced deliberate arcs, as though guided by an unseen hand that knew exactly where to touch and where to spare. Tapestries—depicting victories long past, treaties sealed in gold-threaded script—hung in tatters, their edges cleanly singed rather than torn.
Seraphina paused before one of them.
The sigil of House Lumeria had once dominated the cloth: a rising sun clasped by a crown of lilies. The center was gone now, burned away in a near-perfect circle. Only the border remained, the lilies curling inward as if grasping for something that no longer existed.
Her jaw tightened.
She moved on.
The palace was too quiet. Not the peaceful silence of late night when servants slept and guards murmured at their posts—but the hollow stillness left behind when a place has been abandoned by life itself. Even the echoes felt reluctant, dying quickly as though ashamed to linger.
At the end of the corridor, the doors to the throne room stood ajar.
Seraphina stopped.
This room—more than any other—had been the heart of her kingdom. The place where justice had been pronounced, where alliances were forged and broken, where her father had worn the crown not as an ornament but as a burden borne willingly.
She placed one hand against the door.
The wood crumbled beneath her fingers.
She drew her hand back sharply, staring at the gray dust clinging to her skin. The doors had not been smashed or splintered. They had simply… ceased. Reduced to nothing more than memory and powder.
Swallowing, she stepped through.
The throne room had been gutted.
Sunlight streamed in through the shattered dome above, illuminating a ruin of marble and broken banners. The columns lining the hall had collapsed inward, some shattered entirely, others leaning like wounded giants frozen in the moment of their fall. The raised dais at the far end still stood, though cracked down the middle.
And upon it—
The throne.
Or what remained of it.
The seat of kings had been carved from white stone veined with gold, its back rising in elegant curves shaped by generations of artisans. Now it was split, cleaved from top to bottom. The crown-shaped crest above it lay in two pieces at its base, the stone fractured with unnatural smoothness.
Seraphina walked toward it as though pulled by gravity itself.
Each step felt like trespass.
She remembered kneeling here during her naming ceremony, her hands small and trembling as her father's voice echoed through the hall. She remembered standing beside him years later, listening as petitioners spoke, learning how power was meant to be wielded—not with cruelty, but with restraint.
Now there was only ruin.
She climbed the steps to the dais slowly.
The air felt different here—thicker, faintly metallic. A lingering warmth clung to the stone, as if the fire had not entirely departed. Seraphina knelt before the shattered throne and reached out, brushing her fingers along the crack that split it.
Smooth.
Too smooth.
Her stomach turned.
No blade could have done this. No siege weapon, no earthly flame. Whatever force had struck this place had not struggled. It had not raged.
It had judged.
She drew back, folding her hands into fists.
"The Dark Sovereign," she whispered again, forcing the name to fit the shape of the destruction. "It had to be you."
The stories said he wielded powers stolen from forbidden depths. That he bent darkness itself to his will. That he despised the gods and sought to tear down everything they had built.
It made sense.
She needed it to make sense.
A faint sound reached her then—not a voice, but the whisper of fabric disturbed by movement. Seraphina stiffened, hand flying instinctively to the dagger at her hip. The blade slid free with a muted rasp, its steel catching the light.
"Who's there?" Her voice echoed weakly.
No answer came.
She followed the sound to the right side of the hall, where a fallen column had created a narrow passage into the private chambers beyond. The royal wing.
Her breath shortened.
This was where her parents' rooms lay.
She hesitated only a moment before moving forward.
The passage was partially blocked by rubble, forcing her to squeeze sideways between broken stone. Her cloak snagged on a jagged edge, tearing slightly, but she barely noticed. Her focus narrowed until nothing existed beyond the steady thrum of her pulse and the growing weight in her chest.
The door to her parents' chambers stood open.
Inside, the room was dim.
The windows were intact here, the glass unbroken, though coated with a thin layer of ash that dulled the light to a pale haze. The large bed against the far wall had collapsed inward, its canopy burned away. Personal effects lay scattered across the floor—jewelry boxes overturned, parchment reduced to brittle fragments, furniture charred but not destroyed.
Seraphina stepped inside.
Her gaze caught on a small table near the window.
