The goddess Zyphara had seen countless generations rise and wither away, empires fracture, kingdoms built upon the blood of their neighbors only to collapse into dust. Yet for all the immensity of her perspective, for all the divinity that clothed her in unassailable power, her heart was not stone. Pity could still stir her to action. Compassion—raw, aching, undeniable—still welled within her when she gazed down upon mortals who suffered beyond what their frail spirits could endure.
And on that night, beneath the bruised sky of a city swollen with pride and commerce, her eyes fell upon Ysmara Kaelen.
The mortal woman stumbled through alleyways slick with the refuse of men, her hands trembling as she clutched her swollen belly. She was heavy with child, yet lighter than any beggar's hope, for she carried no roof above her head, no coin in her palm, no kin nor husband nor neighbor to shield her. She had fled her village, where whispers had grown into sharpened blades. What once might have been courtesy had curdled into cruelty, and the girl who had bewitched men with her beauty now found herself branded a shame, a caution, a burden no one dared to hold.
She walked slowly, painfully, but with a stubborn will that refused to snap even when all else in her life had crumbled. From one doorway to the next she moved, pleading with her eyes when her voice failed, begging for kindness from strangers whose doors remained barred. Fear lived in their hearts—fear of strangers, fear of evil, fear of the unknown.
Zyphara had heard those fears countless times before.
They forget the old ways, she thought, standing unseen upon the corner of a market-street where lamps flickered like dying stars. Once they were told: open your door, for you may be hosting a god in disguise. And those who remembered were blessed, and their names endured in song. Now they fear only what may be taken from them, never what may be given.
Ysmara collapsed upon the stone steps of a shuttered temple. The great belly before her shifted; the child within pressed forward as if eager to leave a body already too frail to carry him. Her face, though radiant even through grime and exhaustion, sagged with defeat. Beauty had been her crown, her curse, her weapon and her undoing. Men's eyes once followed her, burning with desire. Now, when they glanced at the roundness of her stomach, their gazes cooled into disgust and dismissal.
Zyphara felt it pierce her like an arrow. To be admired yet abandoned, desired yet despised—this was the cruelest contradiction mortals imposed upon their women.
If she had not intervened, the goddess knew, Ysmara would soon collapse altogether. Hunger gnawed her bones, cold stiffened her fingers, despair hollowed her eyes. She would die here, nameless and forgotten, and none would trouble themselves with remembrance.
Zyphara stepped forward.
She did not choose the glamor of radiant youth, though she could have appeared as a maiden of surpassing beauty. Many of her sisters would have done so, feeding their vanity by standing in rivalry with a mortal famed for her loveliness. Yet Zyphara harbored no envy. She had been a goddess since the world was young, her face sculpted in light eternal, her power unmeasured. Why should she contend with a mortal woman's fleeting charm?
So she clothed herself instead in the shape of an old woman, hair streaked white, face weathered but alight with a strength that mocked the feebleness of age. Her back was straight, her limbs firm, her eyes sharp as tempered steel. A woman of seventy years, perhaps more, yet still vibrant, still unbowed.
She approached the collapsed figure.
"What is a woman like you doing on the stones of this cold street?" Her voice was warm, carrying with it the authority of one who had lived long and seen much. "Where are your people, child? Who walks beside you?"
Ysmara flinched, raising her head. Her lips twisted, the bitterness of her days spilling out before gratitude could restrain it. "It is none of your concern, old mother. Go about your errands. The world will not care when I fall dead here, nor should you."
Her words were knives, sharpened by misery. Yet Zyphara felt no wound. She looked at the swollen belly, the gaunt cheeks, the eyes dark with sleeplessness and grief. Such insolence was not cruelty—it was despair's armor.
"I will not leave you," Zyphara said gently. "Your beauty is evident, yes, but more than that, there is life within you. The streets are no place for either."
Ysmara laughed bitterly, the sound rasping from her throat like broken glass. "Beauty? It has cursed me. Men saw it and wanted me, then spat me out when my belly swelled. What good is beauty if it brings only ruin?"
