POV - Azra'il
Nagakabouros spat me back out like one would an olive stone.
There was no warning. No smooth transition. One instant I was in the pitch black of oceanic trenches, floating in that primordial void that smelled of salt and cosmic indifference; the next, light. Sound. The scent of warm stone, baking bread, and something else, something I couldn't immediately identify, yet it made
me frown.
[The definition of "one piece" is debatable when dealing with an extracorporeal consciousness navigating someone else's memories courtesy of a Serpent-goddess with the bedside manner of a tsunami. But yes, all operating systems are
functional.]
[Approximately two years since the previous record. More specifically, twenty-four months and thirteen days.]
[Perhaps it is her method of instruction.]
I shook off the disorientation and looked around.
And I halted.
Something was different.
Not different in an obvious way, not a catastrophe, a fire, or an invasion. It was different in the way only someone who has watched many cities change can recognise. The way the air moves when a population shifts its posture. When collective shoulders square in a specific direction. When the streets become cleaner, not for hygiene's sake, but for fear of someone noticing the filth.
The city appeared more... disciplined. More aligned. The streets were the same, but the tone was another entirely.
[Yes.]
[Incense. Pine resin burned with aromatic herbs. Emanating from at least four distinct points within the city.]
[Ritual.]
I had smelled this scent before. In Lordran, in the Temples of the Flame, before the priests decided that keeping the fire lit justified burning anyone who disagreed. In Shénvara, in the monasteries where monks swapped enlightenment for obedience and called it evolution. And once, in a life I'd rather not remember, in a cathedral I myself helped to build before realising that what we were constructing wasn't faith, it was control.
The scent of a civilisation starting to kneel has notes of incense, fear, and certainty. And this city was exhaling all three.
Morgana walked the streets with the stride of someone who knows every cobblestone, yet no longer recognises the landscape. And I understood why.
The signs were everywhere. Not shouting, but whispering. The kind of change that only bothers those paying attention, and which everyone else pretends not to notice because noticing would demand a reaction.
Amulets. On the doors of the houses, hanging from the lintels as protection against the evil eye: small metal crests, winged swords in bronze or cheap brass with golden details shimmering in the sun. I counted seven in the first street alone. Then I stopped counting because the number grew depressing.
[Thirteen out of seventeen. Approximately seventy-six percent.]
[Similar proportion. It increases as we approach the city centre.]
New crests on the façades of public buildings: crossed swords with wings, etched into stone or painted on wooden plaques. Not official, yet treated as if they were. The sort of symbol born spontaneously that becomes mandatory without anyone needing to decree it, for social pressure does the work that the law has yet to do.
People greeted each other in the street with phrases that didn't exist years ago. "For justice." "Beneath the wings." Spoken with the ease of those who have already forgotten that a short while ago, no one spoke so. Custom calcifying into culture.
And the court. Kayle's court, that open, Greek-style amphitheatre where trials were public, where anyone could sit in the stands and watch justice being meted out under the open sky, was now something else. The structure had been expanded. Elaborately worked stone walls rose around it, transforming the open space into something more enclosed, more imposing. The back section, where Kayle retired after trials, had become practically a miniature palace. And at the entrance, guards. Not common soldiers. Men and women wearing white tunics with golden trimmings, standing in a position that was half-sentry, half-devotee.
[Based on the historical patterns of cult formation that you and I have observed: advanced stage two, entering stage three.]
[Stage one: spontaneous adoration; the people venerate out of genuine gratitude. Stage two: organisation; leaders emerge, symbols are standardised, rituals appear. Stage three: institutionalisation; adoration becomes structure, with hierarchy, sacred spaces, and mechanisms for inclusion and exclusion. Stage four—]
[We are in the transition from two to three. Symbols are standardised. Leaders likely already chosen. Sacred spaces are being constructed. Stage four depends on a catalyst.]
[Or someone who refuses to kneel.]
Morgana walked through it all with the expression of one trying not to react. But I was close to her, and I saw the toll: the jaw that tightened whenever she passed a new amulet; the eyes that lingered a second too long on a plaque with the winged crest before darting away; the way her shoulders stiffened every time someone said "beneath the wings" as a greeting.
She wasn't surprised. She was measuring. Calculating the velocity at which she was losing a world she recognised.
The temple appeared before I was ready for it.
