Zora was never merely a servant.
At the age of twelve, the Patriarch's recruiters found her scrubbing the grimy floors of a tavern. She worked in silence, ignored by travelers who saw nothing more than another orphan earning scraps to survive.
Then chaos erupted.
A pair of drunken mercenaries descended into a violent brawl, smashing tables and hurling bottles across the room. Seeing the terrified tavern keeper frozen in fear, the young girl rushed between them, pleading for them to stop.
Her courage was rewarded with cruelty.
One of the men swung a wooden chair without hesitation. It crashed against her skull with a sickening crack, sending her sprawling across the floor. Gasps filled the tavern as blood streamed down the side of her face.
She did not cry.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. With trembling hands, she lifted a broken old wand held together by fraying string—the same wand she had bought years ago with the little money she had managed to save after first sensing her mana. Despite its worn and battered state, she had treasured it ever since.
Her lips parted, whispering a single word too faint for anyone to hear.
The bleeding stopped.
Before the stunned eyes of everyone present, the wound knitted itself together, flesh sealing as though time itself had reversed. Not even a scar remained.
The tavern fell silent.
The drunken brute laughed and charged again, convinced it had been a trick.
He never reached her.
Despite her small frame, Zora met him head-on. Every strike he threw was deflected with impossible precision. She slipped beneath his guard, drove her fist into his ribs, swept his legs from under him, and finished with a blow that left the fully grown man unconscious on the tavern floor — the fighting instincts of someone raised on the streets, not in a dojo.
Only then did the Patriarch's recruiters understand what they were witnessing.
It was not simply talent.
The air around the girl shimmered with an almost imperceptible magical resonance, as if mana itself answered her presence. More remarkable still was the unyielding spirit behind those calm eyes — a will that refused to bow to pain, fear, or fate itself.
Most people would have dismissed her as an orphan girl too ordinary to notice twice. Most would have walked past her. They didn't.
Where others saw a servant, they saw a rare jewel hidden beneath years of dust.
That very day, Zora's life changed forever.
By sixteen, she was the Patriarch's shadow, her hands as delicate as any healer's, closing battle wounds and knitting shattered bone with a touch that hummed of something older than medicine. But the gentleness was a mask. Anyone who mistook her for the fragile healer of bardic songs learned their error in blood — because Zora possessed no firestorms, no lightning, no earth-shattering spells, nothing offensive worth the name on a battlefield. So she'd built herself into a weapon instead. She mastered hand-to-hand combat and used her wand the way assassins used stiletto needles. While battle mages hurled destruction across the field, she stepped inside an enemy's reach. With a healer's intimate knowledge of anatomy, she knew exactly where to drive the tip — every thrust aimed at the places a body couldn't afford to lose:
Through the eye.
Into the throat.
Beneath the collarbone, where the great artery pulsed.
Into the ear canal.
The open mouth.
The base of the skull.
Places where the wooden wand wouldn't snap.
Healing simply taught her where life was easiest to end. It is said her wand of healing has taken more lives than it ever saved.
Wounded, she wove healing magic mid-battle with breathtaking speed; wounds closed as swiftly as they opened. Damage her a hundred times and she would mend herself a hundred times, returning each moment with the same lethal grace — a living instrument of attrition, near-invincible until exhaustion or an empty mana reserve finally brought her down. In hand-to-hand combat she was unmatched, a living legend who rendered an opponent's strength irrelevant.
To bear the title of Head Maid was no mere honorific. It was a crown forged in blood and merit. At eighteen she challenged her predecessor — an iron-willed veteran who had served three generations of Patriarchs. The duel lasted one minute and eleven seconds. Zora claimed the title and became the youngest Head Maid in Wolfhard history. Some whispered she won only because the woman had grown old. None have dared test that claim since.
Only two people held the Patriarch's absolute trust on the battlefield. One was Zora, his living wand and ever-present shadow. As Headmaid, she managed the servants, inspected the quality of their work, trained new recruits, and organized supply orders to keep the Wolfhard household running without flaw — overseeing the day-to-day administration of the family's estate with the same precision she brought to a killing blow. The other was Reginald, the Head Butler — the Sword Incarnate. He had faithfully served Grael's father before him, and had watched the current Patriarch grow from a child into the man he was today. As Head Butler, Reginald oversaw the household's domestic affairs, organized ceremonial events, and managed court and state occasions — funerals, engagements, weddings, official visits. He also supervised the treasury and often served as the Patriarch's personal advisor and trusted confidant.
Reginald was the Patriarch's right hand; Zora was his shadow. Their loyalty ran deeper than blood. Together, they were his blade and shield.
And in one bewildering act, Grael had set her aside — not for his first wife, nor his second, nor his third, but for a concubine. As though she were a trinket, passed carelessly from one hand to the next.