A chessboard rested there, its pieces arranged mid-game. Black and white figures stood frozen in conflict, untouched by flame. Her father had favored the black pieces. Her mother the white.
The board had not been disturbed.
Seraphina's breath caught painfully in her throat.
She crossed the room and sank slowly to her knees beside the table, the dagger slipping from her fingers to clatter softly against the stone. She reached out, touching one of the white pieces—a knight—then stopped.
It was warm.
Not from recent fire. From something else. Something that lingered.
Her hands trembled.
They had been here. Not long before it happened.
Her mother's laughter echoed in her memory, soft and low as she teased her father about reckless strategies. Her father's answering smile, weary but fond.
Gone.
The weight of it crashed over her all at once.
Seraphina bowed her head, pressing her forehead against the cold stone floor. Her shoulders shook, though no sound escaped her lips. The grief was too vast, too complete, to be expressed in tears alone.
When she lifted her head again, her eyes were dry.
And burning.
"I will remember this," she whispered, not to the room, but to the world itself. "Every stone. Every scar."
She rose to her feet, retrieving her dagger, and turned toward the adjoining chamber—the private sanctum where her parents prayed.
The door was closed.
She placed her hand against it.
For a heartbeat, she felt nothing.
Then—
A faint, unsettling sensation brushed her senses. Not darkness. Not malice.
Light.
Clean. Pure. Almost gentle.
Her breath faltered.
The gods were watching.
That belief steadied her, even as unease crept along her spine. Whatever had happened here, whatever force had torn her world apart, the gods had allowed her to survive.
For a reason.
She pushed the door open.
The prayer chamber had been spared the worst of the ruin.
That was the first thing Seraphina noticed as she stepped inside.
Unlike the rest of the palace, the walls here still stood unbroken, their pale stone unmarred by cracks or collapse. Tall candles lined the circular room, most of them melted down to thick stubs, their wax pooled and hardened like frozen tears. The air smelled faintly of incense—old, stale, but unmistakable.
It should have been comforting.
Instead, it made her chest ache.
This room had been sacred ground. A place where her parents came not as rulers, but as believers. Where her mother knelt in quiet devotion, fingers interlaced, eyes closed in serene trust. Where her father bowed his head with the weight of a kingdom heavy upon his shoulders, asking the gods for wisdom rather than victory.
Seraphina took a slow step forward.
The faint sensation she had felt beyond the door intensified here. A subtle pressure against her skin, like standing too close to a hearth—not burning, but insistent. Light lingered in the room, though no source could be seen. It clung to the stone in a way that felt… deliberate.
Wrong.
Her gaze was drawn to the center of the chamber.
The altar still stood.
Fashioned from polished white marble, it bore the carved sigils of the pantheon—symbols of protection, justice, mercy. A shallow basin rested atop it, once filled with blessed water.
The basin was empty now.
Bone-dry.
Seraphina approached slowly, her steps measured, each one echoing softly against the curved walls. As she neared the altar, she noticed something that made her stop short.
There were marks on the floor.
Not footprints. Not drag marks.
Kneeling impressions.
Two of them.
Her breath caught.
They had prayed.
Here. At the end.
Her fingers curled tightly around the hilt of her dagger, knuckles whitening as her mind filled in what her eyes could not see. She imagined her mother kneeling first, hands folded, lips moving in whispered pleas. Her father beside her, tall even in prayer, his head bowed low.
Trusting.
Believing.
Seraphina swallowed hard.
"Why?" The word slipped from her lips before she could stop it.
The gods had been worshipped here for centuries. This chamber had been consecrated by bloodlines older than most kingdoms. If any place in Lumeria should have been safe, it was this one.
And yet—
Her gaze fell to the far wall.
A symbol had been burned into the stone.
It was circular, etched with lines of radiant geometry that overlapped and intersected in precise patterns. The stone around it had not blackened. It gleamed faintly, as though polished by unseen hands.
A holy sigil.
Seraphina felt a chill crawl up her spine.
She knew this mark. Every child of the realm did. It was taught in temples, painted in manuscripts, worn by knights of the Light Order.
A sign of divine judgment.
Her heart pounded.
Why would such a symbol be here?