Not because it was hidden, on the contrary. It was impossible to miss. It dominated the central square like a golden tooth in a mouth of stone: a massive structure under construction that was already large enough to cast a shadow over every surrounding house. Wooden scaffolding covered the side walls, where masons worked under the sun, and the sound of chisels and hammers echoed across the square like the heartbeat of something gargantuan being born.
A temple. They are building a temple. All of this in two years.
[Religious fervour tends to accelerate public works. People volunteer their labour when they believe they are building for something greater than themselves.]
The temple was dedicated, theoretically, "To the Winged Sisters." I knew this because there was a temporary sign at the entrance with those words. But the architecture told another story. Everything was light. Gold. Verticality. Columns pointing to the sky like accusing fingers. Stained glass, still incomplete, but already showing sketches of golden wings and flaming swords. The entire aesthetic shrieked of 'ascension, purity, judgement'. There was nothing there reminiscent of shadow, earth, compassion, or humanity.
And the statues.
At the temple entrance, two figures were being carved from white stone. The one on the left was Kayle, and it was faithful. Impressively so. The heroic pose with both swords crossed, wings unfurled to their maximum span, the armour details reproduced with a precision that only comes from someone who has looked closely and grew obsessed with every detail. It was Kayle at the Aatrox moment, the instant she held both blades and the fire consumed her. The pinnacle. The apex. The moment that confirmed everything the followers wanted to believe.
The one on the right was Morgana.
Or something trying to be her.
Wings made of stained glass: colourful, shimmering, translucent, designed to capture sunlight and scatter it in rainbows across the entrance floor. The real Morgana's wings were black as raven feathers, dense, heavy, living; they were beautiful in their own right. But these... they felt wrong. Utterly, fundamentally wrong. A stone veil covered the statue's face, as if "Veiled Redeemer" literally meant covering one's face, when in truth it meant not flaunting oneself, not self-exalting, existing without the need for stained glass. The body was wrapped in a pure mantle, without a smudge or mark, ornamented with golden details that matched her sister's statue.
It was a sanctified Morgana. A Morgana who never existed, sculpted not from who she was, but from who the people needed her to be so she could stand beside her sister without causing discomfort. The acceptable version. The version that fit inside a temple of gold.
Morgana stood staring at the statue.
I saw her face. The attempt at indifference, the lifted chin, the squared shoulders, the neutral expression she used as social armour. The bitter irony that flickered at the corners of her mouth for half a second. And beneath it all, beneath the layers of control: sadness.
The sadness of looking at one's own face carved in stone and not recognising it. Of seeing that the people didn't know who she was, and the little they did know, they had preferred to reinvent.
[The difference between being remembered and being rewritten.]
Morgana turned and kept walking. Without comment. Without visible reaction. Back straight. Always a straight back.
But I saw her fingers clench into fists once before letting go. A grip that lasted half a second. That no one else would have noticed.
The morning advanced and people found Morgana as they found her every day: along the way.
Not in a court. Not in a temple. On the street. Amidst the market stalls, on the corner of a secondary lane, under the shade of a tree growing crooked between two houses. There, where the city was less golden and more honest.
A woman with rough hands came first. A land dispute, the neighbour had moved the fence three palms during the night, stealing a piece of the garden where she cultivated medicinal herbs. It would take too long to resolve in court. But it was vital for someone who lives off herbs. Morgana listened. She asked questions, not about the dry law, but about the context in general. How long had she been his neighbour? What had changed? Was he in dire straits? The woman left with a plan for mediated conversation, not a sentence.
Next, a youth. No older than fifteen. Eyes on the ground. Restless hands, fast hands, the sort that learns to be light when the alternative is hunger. He had been caught picking pockets in the market. In Kayle's court, theft was theft. The law didn't ask why. It didn't want to know that his parents had died in the battle against Aatrox, two anonymous soldiers among the many who formed the shield-wall and did not return. It didn't want to know that he had a little sister waiting at home and that the choice between stealing and letting her starve was no choice at all.
Morgana listened. She asked the questions the court never would; she asked what he would do if he had another choice. The youth lifted his eyes for the first time when she said she was going to refer him to the carpenter on the low street, not as a surrendered criminal, but as someone who deserved the chance the city owed him. For the city stood thanks to parents like his.
Then, a mother. Worried about her son. He had joined Kayle's followers; he wore the white tunic, repeated the phrases, didn't come home for dinner. He wasn't doing anything illegal. But the mother felt she was losing him to something she couldn't name. Morgana listened with an attention I felt in the way her shoulders leaned toward the woman, her entire body saying 'I am here.' She gave no easy answers. She promised no solution. But the mother left with less fear in her eyes, and that, in itself, was a form of healing.