The goddess lowered herself, sitting upon the cold steps beside her. She did not mind the grime, the stench, the curious eyes of beggars huddled in corners. A goddess's dignity was not lessened by sharing the seat of the destitute.
"Tell me," Zyphara said, her tone steady, patient. "Tell me how this ruin came."
Ysmara's lip trembled. For a moment she turned her head away, unwilling to bare her shame. Then, as if some dam had broken, tears spilled freely, and words rushed out between sobs.
"He was a trader," she whispered. "A man of fine words, promising me the wide world. I was foolish, so foolish. I believed him. He said he would return, that he would wed me, that we would live with riches beyond the dreams of my little village. I gave myself to him. And when he vanished, I bore the weight of it alone."
She touched her stomach, her face twisting with both love and loathing.
"They said I was shameless. They said I dishonored the ancestors. Men who once courted me spat at me. Women who envied me now jeered and mocked. I could not walk among them. So I left, hoping some stranger would see not only my sin but my need. Yet every door is closed. Every heart is stone. And soon this child will come—and I… I do not know if I will even survive to hold him."
Her sobs broke into keening. She pressed her face against her hands.
Zyphara placed a hand upon her shoulder. She let mortal warmth flow from her disguised flesh, though within her veins coursed fire and eternity.
"You are not useless," she said softly. "You are not cast away. I see you. I hear you."
The words seemed simple, yet Ysmara clutched at them as if they were water offered to one dying of thirst.
"You are kind," she whispered. "Kinder than any I have met in many months. Why? Why waste your words on me?"
Zyphara looked at her, and for a brief moment allowed a shadow of divinity to leak into her gaze. Ysmara did not notice it, too consumed by her tears, but the goddess knew. The others on the street felt it faintly, like a hush of reverence passing over their hearts.
"Because you matter," Zyphara answered. "Every soul matters. Even when the world forgets, I remember."
Silence fell between them. Ysmara wept, but the tears were softer now, mingled with the strange balm of being heard. Zyphara sat beside her, enduring the cold, the jeers of passing men, the indifference of merchants who stepped around them as if they were refuse. She would not move until Ysmara's sobs had lessened, until the mortal woman's breathing steadied.
Others on the street glanced toward them, eyes full of suspicion, then turned away. None guessed that the goddess of protection herself had chosen to sit upon the stones with the fallen. None knew that Ysmara's tears watered the soil of destiny, and from them something greater would grow.
For Zyphara, watching silently within herself, knew what Ysmara did not: that this child within her belly was no common babe. His father was no wandering trader, no mere man with honeyed tongue. His father was a god in exile, a being whose passion had crossed forbidden boundaries. And the son born of such union would shape more than a single village, more than a single city—he would touch the fate of gods and mortals alike.
Yet Zyphara spoke none of this.
Instead, she offered the only gift that could be borne in such a moment: presence. She listened. She soothed. She forgave the sharp tongue, the weary bitterness, the self-condemnation that dripped like poison from Ysmara's lips.
For this was why she had been stirred to pity. Not only because Ysmara's beauty was wasted on despair, not only because her womb bore a child soon to draw breath, but because every mortal deserved at least one hand to reach for them in the darkness.
Zyphara would be that hand.
And though the streets around them remained heartless, though the lamps guttered in the wind and beggars muttered curses beneath their rags, a small flame flickered in the cold night: the fragile, trembling light of hope, kindled in the heart of one forsaken woman, guarded by the eternal gaze of a goddess who had chosen to walk beside her.
***
The night waned, but Zyphara did not rise from the temple steps until Ysmara's sobs had eased into weary silence. The goddess studied her mortal companion in stillness, her heart heavy with both compassion and knowledge. She could feel the threads of fate winding tightly around the woman's fragile form, threads spun from a loom not even gods could wholly unweave.
At last, Zyphara spoke. "Come with me."
Ysmara blinked, startled. "What?"
