"My lady, we must hurry!"
Before I could react, a hand closed around my wrist and yanked me forward. The woman was in maid's attire, her grip iron-tight.
My feet scrambled to keep up as we fled through the chaos, the distant crash of something collapsing.
Then I heard my own voice.
"No! M-my mother... she's still out there!"
I was trembling and I felt desperate.
It was strange.
I was speaking, but wasn't speaking. I was walking when I wasn't walking. I was crying when I wasn't shedding tears in my consciousness.
That was when I understood.
I was here, behind these eyes, feeling the burn in these legs and the tears streaking down this face.
But I was only watching.
Sealed inside someone else's grief while she ran and wept and called out for her mother, and I could do nothing at all, not even look back.
It doesn't feel like watching someone else cry through glass. It feels like mine.
The ache in my chest, the way her mother's name sits unfinished in her throat, I recognized it. All of it.
Like a memory I never lived.
Fire had already spread through the castle, devouring everything in its path. The air was thick with smoke, the heat suffocating as armored knights rushed past us, shouting orders I couldn't fully process.
They led us to a hidden passage carved into the stone wall, one I never would have noticed on my own, and pushed it open in a hurry.
We escaped through it, but what waited outside was no better.
More soldiers.
More enemies.
"Go! We'll hold them back!" one of the knights shouted, drawing his sword as others stepped forward to block the path.
And so, we ran.
We didn't stop. Not once.
We ran until the burning castle was nothing more than a distant glow on the horizon, until the sounds of battle faded into silence, until even the air around us felt different.
Still... this body didn't stop.
It kept running as if something was chasing it, as if stopping even for a second would mean death.
My heart pounded violently against my chest. It hurt, like it was being torn apart from the inside, making it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything but endure.
And then, time eventually passed.
I wasn't sure how much at first, but eventually, the chaos settled into something quieter.
One month.
That was how long it took before we finally found a place to stop.
A small town, far from the ruins of the castle.
The maid, Suri, used what little she had to buy a modest house on the outskirts. It was old, worn down, and barely held together, but for people like us, it was enough.
For fugitives, it was perfect.
"Are we going to keep running away forever?" I heard myself ask one day.
Suri paused, then turned to me with a gentle expression.
"My lady, we have no other choice. The rebels are still searching for you. If they find you... they will kill you. I'm sure your parents wouldn't want that either."
"...But they're dead," I whispered. The words caught in my throat. "They're..."
My vision blurred as tears welled up, the memories hitting all at once.
"...they're gone."
Suri cried with me that day, and somewhere between the grief and the silence, we found comfort in each other's presence.
She had no reason to stay.
She had served the royal family, not a fallen princess with no power, no protection, and no future. I hadn't even made my public debut yet. To the world, I didn't exist anymore. Even if I claimed royal blood, who would believe me?
And yet... She stayed.
"I am always on your side, my lady," she said, her voice gentle despite everything we had lost. "I was born to serve the royal family, and I will die serving the royal family."
At the time, I didn't understand the weight of those words. But I would soon.
Not long after we settled into that quiet town, the rebels found us. They came without warning, ruining our peaceful lives. And in the chaos that followed, Suri didn't hesitate.
She stood between me and them, buying me time, forcing me to run no matter how much I resisted. I remember her pushing me away, her voice so confident and loyal, even in that final moment.
"Live."
That was the last thing she said to me.
By the time I turned back, it was already over. Her head... had fallen at the feet of the man who now ruled the empire.
I didn't cry. Not then.
I ran, and I didn't stop.
If staying alive was the only way I could honor her, then I would do exactly that. There was no room left for hesitation, no space to grieve. Survival became the only thing that mattered.
With nowhere else to go, I decided to cross into another country, leaving everything behind without a second glance. The life I once had no longer existed, and neither did the person who had lived it.
I became a mercenary after that, doing whatever I could to survive. The only thing I could rely on were the fragments of healing magic my mother had once taught me, magic that belonged solely to those of royal blood.
It wasn't perfect, and it certainly wasn't enough to change anything on its own.
But it was enough to feed myself and keep me alive.
In a land that knew nothing of magic, even that small ability was seen as something extraordinary. People looked at me differently, with a kind of reverence I had never truly felt before, not even when I was still a princess.
And then, just as I came of age, the Church found me.
They called it fate. They called it divine will.
They said I was chosen.
So I became the Holy Saintess of Aretia.
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
Five months after I settled into the kingdom and was taken in by the Church, my days became filled with lessons.
They taught me how to pray properly, how to speak with reverence, how to lower my head at the right moments as if devotion alone could shape belief. Most of all, they taught me about the goddess they worshipped, Aretia.
According to them, she was a benevolent deity who once walked this land.
A beautiful goddess who had descended not out of obligation, but out of love for humanity. At a time when the kingdom was nothing more than barren soil and dying earth, she had blessed it with her power.
Life followed in her wake.
Flowers spread across the ground where there had once been nothing. Grass took root, trees grew tall, and branches bore fruit where none had existed before.
What was once lifeless had been transformed.
A barren kingdom... reborn through the will of a goddess.
When I first learned all of this, I dismissed it as nothing more than a story.
I had never believed in gods to begin with. If a goddess truly loved humans, then why had my family died the way they did? Why was the man who killed them now sitting on a throne that was meant to be mine?
None of it made sense.
And yet... time passed.
The longer I stayed within the Church, the more I followed their teachings, the more something began to change. It wasn't faith, but more of a... Habit.
Then, eventually... a form of solace.
I healed whoever came to me, nobles and commoners alike, as long as they could pay the price. Afterward, I would pray until my knees ached, lowering my head in silence, speaking to the goddess as if she were listening.
Sometimes, I told her my story. It wasn't out of hope that something would change, but like recounting something distant and unimportant, as if it had happened to someone else. Other times, I forced myself to speak as though I was content, as though this life was enough.
Truthfully, it wasn't. Deep down, I hated it. I hated how corrupt the church had become when the head priest changed.
All I wanted was something simple. Freedom. A quiet life, far away from everything.
But...
Would the goddess even hear a wish like that?
At the time, I didn't know.
I didn't know just how much that single, quiet wish would come to twist everything, and bring suffering, not just to me...
But to the entire world.