I watched and I catalogued. The people seeking Morgana were, for the most part, those who didn't fit into stained glass. Workers with calloused hands. Refugees from regions further north who had arrived in the city nameless and historyless. Former thieves trying to start over, who knew that in court they would be judged for their past and not their present. Minorities of all sorts, the people every city has and which every city pretends not to see.
And I noticed something else. Subtle. Nearly invisible.
Some of them looked around before approaching Morgana. A quick glance, checking who was watching. Who might tell. Who wore a white tunic.
The unease was beginning. It was still just a tremor, not an earthquake. But I had felt tremors before, and they always preceded the selfsame thing.
[Historically, which of the two models survives?]
[The healer vanishes.]
Morgana was returning by the path that passed near the court when she spotted Kayle.
I saw Morgana's eyes fix on her before the rest of her body could react. The physical response of seeing someone who matters, the pause in her step, the slight squaring of the shoulders, the focus narrowing.
Kayle was walking towards the court. Not alone, never alone again. An escort of followers in white tunics walked around her, lined up in parallel order on each side, with the rigid symmetry of a military formation disguised as a devotional retinue. Kayle's wings were half-retracted: present, visible, but contained.
Polished armour. Silver hair bound. Impeccable posture. People in the street moved away with reverence. Heads bowed. Hands joined. Whispers that were prayers or something very near them.
"Beneath the wings."
"Protect us, Winged Justice."
"Glory to the Protector."
And Kayle received it all with naturalness. Not with blatant arrogance, there was no smirk of superiority, no imperial wave. It was worse than that. It was indifference. The passive acceptance of one who has internalised that being worshipped is the normal state of affairs. The neutral face of one who no longer distinguishes between being hailed in the street and being treated like the air one breathes, both simply exist.
Two children were playing on the street corner. A boy and a girl, no more than six or seven, chasing each other around a pile of crates with the destructive, wonderful energy children that age possess. The girl carried a basket of fruit, likely an errand for her mother, and the boy was trying to steal an apple while she ran.
They stumbled. Over one another. The basket flew. Apples and pears rolled across the pavement, directly into the path of Kayle and her escort.
The children fell to their knees, trying to gather the fruit, and the girl looked up, at the wings, at the armour, at the woman who shone, with that gaze children have when they find something immense and aren't sure if it's incredible or terrifying.
The Kayle of before, the one from the tower, the one who rested her head on her sister's shoulder, would have stopped. Perhaps not with tenderness, for tenderness was never her forte, but with presence. She would have looked down.
She would have made a dry comment about motor coordination, or the irresponsibility of parents leaving children alone in the street, but in a way where behind the reprimand, there was concern. Someone was there.
This Kayle passed by them as if they were stones in her path.
Eyes fixed ahead. Neutral expression. Not even a degree of tilt towards the children. Her step didn't slow. Her wings didn't adjust. It was as if her field of vision had been recalibrated to exclude anything below a certain altitude of relevance.
One of the followers didn't even look at the children. The other, the closest, made a sharp gesture with his hand, a "get out of the way" shooing motion that held the same emotional energy as scaring off a stray dog. The girl pulled her shoulders in. The boy gathered a bruised apple in silence.
Morgana saw it all.
I saw Morgana's eyes. Searching. Scouring her sister's face from a distance, seeking some trace, any trace, of the vulnerability she had seen that night; of the Kayle who said she feared her own rage; of the woman who embraced her sister because of the cold wind, when for a moment she seemed a normal girl and not a statue.
Morgana found nothing.
Kayle's eyes were distant. Frigid. Not cruel, cruelty, at least, requires recognition that the other exists. That was worse than cruelty. It was irrelevance. The children, the fruit, the tumble, the fear in the girl's eyes, all processed and discarded as irrelevant data by a system that has already decided what matters and what does not.
[...]
The high market square was a fifteen-minute walk from the court, and it was there that Morgana stopped.
In the centre of the square, a man was preaching.
A white tunic with golden details, the same attire as the court guards, but with something more. A brooch on his chest: a winged sword in silver. Distinction within distinction. Around him, fifteen, perhaps twenty people listened with rapt attention. Behind him, four followers in the same dress stood in a symmetrical formation. Hierarchy within hierarchy.