She stepped closer, lifting one trembling hand. As her fingers hovered inches from the mark, warmth radiated outward—not the harsh heat of flame, but something softer. Almost kind.
Her hand recoiled instinctively.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," she whispered.
The stories said the Dark Sovereign defiled holy places. That he shattered temples and mocked the gods. That darkness recoiled from consecrated ground.
But this chamber had not been defiled.
It had been claimed.
A sound broke the silence then—a faint metallic clink.
Seraphina turned sharply.
Near the base of the altar, something lay half-hidden beneath a fallen cloth. She crossed the distance quickly, heart racing, and knelt to pull the fabric aside.
Her breath left her in a shudder.
A ring.
Her father's signet ring lay on the stone floor, its engraved crest scorched but recognizable. The band had been warped slightly, as though exposed to intense heat—but not melted. Preserved.
Chosen.
Seraphina picked it up with both hands, as if afraid it might vanish if she touched it too lightly. The metal was warm, just like the chess piece had been.
They had been alive when the fire came.
Her vision blurred for the first time since she entered the palace.
She pressed the ring against her chest, her breath breaking despite her effort to remain composed. The grief surged anew, heavier than before—not a wave, but a crushing weight that threatened to fold her inward.
Her parents had believed.
In the gods.
In justice.
In the order of the world.
And the world had answered with annihilation.
Her sorrow hardened into something else.
Resolve.
Seraphina rose slowly to her feet, the ring clenched in her fist. She looked once more at the holy sigil burned into the wall, memorizing its shape, its angles, its cold perfection.
"This will not be forgotten," she said, her voice steady now. "Not by me."
If the Dark Sovereign had dared to bring his blasphemy even here—if he had mocked the gods within their own sanctuary—then there could be no mercy.
She would become what the world needed her to be.
A blade.
A reckoning.
She turned away from the altar and left the prayer chamber without another glance, carrying the weight of her loss and the certainty of her hatred with her.
Outside, the sky had begun to change.
The clouds parted just enough to allow a single beam of pale light to fall upon the ruined palace, illuminating the broken towers and scorched stone in an almost reverent glow. From a distance, it might have looked like a blessing.
Seraphina did not see it that way.
She stepped out into the courtyard and lifted her gaze to the heavens, her expression cold and unwavering.
"I will hunt him," she vowed softly. "No matter how long it takes. No matter what I must become."
The light above did not answer.
But somewhere, far beyond her sight, something watched.
And waited.
The courtyard beyond the palace lay open to the sky, a wide expanse of shattered stone and scorched earth where fountains once sang and nobles once gathered beneath flowering trees. Now the marble tiles were cracked and blackened, split apart by the same precise force that had unmade the rest of the capital. The central fountain had collapsed inward, its basin fractured, its statue reduced to a headless silhouette frozen mid-blessing.
Seraphina stepped into the open air.
The wind met her at once, colder here than within the palace walls, carrying with it the faint scent of smoke from distant ruins. It tugged at her hair, loose strands brushing against her cheeks, and for a fleeting moment she remembered running across this very courtyard as a child, laughter echoing as her governess scolded her for improper behavior.
That memory felt like it belonged to someone else.
She crossed the courtyard slowly, her gaze lifting again and again to the broken towers that ringed the palace grounds. Guards had once stood watch there, banners snapping in the wind, armor gleaming beneath the sun. Now the towers were empty. Silent.
At the far edge of the courtyard, near what had once been the servants' entrance, she saw movement.
Seraphina's hand went to her dagger.
A figure emerged from behind a fallen wall—thin, unsteady, wrapped in a soot-stained cloak. Then another. And another. Survivors.
They froze when they saw her, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and disbelief. For a heartbeat, none of them spoke.
Then one of them—a woman with ash-gray hair and a burn scar along her jaw—dropped to her knees.
"Your Highness," she whispered, her voice breaking.
The sound shattered something inside Seraphina.
She moved toward them without thinking, lowering her weapon. The group was small—no more than a dozen souls. A palace cook she recognized. A stable boy missing two fingers. An old steward who had served her family longer than she had been alive.
They looked at her as if she were a ghost.
"You're alive," the steward said hoarsely. "By the gods… you're alive."
