The blue mist beneath the floor thickened, and a low vibration rippled through the walls, as if the stone itself were remembering how to breathe.
Lyss, Caelia, Velka, and Neyra felt the weight of reality loosen around them: sand, light, time—all began to unravel into thin strands that swirled like silk.
The sanctuary opened like a dream.
And before them, the ancient world awakened.
Long before magic had a name,
when the sky knew no prayers
and men believed themselves masters of the earth,
the world was already cracking within.
There were kingdoms without justice,
villages bleeding beneath rusted crowns,
wars fought for hunger and pride.
Balance did not exist—
only the noise of swords and the cries of the innocent.
Yet among all that ruin, thirteen women walked unknowingly,
carrying in their souls the weight of what the world had forgotten to feel.
Magic saw them first—
not with eyes, but with emotion.
It followed them, listened, waited.
For within each of them burned a spark so fierce
that even the universe longed to learn her name.
The Shadows felt the vision melt into their breathing.
The air smelled of rain and ashes—of life before it became history.
And as the images took form, Lyss understood—with equal parts fear and wonder—
that they were not being told a story.
They were living it.
The memory burned alive.
The air of the sanctuary dissolved into a storm of black sand and smoke.
From within that chaos, a figure emerged—a woman almost identical to Lyss, except for her eyes.
Lyssandra’s were not the eyes of a soldier nor of a human being: they were lit embers, a wildfire locked behind pupils trembling with contained fury.
She dragged a broken sword, carving a red trail across the ground.
Her breath was fire; her skin, crusted with blood and ash.
Behind her, five survivors—mere silhouettes—stumbled among the wreckage of melted armor and lances stuck into the earth like twisted crosses.
Lyss recognized her before anyone spoke.
Not with her mind, but with her marrow.
Every step that woman took hurt as if Lyss herself were walking in her place.
Her chest burned. Her jaw clenched.
And when Lyssandra fell to her knees and struck the earth, Lyss felt her own fists crashing against the sand.
—Two hundred marched with me!— Lyssandra roared.
Her voice shattered the air like a storm.
The ground answered: a fine crack, a tremor that made the torches flicker.
—And only five return! Five! And still they call me a hero!
An old man reached out to her, but she swatted him away with a blow that raised a cloud of dust.
—Don’t say my name —she spat—. Don’t you dare speak it!
One of the men, the youngest, tried to explain between sobs:
—Captain… there were thousands of them, we couldn’t—
She turned toward him, her gaze open like a wound.
—We had to! Every single one of them died believing in me!
The wind roared. The embers of the fires lifted, swirling around her body.
Her rage didn’t burn—it devoured.
Lyss, watching from the present, tasted metal on her tongue.
Her fists trembled. Her teeth pressed so hard a thin thread of blood escaped her lips.
It was her fury.
Her wrath.
Not from now—from centuries ago.
Lyssandra inhaled deeply. Her shadow stretched, quivering.
—If the gods won’t bring justice, I will —she said, her voice low, fractured, sacred.
The earth trembled. The ash rose.
The air smelled of iron and promise.
She turned the broken sword and lifted it toward the sky as if to challenge the heavens themselves.
—Two hundred names —she whispered—.
Each one will be a fire.
Each fire, an answer.
And she left, a path of smoldering earth following her steps.
Lyss trembled, struggling to breathe, but the air refused to obey.
Her heart didn’t beat—it thundered.
It was as if the echo of that ancient vow still vibrated inside her, begging for a throat to scream again.
The fire and ash faded away.
Lyss felt the air change, and suddenly she was somewhere else: a small village beneath a gray sky.
The smell was not of war, but of rot.
Collapsed houses, streets turned to muddy trenches, bodies covered with damp rags.
And there, among the sick and the dying, a woman with chestnut hair tied in a messy knot moved tirelessly, a bowl of water in one hand and a soaked cloth in the other.
Ariane.
She had no armor, no jewels, no titles.
Only cracked hands and the eyes of someone who refuses to surrender.