He was a grown man. Early thirties, perhaps. Strong jaw, brown hair cut short in military style, broad shoulders under the tunic that fell with an elegance that was no accident. He had the appearance of someone who trains both body and rhetoric with the same discipline, and who knows exactly the effect the two produce together.
I know the type. I've seen similar in dozens of lifetimes, in dozens of temples, in dozens of movements that started with faith and ended with pyres; the mould is always the same. A man with a firm voice, eyes shining with the borrowed light of someone more powerful, and the capacity to make people feel they are freely choosing what he is commanding them to do.
And he was preaching.
"—and when the flames enveloped the Protector's wings," he was saying, his voice projecting through the square with the clarity of someone who had practised every syllable, "the Darkin recoiled for the first time. Not by the sword, but by the light. The light of Kayle, the light of Justice, burning so bright in our Protector's hands that the very darkness itself cringed."
I recognised the story. It was Aatrox. His version of it.
I carried on listening.
"The Protector raised the two blades, yes, both of them, the complete heritage of the Aspect of Justice, and descended from the heavens like a star. The blow pierced the beast's heart. The light exploded. And the Darkin, who had destroyed entire villages, who had made the ground tremble and the sky bleed, fell. Defeated. Sealed by our Winged Justice."
The crowd murmured approval. Some made the gesture of crossed swords over their
chests.
I noticed what was missing from the story. The chains. The purple chains of dark fire that held Aatrox on his knees whilst Kayle crawled across the ground trying to reach her sword. The chains that kept a Darkin open and vulnerable for the final blow. Morgana's chains.
In this man's version, they didn't exist.
They weren't denied. They weren't contradicted. They were simply... omitted. The most elegant way to erase someone from a story, not to say they weren't there, just never to mention they were.
[Technically, he is editing. The difference is subtle yet vital. Rewriting implies creating an alternative version. Editing is maintaining the same story whilst removing what does not serve the desired narrative.]
[Considerably. A lie can be debunked. An omission requires someone to realise that something is missing. And most folk do not notice.]
He continued for a few more minutes, the reconstruction of the destroyed hamlets, the renovations to the city and the court, Kayle's vision for a perfect, absolute justice without exceptions. His phrases were well-constructed. His pauses calculated. He knew when to raise his voice and when to let the silence do the work. He was good. He was very good. And that worried me.
I looked at Morgana. Her face was controlled, yet the locked jaw and eyes fixed on the preacher spoke what her mouth did not. She knew him. And she did not like what she knew.
Then he saw Morgana.
I saw the instant his eyes found her at the edge of the square. I saw the calculation ripple across his face, quick, almost imperceptible, but I've seen far too many calculations on too many faces not to recognise it. He weighed his options: ignore or engage. He chose to engage. For to ignore her would be to show she didn't matter. And to engage was an opportunity.
"Veiled Redeemer." His voice shifted registers, from the tone of preaching to the tone of courtesy. He turned toward Morgana with a smile that was technically flawless and emotionally fraudulent. "What an honour to have you among us. I was just reminding the citizens of the Protector's deeds against the Darkin. It is vital the younger generations know the history."
"The history," Morgana repeated. Neutral tone. Eyes fixed on him.
"Quite. The story of how your sister saved the city... With the aid of all those who fought by her side, naturally."
"All of them." A ghost of a smile. The kind that doesn't warm. "How generous of you to include us, Ronas."
With the aid of all those who fought by her side. It was brilliant in its malice. It didn't exclude her; it diluted her. It transformed Morgana's contribution into "everyone who fought," equating the entire joint struggle and the chains that held a Darkin on its knees with the generic effort of a crowd. A collective footnote.
"In fact, Redeemer," he continued, stepping towards Morgana with the familiarity of one who thinks proximity is power, "I heard you resolved the case of the young Amirah. The one caught stealing supplies from the guards' storehouse."
Morgana didn't visibly react. "I did resolve it."
"And you acquitted her."
"I referred her to community labour and restitution of damage. She shall replace what she took through her own work. Had you known the case beyond the rumour, you would know the difference."
"With all due respect, Redeemer", and the respect in that phrase had the selfsame consistency as fool's gold, "the guards' storehouse is not a bakery. Those are military supplies. Your sister understands that the law requires firmness in such cases. That mercy, when applied in the wrong place, can be... interpreted as weakness." He smiled. "Not by me, of course. But the folk observe."