Seraphina nodded once. Her throat was too tight to speak.
They gathered around her cautiously, reverently, as though afraid she might vanish if they drew too close. Their eyes searched her face, lingering on the dirt and ash, on the tear in her cloak, on the ring she now wore on a chain around her neck.
"What happened?" she asked finally, forcing the words past the weight in her chest.
The woman with the scar swallowed. "Fire," she said. "Light. It came from the sky, Your Highness. It swept through the city like judgment itself."
Light.
Seraphina's fingers curled slowly.
"There were knights," the stable boy added. "Or—no. Not knights. Just… shadows in the brightness. We couldn't see their faces."
Another voice cut in, trembling with fury. "It was him. The Dark Sovereign. Everyone knows it."
A murmur of agreement rippled through the group.
"Astaroth," someone spat. "Only a demon would do this."
Seraphina closed her eyes briefly.
The name settled into her bones, heavy and familiar now, shaped by grief and rage and certainty. The world already had its answer. Its villain. Its story.
She opened her eyes again and met their gazes.
"Yes," she said quietly. "It was him."
The lie tasted like ash.
But it held them together.
The survivors straightened at her words, something like purpose igniting behind their fear. Hatred was easier to carry than confusion. A single enemy was easier than the thought that the world itself might be wrong.
"We'll rebuild," the steward said, though his voice shook. "If you live, then Lumeria lives."
Seraphina looked past them, toward the broken city beyond the palace walls. Smoke still rose in thin columns from distant districts. The capital was a wound that would not heal quickly—if it healed at all.
"Not yet," she said. "You must leave this place. Gather anyone you can find. Go east, beyond the river. There are still villages untouched by the fire."
They hesitated.
"And you, Your Highness?" the woman asked.
Seraphina's gaze hardened.
"I have a vow to fulfill."
Understanding flickered across their faces, followed by something like awe. Slowly, one by one, they bowed.
She did not stop them.
When they had gone, disappearing through the shattered archways, Seraphina stood alone once more in the courtyard. The palace loomed behind her, a broken monument to everything she had lost.
She reached up and closed her fingers around the ring at her throat.
"Wait for me," she murmured—not to the palace, but to the memories within it. "I will return when this world has paid its debt."
She turned away from the ruins and began walking toward the city gates, toward exile and survival and the long road ahead.
Above her, the pale light in the clouds slowly faded, leaving the sky gray and unremarkable once more.
The capital of Lumeria stood silent behind her.
And far away, beyond kingdoms and prayers, the lie that would shape the age settled deeper into history
Seraphina did not look back as she left the capital.
The road beyond the shattered gates stretched eastward in a long, broken line, its stones cracked and darkened where heat had passed over them like a blade. On either side, fields once green with grain lay flattened and blackened, the stalks reduced to brittle husks that crumbled beneath her boots. Here and there, the skeletons of wagons lay overturned, their wheels warped, their contents scattered and burned beyond recognition.
She walked alone.
The silence followed her, broken only by the soft crunch of ash beneath her steps and the distant cry of carrion birds circling places she refused to approach. The city behind her felt like a weight pressing between her shoulders, an invisible chain binding her to what she had been.
Princess.
Daughter.
Heir.
Each title felt fragile now, stripped of meaning by fire.
By the time the sun reached its highest point, her legs ached and her throat burned with thirst. She stopped near the remnants of a roadside shrine—a small stone alcove built centuries ago for travelers seeking blessing before entering the capital. The figure carved within had lost its face, worn away by time and scorched by recent destruction.
Seraphina knelt before it anyway.
She removed the ring from beneath her cloak and set it carefully on the stone, bowing her head. For a moment, she allowed herself the illusion of prayer—of speaking words that might still be heard.
"Guide me," she whispered. "Give me strength. Let justice be done."
The shrine did not answer.
When she rose, she left the ring where it lay only long enough to steady herself. Then she took it back, slipping it once more around her neck.
Faith, she realized, did not mean waiting.
It meant action.
By dusk, she reached the river.
The water ran dark beneath the fading light, carrying ash and debris from upstream. Seraphina followed its course southward, keeping to the treeline, avoiding the open road where patrols—or worse—might pass. Rumors traveled faster than armies, and already the name of Astaroth clung to the destruction like a brand.
