Divine one–Yang
The moon had entered its final phase.
Nights like this weren't common in Malton—cold rain falling over silent stone, streets emptied as though the city had stopped breathing. The wind whispered in half-sentences, brushing rooftops with the hush of passing spirits.
Somewhere, a child cried.
It was a thin sound.
Fractured. Brief.
And then it stopped.
"Kiara… that's her name," I whispered, cradling her against my chest—not in memory, but in ache.
The wind didn't answer.
It never does.
I've watched her for as long as I can remember. Not out of duty. Not out of fear.
Perhaps it was never her that needed me.
Perhaps it was me.
Clinging to something still soft in a world gone callous.
She was so small once.
So fragile.
I remember her coughing in her sleep. Her knees were bruised from stone corridors. Her fingers are always cold.
She used to reach for my hand without asking.
Now she stands taller than I expected—rigid, deliberate.
That long, dark-blue hair trailing behind her like smoke.
Those red eyes, sharpened by silence.
Always watching.
Always calculating.
Too quiet for her age.
Too still for any child of mercy.
I've tried to understand her, wanted to read her the way I read scripture: line by line, breath by breath.
But the truth is—I don't understand her.
Not fully.
Not anymore.
There is something in her gaze that belongs to neither child nor priestess.
Something that answers not to faith but to balance.
And balance does not love.
I am growing tired.
Of this city.
Of its constant noise, its shifting tides of dogma and doctrine.
The Church whispers of duty. Of divine will. Of correction.
But I no longer hear the god they invoke.
Perhaps I am deaf.
Or perhaps she has left.
Even now, as my limbs grow heavy and my time thins like ash on the altar, I want to stay.
Just a little longer.
To see her smile.
To hear her laugh, even once.
Just once.
But I can't.
The lamb must find her path now—
Not through light.
Not through shadow.
But through the cold still placed between them,
Where gods do not reach.
And when she does—
Let her remember mercy.
Let her remember me.
Even if only as a warmth long gone.
—----
I'm now fully aware: I'm in my final days.
It wasn't pain that told me—it was the silence.
The kind that wraps itself around you like an old shroud, familiar and cold. The kind that settles in your bones when the body begins to loosen its grip on the world.
She sat beside me, her fingers wrapped around mine.
Her face, as always, gave nothing away.
But her hand was warm.
I wanted to tell her so many things.
That the world, despite its cruelty, holds wonder.
That life is worth seeing through.
That she should wake tomorrow and drink in the sun, and again the next day, and the one after that.
But all she said was—
"No one will braid my hair when you die,"
The words landed flat, soft, and final.
She didn't look at me.
Only in my hand, as if it might disappear the moment she blinked.
"I want you to find peace," I whispered.
"To find love, even in this suffocating place."
She didn't answer.
I gripped her hand gently, with what little strength I had left.
What I wanted to say was:
You gave me purpose.
You gave me a reason.
You made my days feel alive, just by being in them.
But if I said that, I would break.
And I've carried this long—
I will not shatter at the end.
So I just pressed her hand once and hoped she felt it.
Outside, the bells of Orion began to ring.
Evening prayers.
She would not go.
She would stay until I slipped into the dark.
She would never say the word goodbye.
And neither would I.
—------
Sister Yang died four days later.
The halls of the Church feel quieter now, somehow.
Not out of reverence.
Not out of grief.
Just quieter.
As though something essential has unraveled, and no one dares to acknowledge it.
Without her, I was reassigned to the orphan-vow cloister near the southern wood of Malton.
It's quieter there too.
More trees.
Fewer voices.
The kind of silence that doesn't comfort—it accumulates.
Here, being an orphan doesn't always mean your parents are dead.
It simply means you were left behind or discarded.
The Church of Sera rises like a wound from the earth—its chapels carved from dark mountain stone, its arches high and narrow, built not for welcome, but for control.
There are no idols, no sainted faces, no golden altars.
Only a single emblem carved into scribed stone, stitched into robes, burned into the wood, and inked into flesh:
Three dots.
Each set is at a vertex of a perfect triangle.
No names. No center. No eye.
A symbol older than the empire.
Said to represent the three sanctioned manas—Natural, Light, and Dark—in divine tension.
Together, they form the seal of Ashera's Balance, the doctrine of order in a lawless world.
Some among the higher orders—the Kalihi, the Kaliki—bear the mark in ink and ash on the back of the neck, or over the breastbone.
A vow without words.
A warning without mercy.
The cold here is constant.
It moves through the cloisters like a second presence.
The braziers are lit, but the warmth never seems to settle.
The air smells of oiled parchment, melted wax, and old stone—clean, but bloodless.
The younger acolytes speak in hushed tones.
They memorize glyphs and obedience.
They learn to lower their gaze when addressed.
They are not taught to think—only to endure.
"Kiara."
I looked up.
A Kalihi stood at the arched threshold, her expression unreadable beneath her hood.
"The lecture begins."
We walked together across the cloister, where the flagstones were worn to smoothness beneath centuries of ritual passage.
The walls bore the familiar carvings: three dots, triangle-shaped, etched in sequence without text or flourish.
The symbol was everywhere, and nowhere meant to be absorbed, not questioned.
The lecture hall was small.
Dust hung in the beams of light from the narrow windows.
Woven reed mats marked where the children were meant to sit.
The acolytes gathered in rows, backs straight, silence preemptive.
Since I became aware of the world around me, I've noticed something:
I don't hear anything.
Not truly.
Or perhaps—I simply don't care to.
They teach the Doctrine of Sera here.
That the good will do what strengthens the realm.
That evil brings ruin through imbalance.
That to deviate is to invite unmaking.
But who decides what is good?
And what is evil?
I do not ask these questions aloud.
I already know the answers.
And I no longer accept them.