"The folk observe," Morgana repeated. Void of tone. No inflection. The kind of repetition that can be agreement or a sentence, depending on the listener. "I also observe, Ronas. I observe that the stories you tell in the squares have... gaps."
The name arrived without ceremony. Spoken by Morgana with the naturalness of one speaking to someone they've known for a long while, and with the weight of someone they'd prefer not to know.
[Registered. Ronas. Associated with the Protector's cult. Leadership position among followers.]
Ronas's smile did not waver. "Gaps?"
"Chains. Shadow fire. A Darkin on its knees. Stories grow and shrink depending on who tells them, don't they?"
For a second, a second worth its weight in gold, something crossed Ronas's face that was not a smile. Something colder. More calculating. The face of someone who has just been seen behind the mask and is deciding if the one who saw is enough of a threat to justify a response.
He composed himself.
"Stories serve the purpose of inspiration, Redeemer. The folk need light. Certainty. Your sister understands that." He inclined his head, a gesture of deference that was anything but deferential. "I am sure you will understand too. In time."
"In time." Morgana took a step toward him. Not aggressive. Worse: calm. Her voice dropped half a tone, just enough for him and his closest followers to hear. "Do you know what I understand, Ronas? That when you tell the story of that day and forget to mention who held the Darkin open for my sister's strike, you aren't inspiring anyone. You are building a myth that only fits one wing. And myths with half the truth have a habit of crumbling at the moment folk most need to believe in them."
Ronas's smile finally faltered.
"Tell the whole story or don't tell it at all, Ronas. But do not edit it in front of me and call it devotion."
Morgana turned and walked out of the square with the posture of one who had ended the conversation, not fled from it.
[A profile consistent with what I classify as an ideological parasite. He does not love Kayle; he loves what Kayle represents for him. Power, structure, certainty. She is the sun, and he is the mirror redirecting the light to where
he wishes to burn.]
[And when he has sufficient power within the structure?]
[And the nearest impurity—]
-----------(*)-----------
Kilam's house smelled of tea and absence.
It was the same house. The same walls. The same kitchen where I had seen, memories that seemed entire lifetimes ago, an old father making sandwiches with withered hands and placing them in a basket for Morgana to take to Kayle. The same table. The same mugs.
But there were no more sandwiches being prepared. No basket waiting in the corner. Kilam was in the chair by the window. Tea in hand. Staring outside with the expression of one looking within.
He had aged. Not drastically, that short time doesn't destroy a person so. But there was more weight on his shoulders. More lines around his eyes. The kind of ageing that comes not from time, but from continuous worry, from the tension of one monitoring a loss in progress without being able to intervene.
"Papa."
"Morg." The nickname. Short, familiar. The sound of an entire lifetime compressed into one syllable.
She sat in the chair opposite. He poured tea without asking. Their ritual; their version of saying 'I am here' without needing to verbalise.
"Have you been to the court?" Morgana asked. Casual. Or trying to be.
Kilam took a sip of tea. "I was. Last Wednesday."
"And?"
Kilam remained silent for a while. The kind of silence with weight.
"I was barred at the entrance."
Morgana halted her mug halfway to her mouth.
"One of the young lads in the white tunics. New. Didn't recognise me." Kilam said this in the same voice he would use to say 'it rained yesterday'. No anger. With the resignation of one who understands they've already lost something and is measuring the size of the loss. "I asked if I could see Kayle. He said the Protector didn't receive visitors without an appointment. I asked if he knew who I was. He said it didn't matter. That the Protector made no exceptions."
Morgana's mug returned to the table. Slowly. Controlled. But I saw her fingers tighten around the handle with a force not required to hold ceramic.
"He barred you." Not a question. It was Morgana processing. And beneath the processing: rage. Not explosive; Morgana didn't explode. Her rage was the type that hardens, solidifies, and transforms into silent resolve. "Our father. Barred. By a follower."
"I wasn't upset," Kilam said. And I believed him. Not because it didn't hurt, but because the pain had already been processed and what remained was that thing worse than pain: acceptance. "I was... confused. It's different."
He placed the mug on the table. Looked at Morgana with eyes that were exactly as they always were: the eyes of a father. Not the father of demigoddesses. A father.
"Is this normal, Morg? Folk building temples for my own daughters and they don't even recognise they have a father?" Hands around the mug. Calloused fingers. Short nails of one who still insists on working with his hands even when his hands ache. "Where do they imagine you lot sprung from? Born of a star? A lightning strike?" His voice failed for a second. "They may see you as goddesses. But I cannot." His eyes grew wet. "You are my little girls."