"Stay beneath my roof," Zyphara said. "At least until your child is grown enough for you to walk freely again. You need not wander these streets. You need not starve. You need not die like a dog in the gutter. Come."
The words landed like stones in water. Ripples moved across Ysmara's face—hope, disbelief, suspicion, yearning.
"You would take me in?" she whispered. "You do not even know me."
"I know enough," Zyphara replied. "I know that no woman should give birth alone on cold stones. I know that life within you deserves a chance to see the sun."
Her voice quivered despite herself. For though she spoke with the calm authority of an elder woman, her spirit swam in a vision that had struck her even as she made the offer.
She saw Ysmara stretched upon a bed, sweat gleaming upon her brow, her body wracked with the agonies of labor. She saw blood—so much blood—that no mortal hands could stanch. She saw the babe raised aloft, his lungs crying out to the world even as his mother's last breath fled from her lips.
The vision was not fleeting. It seized her with brutal clarity, dragging her consciousness into that chamber yet unborn. She stood beside the bed, powerless to halt the unraveling. Her divine eyes pierced time itself, gazing into a tomorrow painted in crimson and sorrow.
And she saw the child.
A boy, his cries loud as trumpets, eyes storm-gray beneath lashes damp with new tears. A boy who would one day wield strength far beyond mortals, though whether that strength would heal or shatter the world remained veiled in shadows. She reached toward him, but the vision dissolved.
Zyphara gasped, returning to the present. Tears stung her eyes before she could stop them.
Ysmara saw only the tears, not the vision. To her, they were the tears of a kind stranger moved by pity.
"You are… crying?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
"Yes," Zyphara said, brushing at her cheeks though the tears did not cease. "Your story touches me deeply."
Part of it was true. Yet sorrow pulsed within her because she knew what Ysmara could not: death had already marked her. The child would live, but the mother would not.
Ysmara bowed her head. "No one has wept for me in months."
"Then let this old woman weep enough for all of them," Zyphara murmured.
Silence lingered, filled only by the creak of shutters in the night wind and the distant wail of some drunkard stumbling through alleyways. Then Ysmara lifted her gaze, eyes shining faintly with new courage.
"If… if you truly mean it," she said hesitantly, "then yes. I will come with you. I have nowhere else."
Relief and grief warred within Zyphara. Relief, because the mortal accepted her hand. Grief, because she knew she was leading her not toward salvation, but toward a gentler death.
"Then rise, child," she said softly, taking Ysmara's arm with strength that belied her aged form. "Tonight, you will sleep beneath a roof."
***
The dwelling Zyphara led her to was no hovel. By a mere exertion of her will, she secured what mortals believed was long hers: a stately house nestled within the heart of the city, with pillars carved in marble and lamps burning fragrant oil upon its steps. To human eyes, it had stood there for decades. To the goddess's will, it had existed for no more than a breath.
Gold and treasure paid the servants. Men and women in simple garb greeted them respectfully, bowing to the gray-haired mistress they believed had long been their employer. None suspected that a goddess had conjured the entire household with a flicker of her power.
To Ysmara, it seemed miraculous fortune.
"You live richly," she said as she was ushered through warm halls where tapestries hung upon the walls and hearths glowed with steady flames. "I thought you only a kind old woman. Forgive me, I did not imagine…"
"Do not trouble yourself," Zyphara said, hiding a smile. "My means are simple, my wants simpler. What I have, I share. What I keep, I keep only to serve."
The servants bowed and withdrew, leaving Ysmara trembling in a chamber with a soft bed and a steaming bowl of broth upon the table. She sank into the bed, pressing her cheek against the linens as if she had stumbled into paradise itself. Tears wet the pillow.
Zyphara sat beside her, folding her hands in her lap. She did not need sleep. Gods did not dream. Yet she remained at Ysmara's side, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, listening to the quiet sniffles as she ate and then fell into slumber.