—Don’t wear yourself out, woman —an old man croaked from where he sat against a wall, his voice a fading breath—. Everyone here is already doomed.
Ariane looked at him and offered him a sip of water.
—Maybe —she said calmly—. But if I stop trying, then the doom will be mine too.
The man coughed, a bitter laugh breaking through the blood.
—Hope? You can’t eat that.
—No —she said, wringing the cloth between her fingers—. But you can breathe it. And while we’re breathing, we’re not lost.
Her voice was steady, without sermons or light.
A common woman, yet every word she spoke weighed more than the prayers dissolving in the air.
At that moment, a boy stumbled into the tent, his leg wrapped in blood-soaked rags.
Ariane caught him before he fell.
—Easy now, little one —she whispered, holding him close.
The boy sobbed, teeth clenched from the pain.
—It hurts… I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to close my eyes…
Ariane knelt, pressing her forehead gently against his.
—You won’t sleep alone —she promised—. Stay with me.
She had no medicine, no miracles —only a clean rag and a steady voice.
But in that place where everything smelled of death, the boy’s crying slowly faded. Not because of magic, but because he believed her.
Lyss felt it like an invisible current: not power, but conviction.
A conviction so warm and stubborn that even the air itself seemed to hold it up.
And in that instant, she understood she was witnessing something greater than a woman tending to her own.
She was witnessing the birth of what the world, centuries later, would come to call Hope.
The air shifted again.
Lyss felt the sand and ash dissolve, replaced by a city gleaming like polished copper under the sun.
Streets overflowing with merchants, perfume, and the voices of those who traded with the same coldness with which they lied.
There, between columns and curtains of silk, a woman walked barefoot, her head held high.
Irhena.
Her robe was simple, but her stride carried something that could not be taught —a rhythm that drew eyes and silenced words.
Not because of beauty—though she had it—but because she wanted something, and no one alive could tell her no.
In the central plaza, nobles and priests argued about taxes and decrees.
Irhena watched from the temple shadows, arms crossed, jaw tight.
Her younger brother, a timid scribe, whispered at her side:
—You shouldn’t be here. Women don’t speak in the council.
She gave him a humorless smile.
—Then someone should start.
The men continued their debate, deaf to anything beyond their own echo.
One of them —the governor— spoke in a heavy, self-assured tone:
—The people can endure a little more hunger if you promise them faith.
Irhena stepped forward.
Her voice cut through the murmur like a blade wrapped in velvet.
—And you can endure a little more shame if it’s served with wine, can’t you?
Silence fell.
A hundred eyes turned toward her.
She did not bow her head.
—Who are you to speak this way? —the governor snarled.
—The one who wants more —she replied—. And that kind of wanting isn’t cured by power or by bread.
Her words were not shouts.
They were promises.
That night, Lyss saw her again, standing alone on the temple’s highest terrace.
Irhena stared at the horizon as if she could devour it.
Between her fingers, she held a broken chain —a relic of something she had once been bound to.
—Desire —she whispered, as though speaking to the wind— is not sin.
Sin is learning to settle.
The breeze played through her dark hair.
And for an instant, Lyss felt that ancient hunger tremble inside her ribs —
the drive to want more, to never stop reaching.
And then she understood why magic had chosen her.
Because the world is not moved by those who have,
but by those who still want.
The vision shifted again.
Lyss found herself beneath a gray sky where ash fell like snow.
The battlefield was a nameless graveyard—splintered spears, torn banners, and bodies that no longer belonged to anyone.
And in the middle of it all, a woman limped forward, dragging a dulled sword that seemed heavier than her own bones.
Mireya.
Her armor was shattered, her face streaked with dust and dried blood, but her eyes still held something the world had long forgotten: humanity.
She fell to her knees beside a trench.
Her breath came in shallow gasps, her chest rising and falling with effort.
Around her, there were no friends, no enemies. Only remnants.
Until a low moan made her turn her head.
A few steps away, between two bodies, lay an enemy soldier—young, pale, his abdomen torn open by a lance.