She heard it whispered before she ever heard it spoken clearly.
In a village half-burned but not destroyed, she passed near a group of refugees huddled around a fire. Their voices were low, fearful, as they spoke of a shadow that walked with flame, of a demon sovereign who defied the gods themselves.
"—they say he smiled as the city burned—"
"—no mercy, none at all—"
Seraphina's hands tightened around the straps of her pack.
They did not know her. To them, she was just another wanderer, cloaked and weary. She did not correct them. Each word they spoke hardened her resolve further.
If the world believed this lie so completely, then it would not resist when she turned herself into its instrument.
She traveled for days.
The land grew wilder the farther she went—forests thicker, paths narrower, signs of civilization fewer and farther between. She slept beneath trees, wrapped in her cloak, dagger within reach. Hunger became a dull ache she learned to ignore. Pain became a teacher.
On the fourth night, she reached a ruined watchtower overlooking the river's bend. Its upper levels had collapsed long ago, but the lower chamber still stood, its stone walls offering shelter from the wind.
She lit no fire.
Instead, she sat in the darkness, back against cold stone, and drew her dagger across her palm.
The pain was sharp, immediate. A thin line of blood welled up, dark against her skin.
"I swear," she said softly, pressing her bleeding hand to the stone floor, leaving a faint mark behind. "By my blood and by my loss."
She named the oath aloud, each word deliberate.
She would hunt the Dark Sovereign.
She would strip him of his power.
She would make him answer for every life taken in Lumeria's fall.
When she finished, she bound her hand tightly and leaned back against the wall, exhaustion finally claiming her.
Sleep came fitfully.
In her dreams, she walked again through the burning palace—but this time, the fire shone too brightly, and when she tried to look at it directly, her eyes burned. Voices echoed from everywhere and nowhere, praising justice, praising light, praising destruction done in the name of order.
She woke before dawn, heart racing, breath shallow.
The dream clung to her like smoke.
She rose, shouldered her pack, and continued east.
Far away, in places she could not yet imagine, swords were being forged and prayers spoken. Orders prepared. Heroes were praised.
And somewhere beyond the edge of the world she knew, a name was being celebrated as the light that would save them all.
Seraphina walked on, unaware that the truth she hunted lay not in shadow—but in radiance.
The forest east of the river was older than any kingdom.
Its trees rose tall and close together, their canopies woven so thickly that daylight reached the ground only in broken fragments. Moss clung to stone and bark alike, and the air smelled of damp earth and rot—life feeding on what had died before it. The road vanished here, reduced to little more than a memory traced by bent grass and half-buried stones.
Seraphina welcomed the cover.
She moved cautiously, each step deliberate, senses stretched thin. The wilderness did not care that she had once worn silk or spoken commands that moved armies. Here, survival was the only authority.
By the second day within the forest, she realized she was being followed.
It was not the clumsy pursuit of bandits or the heavy presence of soldiers. This was quieter. Smarter. Branches disturbed where no wind blew. Footsteps that never quite revealed themselves.
Seraphina did not draw her dagger.
Instead, she altered her pace, slowed her breathing, and let her stride grow careless. She allowed her shoulders to sag, her posture to soften—no longer a princess, no longer alert prey, but a tired traveler nearing her limit.
The forest watched.
When the attack came, it was sudden and brutal.
A figure lunged from the undergrowth, a blade flashing in the dim light. Seraphina twisted instinctively, the edge of the knife grazing her cloak instead of her ribs. She fell back, rolling across the forest floor as dirt and leaves filled her mouth.
She came up with her dagger in hand.
Her attacker hesitated.
He was young—barely older than she was—with a scarred cheek and eyes sharp with desperation rather than malice. His clothes were patched and stained, his sword nicked and poorly balanced.
A survivor.
Not a monster.
"Drop it," Seraphina said, her voice steady despite her racing heart.
The boy laughed weakly. "You're alone," he said. "You won't last long out here."
She advanced one step.
"Neither will you if you don't listen."
Something in her tone made him falter. His grip loosened. The sword slipped from his fingers and struck a rock with a dull clang.
Seraphina did not kill him.