In the crowd, I saw her.
A girl.
Black hair.
Eyes the color of old blood.
Still. Too still.
The kind of stillness that only comes after something is taken from you, and never returned.
She sat like someone awaiting judgment.
Not hopeful. Not afraid.
Just already gone.
After the lecture, I approached her.
She flinched—barely—but I saw it.
She was younger than I. Smaller.
But something in her was familiar.
Not her features.
But the quiet.
As if the same silence that filled me had carved her, too.
"You've already met her," said the Kalihi, her voice soft but unyielding, like cold iron beneath silk.
She stepped forward from behind me, robes rustling against the stone. The triangle mark was inked just below her left eye—three dots forming the sacred geometry, as if balance itself had been branded into her flesh.
"Her name is Nui. She arrived from Orion last season. She is to be sanctified at the next moon."
A pause. "You are assigned to oversee her extraction."
I didn't answer.
Just a slight nod.
A gesture not of obedience, just acknowledgment.
My gaze flicked to the girl.
Nui.
She stood near the window's narrow slit, where pale light cut across her face. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest, and when our eyes met, she quickly looked away.
She didn't speak.
But she didn't need to.
She was uncomfortable. Not with the Church. Not with the ritual.
With me.
I couldn't blame her.
I was uncomfortable with myself, too.
The Extraction Hall
The chamber lay beneath the chapel, behind two iron-bound doors marked with the triangle seal.
No prayers were spoken here. No hymns.
Only the scrape of boots on stone and the murmur of Kalihi moving between stations.
There were seven beds arranged, each with a child lying atop clean linen. White robes. Bare feet. Ankles bound with a soft cloth. They called this mercy. They said it was to prevent injury if the child convulsed.
They always convulsed.
The air smelled of ashroot and tincture oil, used to dull pain, though not entirely.
A faint hum pulsed from the etched glyphs carved into the floor. Magic sigils. Stabilizers, they were called. And wards. And containment lines.
Every term is cleaner than what they meant.
Extraction.
Not a punishment, not precisely.
It was the procedure.
The unblessed were unstable. Sometimes, they said, a child's mana would swell too suddenly—too violently—and rupture the heart. Or boil the blood. Or turn on the mind and burn it hollow.
So the Church removed it.
"Better to survive without power," they taught, "than perish by your gift."
I stood at the edge of the circle, robe drawn tight around me.
Nui lay on the second bed from the left.
Her eyes were open.
Focused, but still.
Not afraid. Not exactly.
But aware.
I stepped forward. The Kalihi stepped aside.
This task had been given to me.
I reached out and placed my hand over her chest, just above her heart.
She did not move.
The contact was gentle, ritualistic.
Skin to skin.
Flesh to mana.
Soul to system.
The glyphs beneath her bed stirred.
Lines of pale light slithered along the floor like a breath held too long.
I felt the current rise beneath my palm.
A flicker. A pull.
The raw presence of her mana—untamed, untrained, struggling like something half-drowned.
Her breath hitched.
Not pain.
A reaction.
As if something in her still resisted.
However, the ritual was already underway.
The glyphs absorbed the surge, drawn from her chest into the stabilizers, where it would be sealed in vials for "safe use."
Her body stilled.
Her mana dimmed.
When I stepped back, her eyes were still on me.
No tears.
No thanks.
Just silence.
And for a moment, I saw something not unlike hate.
Or maybe grief.
I bowed slightly.
Protocol.
Then turned away.
After the extraction, I walked the corridor alone.
But the scent clung—Melabel, burnt oils, the bitter tang of silver-etched stone. It lingered in my lungs like smoke from another life. With each step, the walls around me lost their shape.
And then—
I wasn't there anymore.
I was ten. Maybe younger.
Unblessed.
I lay on a narrow bed, my limbs smaller and thinner. My wrists were bound in flax thread, but loosely—formality, they called it. There were others in the room. I heard them. Some whispered. Others wept. I stayed still.
I didn't cry.
Sister Yang stood beside me.
She was already old then. Her hands were calloused from ink and garden soil. Her voice is always quiet, never soft. But that day, she held my hand.
I remember how she brushed my hair back, how she watched me.
I thought she would refuse, that she would step between me and the glyphs and say no.
But she didn't.
She simply said, "I'll stay."
And then she pressed her palm to my chest.
The light began.
A warmth, then a sharp tug inside me—like something unspooling beneath the ribs.
I gasped.
It wasn't pain exactly.
It was like being emptied. Drained.
My fingers curled against hers.
The glyphs lit brighter, and I tried not to move, not to cry, not to scream.
And then—
Darkness.
I woke up in the infirmary, cold and shaking.
Sister Yang is beside me.
I had collapsed.
I always did.
Every time they took mana from me, my body betrayed me. Folded in on itself.
Crumbled.
The Kalihi said I was weak.
Yan never said a word.
She just held my hand until the shaking stopped.
Now, in the present, I stood against the corridor wall, my breath shallow. My knees locked, my vision stinging.
I didn't collapse.
Not this time.
But I wanted to.
Not because I pitied Nui.
Not because I doubted the ritual.
But because I remembered what it was like to lie there.
To feel the world pulled out of your chest.
To know it was someone you trusted doing it.
I steadied my breath and pushed off the wall.
There were no tears.
No faltering steps.
Only silence.
Just as I was taught.
I returned to my cell in silence.
The candle by the window had burned low, wax spilling like blood down the stone. The symbol of Ashera marked the wall—three dots in perfect symmetry.
Balance.
Order.
Obedience.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I turned my back on it.
For the first time.
Because now I knew something I had no words for:
Sister Yan never once flinched when she took my mana—
But she always cried when I couldn't see.
And maybe, just maybe—
That was the closest thing to the truth I'd ever known.