He watched her, afraid.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t fight.
He only breathed, asking for something without words.
Mireya gripped the handle of her sword.
She could have ended it. She could have been “practical,” as the captains always said.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she reached into her satchel.
Pulled out a piece of hardened bread, broke it in half, and set one piece in front of him.
Then, without speaking a word, she sat beside him and bit into her share.
The boy watched her—first in mistrust, then in something close to peace.
They ate in silence.
The wind moved through empty helmets and broken spears.
For a moment, the battlefield stopped being a wound and became… human.
When the young man finally closed his eyes, Mireya covered him with her cloak.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t pray.
She simply sat there, staring at the horizon.
And Lyss felt, with her heart tightened in her chest, how that stillness turned into something larger than war itself:
Compassion.
Magic touched her then—unseen, soft, like a warm hand laid over an old scar.
It did not promise victory.
It promised understanding.
Lyss felt the air grow cold, the warmth of compassion fading away.
The world shifted once more.
A small room appeared—barely lit by a candle on the verge of dying.
Sweat ran down the skin of a woman who hadn’t known rest in days.
Saphine.
She woke with a gasp, her eyes wide in the dark.
Her breathing was shallow, frantic.
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In her chest, the weight of memory crushed her.
On the table lay piles of parchment sealed with her own name—decrees, laws, orders written in the same hand now trembling above them.
Her fingers brushed the ink, and for a heartbeat she thought it was blood.
—“It was only a signature…” —she whispered—. “Just a signature…”
The same dream haunted her every night:
Emaciated children in the streets, barren fields, mothers stirring empty pots to quiet their children’s cries.
All because of a law she had written—one meant to bring order, control, protection.
But order had brought hunger.
And hunger had brought death.
Saphine rose unsteadily, clutching the candle in her shaking hand.
She opened the door and stepped outside.
The night swallowed her; only the soft murmur of weeping survived in the streets.
At the corner, a mother gave her child water, pretending it could fill an empty stomach.
Saphine froze. Her heart pounded in her throat.
She fell to her knees.
—“My mistake has a face…” —she said—. “And it breathes.”
The candle went out.
But a faint glow emerged from her chest, pushing against the dark.
It was not redemption.
It was punishment—
a promise never to forget what remorse teaches:
that sometimes living means carrying every name of those you let die.
And Lyss, watching it unfold, felt the mark of Saphine burn into her own chest.
Because remorse, too, is a way of remembering that one can still feel.
The world trembled around her.
The smoke of war was thick, salty—almost alive.
Zahra.
She moved among the bodies with a broken breath, her chest burning. Her spear weighed as if the very iron wanted to abandon her, but she didn’t let go.
—“I will not fall,” she whispered, though there was no one left to hear.
Mud clung to her boots, mixed with blood she could no longer tell apart as hers or someone else’s.
The enemy kept coming: shouts, footsteps, steel.
One came too close. Zahra turned and pierced through his armor—a clean, perfect motion, born of instinct and fury.
The body dropped. She moved on.
But her legs were trembling.
An arrow.
It struck her shoulder, making her stumble. She didn’t scream. She clenched her jaw and kept moving.
Another arrow sank into her thigh. The pain was a bite to the soul, yet pride held her upright.
A third hit her abdomen. She coughed, bending over. Blood on her lips. She gripped the shaft of her spear until her knuckles turned white.
If I am to die, it will be facing the sun, not on my knees, she thought.
She kept walking.
Her breath was a ragged gasp.
The sky seemed to melt, the shapes of her enemies warping, faceless. She no longer knew if they were men or ghosts—only that she would not yield.
A fourth arrow sliced the air and struck her right arm. Her weapon fell, hitting the ground with a hollow sound.
The soldiers closed in.
Zahra raised her head—eyes burning, jaw locked, spine unbent.
Pride was stronger than flesh.
A faint, bloodstained smile curved her lips.
She spat at the nearest soldier.