The silence that followed had the consistency of lead.
Morgana didn't answer. Not because she had no answer, but because any answer would be insufficient. What do you say to a father who raised two daughters who are now worshipped by strangers who don't even know his name? What kind of comfort fits into that space?
A tear rolled down Morgana's face. She wiped it away quickly with the back of her hand, the instinctual gesture of someone not wanting to cause worry, and composed her expression before Kilam could see the full wreckage.
But he saw. Because fathers always see. He didn't say anything. He just reached across the table and held her hand. Withered fingers around fingers that would never age. The simplest and most immense gesture that exists between two folk sharing blood.
The tea went cold.
[I'm here.]
[I know.]
Morgana left her father's house needing air.
Not because the house was suffocating, but because the conversation had filled her chest with something that didn't fit within walls. She walked with no set direction, passing through the streets that now had amulets on the doors and new greetings on folk's lips; I accompanied her in silence, for some moments demand silence even from observers with centuries of accumulated opinion.
She was turning the corner near the south gate when the soldier appeared.
Not a white-tunicked follower. A common soldier, in guard's armour, sweat on his face, heavy breath from having run. He saw her and changed direction with the relief of someone finding exactly whom they sought.
"Redeemer." Breathless. Urgent. "News from the East. A messenger arrived less than an hour ago."
Morgana halted. Her shoulders squared. Her posture shifted from the woman processing her father's pain to the woman protecting cities. The transition was instantaneous and I recognised it: the selfsame key Kayle turned, but without losing what lay beneath.
"What has happened?"
"The city of Zephyra. An army approaches from the south. Large. Organised. They've asked for aid."
"How many?"
"The messenger spoke of thousands. He didn't know for certain. He was in a panic."
Morgana processed this. I saw the cogs turning: the tactical analysis, the distance calculation, the weight of a decision not yet made but already forming.
"Has my sister been informed?"
The soldier nodded. "The Protector knows. The judicators are being mobilised. Ronas", he hesitated for a second at the mention of the name, like someone stepping on an unstable stone, "is organising a contingent of volunteers to accompany the Protector."
The air grew heavier.
Morgana looked towards the court. Towards the temple under construction. Towards the part of the city where her sister now existed, surrounded by white-tunicked followers calling for volunteers for a war they had yet to even see.
Kayle was going to Zephyra. With the judicators. With volunteers who worshipped her as a goddess and were heading to the battlefield with the fervour of those fighting not just an army, but for a faith.
"Thank you," Morgana said to the soldier. "You may go. I shall... prepare."
The soldier moved off. Morgana stood still.
And I saw, on her face, the question not asked aloud. The question sitting between her furrowed brows and her tight jaw. The question she would likely ask herself the entire night and which would have no answer until she reached Zephyra and saw for herself.
[Yes.]
[But?]
[And Morgana?]
Morgana was already moving. Heading back into her house. Likely to gather her armour. Likely to tell her father she would be back, the same promise as always, spoken with the same steady voice, with the selfsame uncertainty beneath.
[Your gut feelings have a 94.7% accuracy rate.]
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Author's Note
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This chapter is… quietly cruel.
There's no explosion, no big battle, none of that classic "epic" moment, but it carries something that, to me, weighs a lot more: the feeling that something important has already started to break… and no one can really stop it.
You can kind of see Zephyra being "announced" before it even shows up. Not just as a battlefield, but as a turning point. The next chapter will dive straight into that confrontation, and it's not just another fight. It's a major milestone for Kayle and Morgana. Pretty much the beginning of the collapse of trust between them. That crack that used to be small… starts becoming impossible to ignore here.
And honestly? This arc was basically me "getting blood from a stone" 😅 Zephyra, in the official lore, is almost a ghost. Most of what we have comes from fragments, especially the Canticle of the Winged Sisters. I had to go over it multiple times and build from there, trying to expand things while still keeping it consistent.
If you're curious about the source material, you can check it here:
And… I'll be a bit honest here: I've noticed the comments have been a little quieter lately 👀And for me, comments aren't just a "nice extra", they're genuinely what keeps me motivated to write. Especially when it turns into discussion about the chapter, theories, interpretations… I love reading and replying to you all. A lot of my ideas actually come from those interactions.
So if you can take a moment to leave a comment, even just a small reaction, it really means a lot and helps more than you think 💛