When the night deepened and silence pressed down upon the city, Zyphara allowed her essence to unfurl. Her divine power stretched outward, touching alleyways, marketplaces, rooftops. She guarded not only the woman slumbering in her chamber, but beggars huddled against the cold, children scouring rubbish for scraps, old men coughing their last breaths. Her essence was protection, and she gave it freely, weaving wards through the city like threads of unseen light.
Still, her thoughts turned inward.
Tzandrel.
She whispered the name in her heart.
The god of war, the blood-forger, the flame-eyed one. He had walked among mortals in disguise, and in that guise he had taken Ysmara into his arms. Now he languished imprisoned in the realm above, shackled for a thousand years after striking the first blow in a quarrel with Akrion. Gods did not know all things, though mortals thought them omniscient. Even gods were ensnared by wrath, by pride, by choices that led to ruin.
If he were free, Zyphara thought bitterly, he would have guarded her. He would have lifted her above the jeers of her village. He would have fought death itself to keep her by his side.
But he was not free. And so his lover wandered the streets, despised, swollen with the fruit of his passion, cast aside by mortals who did not know they mocked the vessel of a god's child.
Zyphara looked down at Ysmara, sleeping now without fear. Her beauty glowed even in exhaustion. She was radiant, yet fragile. A vessel of destiny, yet mortal still.
The goddess's throat ached with unshed words. Would it be mercy to intervene? To stretch her days beyond the thread spun for her? To bargain with death, to hold its hand at bay?
Yet she knew the answer. She was not Tzandrel. She was Zyphara. Protection did not mean defiance of the natural order. It meant care within it. Ysmara's fate was sealed. The child within her was the one meant to endure.
Still, as dawn's first light touched the city's roofs, Zyphara wept quietly beside her bed.
***
Days passed into weeks.
Ysmara grew stronger, nourished by food and rest, clothed in garments of silk she had never before dreamed of touching. Servants fussed over her, bowing low, never doubting the identity of the mistress they served. To them, she was the long-beloved matron of the house, and Ysmara was her guest.
At first Ysmara hesitated, ashamed to accept so much, ashamed to be served a cup she could just as easily lift on her own. Yet Zyphara gently insisted.
"Let yourself be cared for," she urged. "There will be time enough for labor in other days. Now is the season of rest."
And so Ysmara smiled more often, laughed at small jests, even sang softly as she stitched clothes for the child soon to come. Yet at night, when the fire dimmed and shadows lengthened, Zyphara sat awake, guarding the silence, weaving unseen wards of protection across the house.
For gods did not sleep. Not even a breath. Sleep was the mercy of mortals, not the burden of divinities.
And in her long vigils, Zyphara's thoughts returned always to Ysmara's fate. She could not banish the vision. The image of blood-stained sheets and a child's first cry haunted her like a phantom.
Would he remember his mother? she wondered. Would he grow knowing her face only through memory, or would she become a ghost, a story told by others?
Her heart ached. Even for a goddess, compassion could be a torment.
Yet she held fast. For Ysmara's time of help had come, and Zyphara would not let her final days be defined by misery. If she could not change the end, she could soften the path leading toward it.
***
The days of waiting dwindled like wax melting from a candle. Ysmara's belly grew rounder, her step slower, her laughter tinged with anxious breath. The servants, unknowing, bustled around her with cheerful ignorance, fetching her meals, fluffing her pillows, and gossiping of markets and festivals beyond the house. To them, she was merely a guest awaiting her child. To Zyphara, every day was the toll of a bell, each sound reverberating closer to the hour she had foreseen.
She did not tell Ysmara. What would be the point? No mortal mother should know she was destined to die before her child's eyes. Better she live her last days free of dread. Better she believe in life, even if death waited beside the door.
So Zyphara smiled when Ysmara spoke of names. She stitched beside her when she sewed swaddling cloth. She listened when Ysmara dreamed aloud of what her child might grow to be—merchant, knight, even scholar. All the while the goddess's heart bled silently, for she knew these dreams would not be Ysmara's to witness.
