There are prisons without bars.
Cells made of flesh, of blood... and of a will that is not your own.
Berenia knew it.
She knew it since that night when the moon became too white and the air of the Douglas Duchy thickened, dense like stagnant mud. Since then, something else had inhabited her body. And from the deepest corner of her own mind, Berenia observed.
—Get up —the Shadow inside her ordered.
And her body obeyed.
That body she had cared for over twenty years, that she had healed, fed, and protected, moved without her. Berenia screamed from the depths of her soul, but her lips did not open. She watched, helpless, as her own hands folded the sheets of the infirmary with an alien, inhuman precision.
The thumb of her right hand trembled once, as if trying to disobey... and then fell still.
She saw her parents through her own eyes, as if observing an ancient, distant painting. She wanted to tell them she loved them. That they should run. That she was no longer there.
But the voice that left her throat did not belong to her.
She spoke cold words, measured, calculated by that consciousness seeded within her like a patient parasite.
The exodus was a slow torture.
Berenia watched the lands of the Duchy fade on the horizon. The hills where she had run as a child turned gray under the corrupted mana of the gods. Each step toward the new settlements was a silent stab.
—Stop. Look back one last time —her consciousness begged, clinging to what little still felt like her own.
But whatever inhabited her did not know nostalgia.
Her body kept walking. Helping the wounded. Comforting children. Pretending to be the Berenia of always, while the real one suffocated in a silence without cracks.
The night of departure was the worst.
She saw her father sleeping, exhausted from the journey, and wanted to kiss his forehead. Wanted to etch that face into her memory in case she never saw it again. Instead, her body rose, took a cloak, and walked into the forest without looking back.
She abandoned her blood. Her home. And what hurt her most—her lord.
Duke Lusian.
Just when his people needed him most.
—If you harm him... —Berenia's consciousness whispered into the darkness that possessed her—If you use my hands to hurt my people... or to touch Lord Lusian...
The threat was not a shout. It was a broken oath.
—I will find a way to break this body from within.
The Shadow did not respond.
It did not need to.
It already had control.
While Berenia walked through the lands of the Empire, the sky tore open.
It was not lightning or a storm. It was a wound in the firmament, and from it descended the voice of the Heralds. It did not speak to ears, but to bones. It vibrated in the marrow of the living, imposing itself like an ancient command.
The Tournament of Selection had been proclaimed.
The gods, terrified by the fall of the Crusaders and the rise of Lusian, cried out for new champions. Their thrones trembled, and when gods tremble, they turn fear into ritual.
—The faithful shall gather —intoned the Heralds—The worthy shall walk among gods.
Inside Berenia, the Shadow smiled using her lips.
There was no better hiding place for poison...than the very center of the altar.
The Tournament was a display of power and desperation.
Warriors covered in scars, mages wrapped in ancient relics, paladins bathed in artificial faith: all paraded under the hungry gaze of the Heralds. Each offered their strength, their devotion, their life.
And one by one, they were rejected.
Too much ambition.Too much ego.Too much self.
The gods did not seek greatness.They sought vessels.
When it was the young woman's turn, the arena fell into unnatural silence. Since her arrival, she had not spoken or interacted with anyone. When some men tried to approach her, perhaps with ill intentions, they stopped abruptly and retreated, almost fleeing.
Berenia walked toward the main pillar. The Herald of Darkness awaited her. For a moment, almost instinctively, she felt the urge to kneel, without understanding why.
To the priests, she radiated an impossible calm. A devotion so pure it seemed to erase the air around her. They did not know—they could not know—that what they perceived was more than purity.
It was law itself. Something older, more mystical.
The Herald stepped forward, extending his jeweled, trembling hand.
—Your affinity is... absolute —he whispered, astonished—You seem like a being designed by heaven itself to contain glory.
From her internal prison, the real Berenia screamed.
She saw the blessing descend.
Nyxara, Goddess of Darkness, desperate for a weapon against Lusian, poured her essence without restraint. It enveloped Berenia's body, marking her forehead with the divine seal. Threads of light bound her body, but Berenia's soul remained isolated from it.
To the world, the Heroine of Darkness had just been born.The savior the Empire had been longing for.
But beneath that body, the blessing transformed.
Kheris' inheritance awakened.
A drop of black blood pulsed within that body. And upon that face, a shallow smile was born.
The trap was closed.
The gods had chosen their champion without realizing they had just handed the keys of their fortress to the only being capable of destroying them from within.
The Trojan Horse of a dead god.
Berenia raised her gaze to the sky with a smile that was not hers.
—I am ready —her body said.
—I'm coming for you —that consciousness whispered.
While the decree of Aeltharis, the Mandate of Judgment, burned in the firmament... —already wrapped in the silks of the Imperial Heroine— she lifted her gaze from the Empire's capital.
She saw the decree.
She could see everything, but she could not control her body.
—They have sentenced you, my lord Lusian —the real Berenia thought, silently crying—They have placed a price on your head because they fear you.
She felt Nyxara's blessing burn within her body, that living darkness that claimed her as a weapon.
—No, no… I cannot be the blade used to kill you —she continued, turning pain into edge.
On the mountain, Lusian awoke startled.
The cold did not come from the World Tree. It was something else. A bad premonition.
A brief emptiness in his chest.The echo of a goodbye he did not hear.The feeling that someone, far away, was still standing for him.
Lusian clenched his fist.
He did not know why, but he was not alone.