She disarmed him fully, binding his wrists with cord from her pack and forcing him to sit. Only then did she allow herself to breathe.
"Why?" she asked. "Why attack?"
He looked away. "Because everyone else does," he muttered. "Because if you hesitate, you die."
The words struck deeper than she expected.
She cut his bonds after a long moment, tossing him a strip of dried meat and pointing west. "Go," she said. "Before someone worse finds you."
He stared at her as though she had offered him something priceless.
"You'll die," he said again, softer now.
"Maybe," she replied.
He vanished into the trees.
Seraphina stood alone once more, hands shaking—not from fear, but from realization. She had survived the encounter not through strength, but through instinct and restraint.
That would not always be enough.
Two days later, she found what she was looking for.
The ruins lay half-swallowed by the forest: an old keep long abandoned, its walls cracked but standing, its courtyard choked with vines. Smoke rose faintly from within.
She approached openly.
A blade pressed against her throat before she crossed the threshold.
"State your business," a voice growled.
"Teach me to fight," Seraphina said.
Silence followed.
Then laughter—dry, humorless.
An older man stepped into view, his armor mismatched and worn, his posture rigid with old injuries rather than weakness. His eyes assessed her quickly, missing nothing.
"You?" he scoffed. "You'll break."
She met his gaze without flinching. "I've already broken."
Something shifted.
He lowered the blade.
They did not speak of her name or her past. He did not ask why she wanted to learn. Only whether she would endure.
Training began before sunrise the next day.
She learned how to fall without shattering bone. How to hold a blade so it became an extension of her arm. How pain sharpened focus rather than dulling it. Her hands blistered. Her muscles screamed. She bled.
She did not stop.
At night, as she lay exhausted beneath the ruined keep's roof, she heard news carried by travelers and mercenaries passing through.
They spoke of fear spreading across the kingdoms.
Of darkness gathering.
Of the gods preparing a champion.
A hero.
They spoke the title with reverence, with hope.
Seraphina listened in silence, her fingers closing around the ring at her throat.
If the gods had chosen a hero, then she would become something else.
Not light.
Not salvation.
Something sharper.
Something willing to be hated.
The forest whispered around her as she drifted into uneasy sleep, and far away, the lie that had destroyed her life continued to grow—untouched, unquestioned, radiant.
Time lost its meaning within the ruined keep.
Days were no longer measured by dates or duties, but by pain and repetition. By the slow strengthening of muscle and the steady erosion of hesitation. Seraphina woke before dawn each morning to the sound of steel striking stone, the old mercenary already moving through drills that had once belonged to soldiers half his age.
He did not call her by name.
He called her again.
Again—when her grip faltered.
Again—when her stance collapsed under fatigue.
Again—when she fell and scraped her palms raw against the dirt.
She learned quickly that anger was a poor substitute for control.
Her hatred burned hot, but it scattered her focus, made her movements wild. The mercenary punished that mercilessly, striking her blade aside, knocking her to the ground, forcing her to rise and try once more.
"Steel doesn't care why you swing it," he said once, his voice flat as rain-soaked stone. "It only answers how."
So she learned how.
How to breathe through pain until it became background noise.
How to watch an opponent's shoulders instead of their weapon.
How to move without sound, without wasted effort.
Her body changed.
The softness of courtly life hardened into something leaner, stronger. Her hands grew calloused, her arms corded with muscle earned inch by inch. Bruises layered over bruises, yellowing and fading only to be replaced by fresh ones.
At night, when exhaustion dragged her into sleep, the dreams returned.
The palace.
The altar.
The light that burned without mercy.
She woke each time with her jaw clenched and her hand curled around the ring at her throat, as if it alone tethered her to who she had been.
Travelers came and went through the keep, drawn by the mercenary's reputation. They brought news without realizing it.
Of villages fortifying their borders.
Of priests preaching vigilance.
Of a darkness named and cursed across taverns and temples alike.
"Astaroth," they said, voices dropping even in firelit rooms. "The Dark Sovereign stirs again."
Seraphina listened from the shadows, sharpening her blade.
Each retelling added another layer to the legend. Another exaggeration. Another atrocity attributed to a name that had become convenient—a single shape into which all fear could be poured.