—“You think you’ve won?” she rasped, her voice shattered but still sharp. “You know nothing of my cause.”
The man hesitated—just for a heartbeat—before striking her with the butt of his weapon.
The blow dimmed her sight.
Zahra collapsed, but even in her fall she did not yield: her body dropped upright, her expression defiant, the fire in her gaze still alive.
Silence followed.
And within that silence, Lyss felt her own chest ignite.
The pride of that woman—that unyielding, tearless pride—had passed through her skin like a living current.
For an instant, she could swear she was breathing through the same lungs.
And she understood that even this emotion, fierce and unforgiving, was its own form of love.
Then a camp burned with dying fires.
Elena.
She walked among the shadows, her cloak in tatters, her armor rusted with blood. The wounded twisted in fevered sleep; the living looked like corpses waiting for their turn.
The wind carried the scent of defeat —sweet and rotten.
Inside her tent, she found only a broken table and a half-burned map.
Upon it, a name haunted her like a curse:
Lyssandra.
The messenger’s voice still echoed in her skull.
“She took the southern flank. No survivors.”
Nothing more. Nothing needed.
Elena had seen that fury before.
She knew what it meant to face those burning eyes and understand that there was no prayer strong enough to hold them back.
She fell to her knees, the air ripped from her lungs.
No tears came.
Desperation gave her no release, only a hollow widening beneath her ribs.
—“Why her?”—she whispered to the ground.—“Why does she survive? Why does the world choose rage… and not reason?”
No answer came.
Only the wail of a soldier outside, tearing through the night.
Elena stood again, unsteady. Her reflection in the steel showed a face she barely knew—red eyes from exhaustion, skin stained with ash, mouth twisted between hatred and fear.
She pressed the crossbow to her chest.
—“If the gods are fair… let the next arrow be mine.”
But it wasn’t a plea.
It was defiance.
She looked up to the unmoving sky and felt despair take her—not as surrender, but as motion, as a pulse crawling beneath her skin.
If the world would not save her, she would break it herself.
Far away, the wind trembled across the battlefield.
No one could tell if it carried a scream, or just the echo of a woman who refused to fall.
Then...
The room was bathed in the soft light of dawn.
Valenne.
She brushed her hair before the mirror with slow, deliberate strokes, as if each strand were part of a sacred ritual.
The reflection returned a perfect smile —poised, unmoving, practiced.
The door creaked open.
Her sister entered —the queen of that marble kingdom— with the crown gleaming under the sun.
Golden light touched the walls, the tapestries, and for an instant, it caught in Valenne’s eyes as well.
—“Sister,” said the queen, approaching with that sweetness that smelled faintly of distance.—“Father would have been proud.”
Valenne spoke to the reflection, not to her.
—“Of course. It was his dream… and yours as well.”
The queen laughed softly, innocent to the tremor in Valenne’s hand, unaware of how tightly her fingers clutched the brush like a weapon.
—“You’ll come to the council tonight, won’t you?”—her sister asked, turning to adjust the crown before the same mirror.
Valenne’s reflection watched her with different eyes —sharp, cold, carrying a silent vow.
That crown should be mine.
I studied the laws, the prayers, the secrets. I was the one who bore the scars of duty. And yet… she wears it only because she was born first.
Valenne smiled.
—“Of course. I’ll be there,” she whispered.
When her sister left, silence returned.
Her smile faded.
But the reflection’s didn’t.
A green shimmer, poisonous and alive, rippled across the mirror like a fracture of light.
Valenne lifted her hand, resting her palm against the surface.
The glass was cold.
—“One way or another…” she murmured— “what is mine will return to me.”
The reflection nodded.
And when she pulled her hand away, the glow still pulsed softly,
as if the mirror remembered the promise.
Dawn broke gray over the hills.
The village lay silent, broken only by the mournful creak of a windmill turning without wind.
Rhiannon stepped out of her house with a basket in her arms and her back straight, though the weight of exhaustion was heavier than the wood she carried.
