"Sometimes the things that break you… are the same things that set you free."
---
I woke up to smoke in the air.
Not fire, but a thick, earthy scent that clung to the village like breath on cold glass. It seeped into my skin, into my lungs, until it felt like I had been breathing it for years.
The sound of soft bells drifted through the open window, each chime followed by the swish of fabric.
I stepped outside.
Women moved silently through the dawn, draped in deep crimson shawls that caught the light like embers. Bells chimed faintly at their waists, the sound strange and solemn. They didn't look at me. They didn't look at anyone. They only moved with purpose—toward the temple at the center of Myraea.
I barely had time to throw on my outer robe before someone knocked on the door.
It wasn't Nysa.
It was the Elder. Her presence filled the doorway like a shadow.
"The Trial begins," she said. "You must come."
Her voice was neither warm nor cold—only absolute.
I followed without a word.
---
The temple was circular, open to the sky, the stone beneath my feet warm as if it had been kissed by the sun for centuries. A bowl of fire burned at its heart, flames licking upward but never smoking. Around it, twelve women stood in a ring, faces painted white except for a single red line that ran from their lips to their throats.
It looked like silence. And sacrifice.
Nysa stood apart from them, arms crossed, jaw tight. She was watching, but her eyes didn't meet mine.
"Step forward," the Elder commanded.
I obeyed, though my knees felt unsteady.
"You came here by fate, through the mirror's choosing," she said. "But fate does not grant safety. It demands courage."
I swallowed. My mouth was dry.
"This is the Trial of Fire," she continued. "To stay in Myraea, to keep the bond, you must pass through."
"Through what?" I asked.
The Elder tilted her head. "Through yourself."
Before I could ask again, she pressed a warm hand to my forehead.
The world blinked out.
---
I stood in a church.
The air was heavy with incense and old wood. My mother's voice filled the space like thunder, her hands raised high as she preached.
Behind her, on the wall, was a painting of two women bound in chains—their faces twisted in shame.
"The Lord created Adam and Eve," she was shouting. "Not Amara and Eve!"
The crowd's murmurs swelled, sharp and unkind.
I was smaller here, younger, my shoulders hunched as if I could disappear into myself. Every face turned toward me.
"Demon," someone whispered.
"Unnatural."
I opened my mouth to speak—but no sound came. My throat burned.
Suddenly, the painting behind my mother changed.
It was me and Nysa.
We were kissing.
---
The church dissolved like mist.
Now I stood in my bedroom, the curtains drawn, the air thick with the scent of candle wax. I watched my teenage hands shaking as I stuffed a folded letter into the drawer.
It was a confession—the one I never sent.
I think I'm different, the letter began. And I'm scared.
The dream-me stared at the words for a long moment before crumpling the page and holding it to the flame of a candle.
I remembered that night. The smell of the paper burning. The way my heart pounded as if I could destroy the truth along with it.
Smoke curled into the dark.
---
The fire took me again.
Now I stood in a dark void, alone, barefoot. My breath echoed.
A voice came—not my mother's, not the Elder's.
It was mine.
Do you want to stay broken?
A mirror appeared before me. But it didn't show my face.
It showed a girl who looked stronger, wilder. Her hair was tangled, her lips bleeding from a fight, her hands steady on a blade. Her eyes burned.
She didn't look like me.
And yet… she was.
Choose, the voice said.
"Choose what?" I asked.
To become. Or to disappear.
---
When I gasped awake, I was lying beside the temple fire.
The Elder was gone. Nysa was kneeling beside me, her face pale.
"You stopped breathing," she whispered. Her voice was unsteady—and that scared me more than the visions.
"I saw her," I said softly.
"Who?"
"The girl I'm supposed to be."
Nysa studied me for a long moment, then reached down and tied the red ribbon tighter around my wrist.
"Then don't run from her," she said. "Run to her."
---
That night, I didn't sleep.
I sat by the fire until morning, the visions still flickering behind my eyes. My mother's voice. The burning letter. The girl
in the mirror.
I didn't know what would happen next.
But for the first time since arriving in this strange, impossible place… I wanted to find out.