Elira had always thought her life would be simple. She dreamed not of thrones, nor of kingdoms, nor even of heroic quests sung in tavern halls. No—Elira longed for the ordinary. She imagined herself behind the wooden counter of a quiet bookshop, where the air smelled of parchment and ink, where bells on the door chimed softly as customers entered, and where her days were spent folding corners of stories rather than folding the fabric of destiny.
But Elira was not ordinary.
Since her childhood, the world itself had whispered her name. Raindrops slowed when they touched her skin, flames curled into shapes at the flick of her fingers, and birds tilted their heads as if listening to melodies only she could hear. Power lived in her veins—wild, unpolished, dangerous. And though the village folk called her gifted, Elira saw it as a curse. Ordinary girls did not set hearthfires ablaze when they sneezed. Ordinary girls did not glow faintly when the moon was full.
So she buried her gifts beneath silence. She practiced smiling at markets and bowing her head in lessons, convincing everyone she would grow up to be nothing more than a scholar's assistant or perhaps, if luck allowed, the keeper of her imagined bookshop.
Yet destiny has little patience for quiet dreams.
One night, Elira's sleep was fractured by a dream so vivid it felt like memory. She stood on a cliff of obsidian stone, overlooking an ocean of silver waves. Above her, the constellations rearranged themselves into a crown of light. A voice—not male, not female, but woven from thunder—spoke:
"The world does not need another bookseller, Elira. It needs you."
She woke gasping, her palms glowing with symbols she did not know how to read. By morning, her village square buzzed with rumors of shadow-creatures rising from the northern forest. Farmers swore their fields had gone silent, no bird or cricket daring to sing. And when the village elder looked into Elira's frightened eyes, he bowed—bowed—as though he already knew the truth.
Elira had wished for shelves of books and the ordinary rhythm of mortal life. Instead, fate had given her an unwritten chapter, vast and perilous. She was not to be a shopkeeper. She was to be the keeper of something far greater—light against the growing dark.
And though fear clutched her chest, somewhere deep inside, a flame stirred. For the first time, Elira wondered if the world's whispers had not been a curse after all, but a calling.