The houses around her stood empty. The laughter was gone. The smoke of breakfast fires hadn’t been seen in days.
In the square, the elders watched her with sorrow. One of them spoke, his voice cracked.
—“There’s nothing left, Rhiannon.”
She looked at him the way one looks at a wound that no longer bleeds.
—“As long as I breathe, there’s something left.”
She set the basket down on a table and began distributing hard bread, water, dried herbs that still remembered the warmth of the sun.
Her youngest child appeared at the doorway, eyes dulled by hunger.
Rhiannon knelt before him and took his small hands.
—“Listen, my love,” she whispered. “The world may forget us. But as long as you believe tomorrow exists… it will come.”
He nodded, barely understanding.
She rose to her feet. The wind carried the scent of war, but her gaze didn’t waver from the horizon.
A younger man spoke up, his voice trembling.
—“We can’t stay, Rhiannon. They’ll kill us.”
She drew a deep breath, her chin firm, faith alive beneath her skin.
—“Let them come.” Her voice was a murmur —half prayer, half threat.— “I won’t flee from the place where I buried my promises.”
The sky darkened. A thunderclap split the air.
Rhiannon lifted her eyes, and for a heartbeat, the light seemed to obey her.
Her faith had no temples, no idols.
Only herself.
And that was enough to make the world tremble.
The wind blew like a knife, carrying shards of frost across the dead plain.
Ilse.
Walked slowly, her steps crunching over a thin layer of ice that had swallowed even the fallen bodies.
There was no fire, no blood.
Only silence.
The kind of silence that comes after the impossible.
Her bare hands did not tremble.
Snow gathered on her white hair, on her still face, on lashes that hadn’t blinked in minutes.
Around her, trees, spears, and men alike were frozen in the same breath of deathly cold.
One of them was still alive.
An enemy soldier—barely a boy—with cracked lips and eyes clouded with fear.
—“Help… please…” he whispered.
Ilse knelt beside him.
She said nothing.
Her hand rested over his chest. The air between them turned white, unmoving.
The boy’s trembling ceased. His body went still.
Ilse drew her hand back.
Her fingers, unmarked. Her expression, untouched.
She lifted her gaze to the sky.
The sun, trapped behind pale clouds, could barely pierce its own cold.
—“The world is clearer this way,” she murmured, though no one heard her.—
“No noise. No heat. No mistakes.”
And as she walked on, the ice followed her steps.
Even the wind did not dare contradict her.
Then a council hall was lit by low torches.
The shadows of the ministers danced against the walls, long and distorted.
On the obsidian throne.
Ysara sat upright.
Her fingers interlaced over her knees.
Her eyes, dark as blackened glass, moved calmly from one face to another with predatory precision.
No one spoke without her permission.
No one breathed more than necessary.
—“The convoy never arrived,” one of the captains said, his voice wavering.
—“Because someone talked,” Ysara replied, without raising her voice.
The captain swallowed hard.
She rose. Her velvet-blue cloak trailed across the marble, making a soft, exact sound.
—“Loyalty is not proven with words,” she said, her gaze sweeping across them all. “It’s proven when silence weighs more than gold.”
She walked among them. Every step measured. Every word a restrained sentence.
The air thickened. Fear was palpable—but not blind. It was respect.
—“My distrust keeps this city alive,” she continued, lifting a cup of wine without drinking from it.
“The day I trust… we all die.”
She set the cup down on the table, untouched.
A single drop slid down its edge, hitting the floor with a dry sound.
—“Check every guard, every seal, every prayer. No one sleeps tonight.
If the gods are watching us… let them learn what true survival looks like.”
Her advisors bowed, trembling, and left the hall one by one.
When the last door closed, Ysara allowed herself a breath—faint, almost human.
—“Trust,” she murmured, looking at her reflection in the dark wine, “is just another way to close your eyes.”
Then she extinguished the torches.
One by one.
Until only she and her shadow remained.
A workshop smelled of old oil and cold metal.