She did not question it.
Not yet.
One evening, after a particularly brutal spar that left her ribs aching and her breath shallow, she sat alone on the keep's broken battlements, watching the forest swallow the last of the sun. The sky bled crimson and gold through the trees, beautiful in a way that felt almost obscene.
The mercenary joined her without a word, lowering himself onto the stone beside her.
"You could leave," he said eventually. "You're ready enough to survive."
Seraphina did not look at him. "Survival isn't my goal."
He studied her profile, the set of her jaw, the scars already beginning to mark her skin. "Revenge, then."
"Yes."
He nodded once, as if confirming something he had known from the beginning. "That road doesn't end."
"I know."
Silence settled between them, not uncomfortable, but heavy with things unsaid.
Far beyond the forest, bells rang in distant cities—celebrations, proclamations. A name was being lifted higher and higher, carried on hymns and hope alike. A champion of light, blessed by the gods, rising to stand against the encroaching dark.
Seraphina did not hear the bells.
She watched the sun disappear and imagined a throne split in two.
When she rose, her movements were smooth, controlled. Purpose carved into every step.
The girl who had walked through the ashes of her kingdom still lived within her—but she was no longer alone.
She was being reforged.
And Chapter One had not yet finished telling her beginning.
The first death did not come with drama.
There was no declaration, no drawn-out struggle beneath storm-dark skies. It happened on a gray morning, when the forest lay heavy with mist and the world felt muffled, as though even sound had grown cautious.
Seraphina was returning from the river with a waterskin slung over her shoulder when she sensed the presence behind her.
Not a threat at first—just a disturbance. A shift in the rhythm of the forest that no longer escaped her notice. She slowed, letting her steps grow uneven, her posture careless, the role familiar now.
The mercenary had taught her well.
The man stepped onto the path ahead of her, sword already drawn. He was broad-shouldered, his armor scavenged from different sources, his face set in the hard lines of someone who had learned to take before being taken from.
"Leave the pack," he said. "And the blade."
Seraphina stopped.
She raised her eyes slowly, meeting his gaze. There was fear there, buried beneath confidence. Desperation. Hunger.
"I don't want trouble," she said.
He laughed. "Neither do I."
He lunged.
Training took over where thought ended.
Seraphina moved without hesitation, her body responding faster than her mind. She sidestepped the initial strike, her dagger flashing up to deflect the blow just enough to throw him off balance. He cursed, swinging again, wide and sloppy.
She stepped inside his guard.
The blade found its mark.
It was over quickly.
When the man fell back into the dirt, the forest seemed to exhale. Birds scattered from nearby branches. The mist shifted, closing in around them.
Seraphina stood frozen, her breath coming too fast, too shallow. She stared at the man on the ground—not at his face, but at the stillness of him. At the absence where movement should have been.
Her hand trembled.
She lowered herself slowly, checking for signs of life even though she knew there would be none. The mercenary's lessons echoed in her mind, cold and practical.
Make sure.
There was nothing to make sure of.
She sat back on her heels, the dagger slipping from her fingers to the earth. Her chest felt tight, as though something inside her had been bound too tightly and left there.
This was different.
Not grief. Not rage.
Weight.
She closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered—not because she believed he deserved mercy, but because some part of her still needed to say the words.
When she rose, she did not look back.
She returned to the keep in silence, her movements slower, her thoughts distant. The mercenary knew the moment he saw her.
He said nothing.
That night, she washed the blade carefully, her hands steady now, the water running clear. She wrapped the dagger and set it beside her bedroll, then lay down and stared at the dark ceiling until sleep claimed her.
The dreams did not come.
Morning arrived pale and indifferent.
Seraphina woke with the same purpose she had carried the day before—but something within her had shifted. A line crossed. A door closed quietly behind her.
She stood on the battlements once more, looking out over the forest, the world stretching vast and unknowable beyond it.
Somewhere, far away, a hero was being crowned in light and song.
Somewhere else, a villain's name was being carved deeper into history.
And here, at the edge of ruin and resolve, Seraphina Lumeria became something she could never undo.
Not yet a legend.
Not yet a weapon.
But no longer innocent.