The hour came on a gray morning, when the sky hung low and the air pressed heavy with the promise of rain. Ysmara's cries rang out from her chamber, startling the household into chaos. Servants scrambled, women rushing with linens and hot water, men fleeing the hall as if the very sound of labor terrified them. Someone shouted for a midwife.
"No."
Zyphara's voice cut through the tumult. She stood tall despite her guise of bent age, her gaze fixed upon the doorway of Ysmara's room. "I will tend her. None other is needed."
The servants hesitated. They trusted her with blind faith; she had never given them cause to doubt. So they obeyed, bustling to prepare what she asked—bowls, cloths, candles set alight. The chamber grew warm with flame and steam, the air thick with the scent of herbs burned to steady nerves.
Ysmara writhed upon the bed, sweat streaming down her face, hair plastered to her temples. Her hands clutched the sheets, knuckles white. Pain tore through her in waves, each cry shuddering like the clash of battle in Zyphara's ears.
"Breathe, child," Zyphara said gently, sitting at her side. She took her hand, steadying it with a grip that felt unyielding as stone. "Breathe with me. You are not alone."
Ysmara's eyes flicked open, glazed with agony. "It… it hurts, old mother… gods, it hurts so much…"
Zyphara brushed damp strands from her brow. "I know. Endure a little longer. You are stronger than you believe."
Hours passed. The sun crawled behind storm clouds, rain beginning to patter against the shutters. The house echoed with Ysmara's cries, with the shuffle of servants carrying water, wringing cloths, murmuring prayers under their breath. Yet through it all, Zyphara remained calm, her presence a pillar around which the chaos swirled.
Inside, her heart splintered.
She knew. She felt it with every pulse of divine perception—the tightening of fate, the inevitable unraveling of mortal flesh. Ysmara's body would not endure this trial. Death stood already at the threshold, waiting patiently.
Still, Zyphara whispered words of comfort. She stroked Ysmara's hand. She guided her breathing, urged her to push, to cry, to scream when needed. She blessed her quietly, unseen by mortal eyes, weaving threads of protection around her soul so that when her spirit slipped free, it would not wander lost but pass swiftly into the realm beyond.
The labor stretched into endless hours. Shadows lengthened. Candles guttered and were replaced. Servants dozed in corners, then jerked awake at each cry. And finally—finally—the moment came.
A child's cry split the air. Thin, fierce, insistent.
Ysmara sobbed, collapsing against the pillows as Zyphara lifted the infant, slick with blood and life, into her arms. She looked down upon him.
Storm-gray eyes blinked open, glistening like steel beneath clouds. Hair damp but already showing its ash-brown hue. Skin olive-toned, glowing with the heat of new birth.
Orin Kaelen. The son of Ysmara and Tzandrel. Half-mortal, half-divine.
Zyphara felt awe pierce her. Not because of his beauty—though even as a newborn, he was striking in a way that would unsettle many hearts—but because of what lay hidden in him. His aura flickered between shadow and light, veiled in mystery. He bore the scent of destiny, the weight of choice. He could be salvation. He could be ruin.
Ysmara reached weakly toward him. "Let me… let me see him…"
Zyphara placed the child in her arms. Ysmara clutched him to her breast, tears spilling down her cheeks. She kissed his damp forehead, her sobs mingled with laughter.
"He's… he's perfect," she whispered. "So perfect… Orin. His name is Orin. His father said it would be Orin…"
Blood soaked the sheets. The servants scrambled, pressing cloths, whispering frantic prayers. The flow would not cease.
Zyphara knew it could not be stopped.
Ysmara's lips trembled, her face pale, yet her eyes blazed with fierce love. "He's mine. My boy. Even if I… even if I don't…"
Her voice faltered. Tears choked her. She kissed Orin again, holding him closer. "Live, my son. Live for all the years I cannot."
Then, with a final shuddering breath, her body went still. Her arms, though slackened by death, did not release her child.
A servant gasped, stepping forward to pry the babe free.
"Stop."
Zyphara's command froze them. Her voice carried the authority of mountains, though it remained wrapped in the tones of an old woman.