Sylja sat before a table cluttered with tiny parts—gears, feathers, shards of glass, scraps of parchment covered in formulas only she could read.
The candle that lit her work was already a warped stump of wax, but she refused to let it die.
—“Something’s missing,” she murmured—for the tenth time that night.
On the floor lay three human statues, perfect, eyeless.
She had carved them with such precision they almost seemed to breathe.
Each one was a different version of herself.
Sylja stood. Her fingers were covered with small, old, repeated cuts.
She touched one of the statues on the cheek.
—“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered. “Not until you’re real.”
A metallic sound broke the silence: a broken clock in the corner struck an hour that did not exist.
She dropped to her knees beside it, frantic, trying to make it work.
Nothing changed.
A single tear—the only one she allowed herself—fell onto the motionless hands.
—“I can’t stop,” she said softly, barely an echo. “If I stop… I stop existing.”
And she kept going.
Over and over again.
Until the candle burned away completely—and even in the dark, her hammer kept sounding.
Obsession never rested.
It merely changed form.
The sky then was a nameless gray.
The rain did not fall; it simply hung in the air, suspended, as if it too refused to touch the earth.
Nerys was digging.
Her hands were caked in mud, her nails broken.
Each shovelful was a word she did not dare to speak.
Her husband’s body lay wrapped in linen beside her, next to two older graves overgrown with dry grass.
Her father.
Her mother.
Now him.
Silence accompanied her like a faithful shadow.
The village lay far behind the hill; no one had come to help. No one dared to look so closely at that much sorrow.
When she finished, she knelt before the grave and pressed her forehead against the freshly turned soil.
She did not pray.
She asked for nothing.
—“I always end up here,” she whispered, her voice breaking without tears. “Digging holes for the ones I love.”
Her fingers trembled, sinking into the mud.
A part of her wanted to sink with it, to vanish among them.
But another part—small, stubborn—kept her still.
She looked to the sky.
The clouds parted slightly, letting through a pale sliver of light.
The breeze smelled of dust and farewell.
—“If there’s something up there,” she said, voice hollow, “at least let me remember.”
The wind wrapped around her, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.
A single drop fell on her cheek. It wasn’t rain.
It was the first tear the sky had ever shed for her.
And within her womb, though she did not yet know it, something answered.
A spark.
A life.
An echo that would soon bear the name of Sadness.
Silence filled the temple.
For a moment, I thought nothing else would move.
Then I heard it.
The crying.
It wasn’t mine.
It came from Caelia.
She—always the unshakable one, the shield—was crying without restraint.
Not for herself, but for what she had seen.
For all of them.
For those women who, without knowing it, had made us possible.
My chest tightened.
I couldn’t hold it back. The tears came uninvited, soft and inevitable.
And as they traced down my cheeks, the air in the temple shimmered again.
The story wasn’t over.
One night, beneath a sky that no longer remembered the stars, thirteen women felt the call.
They didn’t hear it. They felt it—like a current deep beneath the skin, as if the world itself were whispering their names.
There were no words.
Only the certainty that nothing else mattered.
They left behind villages, families, homes, without once looking back.
One by one, they walked toward the same invisible point, guided by a shared echo that bound them together before they even knew it.
Until they arrived.
Thirteen women stood before a rift that breathed light.
From within, threads of pure magic flowed outward, dancing like fragments of dawn.
No one spoke. No one feared.
They understood without understanding.
They knew what the rift was asking for.
One by one, they began to shed the emotions that did not define them.
There was no pain.
Only soft lights rising from their chests, crossing the air to sink into the earth.
When the last of them was done, the air changed.
The rift ceased to roar and began to sing.
The thirteen received the blessing of magic—not as a curse, nor as a burden, but as a promise.
From that moment on, their blood became a seed.
And any who carried it, in centuries or in dreams, would inherit the gift to feel, to fight, and to remember.
The echo of that promise still trembled in the air when I opened my eyes.
The temple was breathing with us.
And for the first time, I understood—
Magic did not choose us.
Magic remembered us.