"Let her hold him a moment longer," she said softly. "She carried him nine months within her. Let her keep him now, if only for this last breathless moment."
The room hushed. The only sound was the soft rain and the tiny noises of the newborn.
For a time, Zyphara allowed it—mother and child bound together, one gone, one just begun.
At last she stepped forward. Gently, reverently, she lifted Orin from Ysmara's arms. The child did not wail. His eyes blinked up at her, wide and calm, as though some deep part of him knew whose hands now held him.
Zyphara looked down at him, her heart swelling with a tumult of feelings—sorrow for Ysmara, reverence for the child, fury at fate itself. She was the goddess of protection, and yet she could not shield Ysmara from this.
She pressed her lips to Orin's brow, blessing him silently. Protection wrapped him like a cloak, invisible yet unbreakable. Any who sought to harm him would find their malice turned back upon their own heads.
Then she gazed once more at Ysmara's still form. Her face, though pale, was serene, as if she had died in the peace of beholding her son.
"Go in peace, child," Zyphara whispered. "Your journey is not ended, only changed. May the halls beyond welcome you kindly."
The servants wept. Some knelt beside the bed, murmuring prayers for her soul. Others busied themselves with cloths and coverings, though their hands trembled.
Zyphara stood tall amid the grief. She cradled Orin close, feeling the warmth of his tiny body, hearing the steady rhythm of his breaths.
A demigod. Born of mortal and divine. His future lay shrouded, uncertain, vast as the horizon.
He could be the ruin of empires, she thought. Or their salvation. He could shatter the heavens, or bind them together. His choices will carve the fate of gods and mortals alike.
Yet tonight he was only a child, small and vulnerable, his life just begun.
Zyphara held him close, swaying gently, whispering a lullaby older than mountains.
For though she could not protect Ysmara from death, she would protect this child with all the might of her divinity.
Thus ended Ysmara's mortal journey. Thus began Orin Kaelen's.
***
The house grew hushed after Ysmara's death. Mourning spread among the servants, yet their grief was a mortal thing, shallow compared to the weight borne in silence by Zyphara. She saw to Ysmara's burial herself. Cloaked in her guise of the old matron, she arranged a funeral neither lavish nor meager—a proper resting, with prayers sung and flowers scattered, and earth opened to embrace what once had been bright beauty.
When the last clod of soil struck the coffin, Zyphara whispered over it words no mortal heard, weaving protection not for the body but for the soul already departed. She knew Ysmara's spirit walked now among the shadowed ways of the dead, awaiting judgment. Yet because Zyphara had blessed her, the way would not be harsh. Whatever sins weighed upon her would be tempered with mercy.
The servants whispered of their mistress's tears, for they had never seen her weep before. And when, days later, Zyphara dismissed them all with heavy purses of coin and soft-spoken blessings, they thought it was grief that compelled her to solitude. None guessed they had served a goddess in disguise.
So they left, scattering to their own lives, leaving Zyphara alone in the great house with the infant Orin.
***
The child grew swiftly. His first year was marked by a strange duality: mortal frailty, and something beyond mortal woven into him. His body was soft, his cries piercing, his needs simple. Yet his eyes, storm-gray even in infancy, held a focus too sharp, as if some part of him already studied the world with ancient scrutiny.
Zyphara loved him. She had not meant to, not as she did. She told herself she only protected him because it was her nature, because it was her duty as goddess. Yet each time he reached tiny fingers toward her, each time he gurgled laughter when she bent over him, she felt her divinity bend with something gentler.
She was not his mother, yet she became his shelter.
Still, she knew she could not keep him. Orin was destined for the world of men, not to be hidden forever in the halls of a conjured house. She would shield him from the worst, but he must walk his own path. To bind him too closely to her would be to stifle what fate had planted.
So when he turned one year old, Zyphara steeled herself. She wrapped him in swaddling cloths of soft weave, kissed his brow, and carried him through the streets of another city—far from where Ysmara had died.
Before the gates of a humble orphanage she laid him down, setting beside him small toys wrought with her hand. She cloaked herself from mortal eyes, yet Orin saw her. His little face lit with recognition, and he laughed, reaching toward her.
"My sweet boy," she whispered, unseen to the matron who soon came rushing at the sound. "You are not abandoned. You are never alone. I will be with you, unseen, always."
The woman gasped when she found the child, exclaiming over his beauty. Even as a babe he was startling—ash-brown hair curling softly, skin olive-warm, eyes of storm that seemed to pierce. She gathered him up, murmuring that she would keep him as her own, and carried him inside.
From the threshold, Zyphara watched. Orin still looked back toward her, though he no longer saw her form. Yet some sense lingered in him, a comfort that his second mother remained nearby.
***
Years passed. Orin grew beneath the roof of the orphanage, loved by some, envied by others. His beauty did not fade—it deepened. By six years old, he was a boy of striking face and bearing, already drawing whispers from townsfolk who remarked he looked too noble, too sharp-featured, too unearthly for a foundling.
Yet with beauty came strangeness. He was gentle at times, obedient, quick to laughter. But at other times, violence flared from him like sparks from iron struck on stone. He fought other boys with ferocity far beyond his years, eyes blazing, fists hard, as though something ancient guided his limbs.
The caretakers scolded him, punished him, yet they could not strip the wild fire from his nature. They wondered what blood flowed in him. Only Zyphara knew. It was Tzandrel's blood, the war-god's temper burning already in his son.
And still she guarded him.
There were those with darker aims who sensed something unusual about the boy. Witches muttered of his aura. Some tried to ensnare him with charms, to drink his spirit or twist him to their ends. Zyphara crushed their schemes, though often in silence. Sometimes she let them taste a moment of triumph, only for their spells to rebound and consume them. Others fell ill, or perished by mischance, never knowing the hand of a goddess had thwarted them.
Orin never understood why such evils always faltered. He only knew he was strangely preserved.
Then came the plague.
It struck like a shadow across the city, creeping from home to home, leaving blackened corpses in its wake. Priests prayed, leeches bled the sick, herbs burned day and night—but death did not relent.
The orphanage was not spared. One by one, children fell ill. Their cries filled the night, their small bodies shuddering with fever. The matron fought to save them, her own health crumbling, until at last she too collapsed upon her bed.
Orin watched it all. He saw his friends, the brothers and sisters of circumstance, grow pale, cough blood, fall silent. He saw their little hands stiffen, their eyes glaze. He sat among the cots as one after another was stilled.
Fear clawed him, but never claimed him.
Zyphara stood by, unseen, her essence blazing around him like a barrier. Death prowled the orphanage hungrily, feasting on every soul it could grasp. Yet each time it reached for Orin, Zyphara barred its way.
"Not this one," she whispered into the dark. "You shall not have him."
And so it passed him by.
When the plague at last withdrew, silence reigned. The orphanage reeked of rot. Bodies lay upon cots, stiff and cold. The matron herself was gone, her kind eyes closed forever.
Only Orin remained.
He stepped among them with wide eyes, clutching a toy once given him, his small hands trembling. He did not understand why he alone had lived. He only knew the air was heavy with death, and that the laughter and warmth of the place had ended.
He walked out into the streets, leaving the orphanage behind.
Thus Orin became a child of the streets.
He begged for scraps, slept in alleys, learned to fight not only with fists but with cunning. Sometimes strangers gave him food, moved by his face or by some stirring of pity. More often they turned away, as they had once turned from his mother.
Yet through it all, Zyphara walked with him, invisible but present. She shielded him when stones were thrown. She blunted blades raised against him. She steered him toward the kind few who would share bread, and away from the pits where darker traps lay.
Still, her heart ached. For she saw the shadow of his mother in him—the tilt of his head, the curve of his smile—and knew he was destined to walk a hard road. Protection could only shield, not soften the choices he would one day make.
The goddess wept often in those days, though no mortal saw her tears.