Ti/Date: 5th Day of the Void, 5 minutes to midnight
Location: Emberhall Pavilion
She expected the blanket first—that scratchy, threadbare thing that had marked too many mornings. Or maybe the sll, that persistent mustiness that clung to everything in the servant quarters like a second skin. Even the hunger would have made sense, that familiar gnawing that never quite went away.
But it was silence that hit her.
Not just quiet. Silence. The kind that pressed against her eardrums and made her want to scream just to fill the void. Where was—?
"Seven-Tee-Nine?"
The na tumbled out before she could stop it, a ntal whisper that should have been answered by that familiar, slightly sardonic presence. The voice that had guided her through ninety-nine lifetis, that had been as constant as breathing.
Nothing ca back. Just... emptiness.
She tried again, pushing harder into the spaces of her mind where he’d always been. "Seven-Tee-Nine, please. You have to be—"
The silence swallowed her words whole.
It felt like losing a limb. Worse. Her phoenix eyes—tilted like a cat’s in a way that spoke of ancient bloodlines she’d never known, though they were dulled now to muddy brown—snapped open and focused on a ceiling she knew far too well. Water stains blood across the plaster like old bruises, mapping out years of neglect. Rain always found its way through the servants’ wing. No one bothered fixing what the help lived under.
That window. By the Light, that sa grimy window that barely let light through.
She was back.
The realization hit like a physical blow, stealing what little air her undernourished lungs could hold. After two and a half millennia—after ascending through realms that defied everything she’d thought possible, after facing things that should have shattered her completely—here she was. Seventeen-year-old Mara Brenner was on a straw mattress in the corner of the world that had forgotten her existence.
The mories crashed over her then, not gentle or manageable but raw and bleeding fresh. Novara dissolving. The taste of her own heart’s blood. Death after death after death, each one teaching her new ways to hurt.
Her small fra started shaking, rage and grief building like pressure in a steam kettle. The urge to scream clawed at her throat—to release sothing so primal it would crack every window in this damned house. Her hands flew up, pressing hard against her mouth.
No. Not here.
She bit down on her palm instead, hard enough for the tallic taste to flood her mouth. Pain to anchor against the tsunami trying to drown her. The need to scream transford into sothing else—cold and sharp and focused.
She’d survived worse than this. In caves that never saw light, in prisons built from nightmares, she’d learned to lock away what would break her. Not suppression—that had nearly destroyed her in the soul tribulation. But containnt. Deliberate choice to feel it later, when safety allowed for the luxury of falling apart.
The shaking gradually stopped as her breathing found its rhythm. Patterns learned across a thousand different hells. The rage crystallized, beca sothing useful. The anguish hardened into determination.
Later. She’d grieve later. Right now, there was work.
***
Her hands ca up to her face—callused from endless chores, marked by that jagged purple scar on her wrist like so kind of brand. The skin felt wrong. Too soft, unmarked by experiences that should have carved wisdom into her bones. Her fingers found the fresh bruise on her left cheek, a tender reminder of yesterday’s beating.
That familiar spike of helpless rage tried to claw up her throat.
But now it t sothing new. Sothing harder than diamond and colder than space between stars.
She wasn’t the frightened girl who’d endured thirty years of systematic cruelty anymore. Now she rembered.
Everything.
Raven swung her legs over the bed’s edge slowly, bare feet eting rough wood. Dizziness washed through her—this body was pathetically weak compared to the goddess she’d been in her final cultivation life. Worse, everything felt... wrong. Too small. The hands that had once wielded cosmic power now struggled with the simple act of standing without swaying.
It was like trying to pour an ocean into a teacup. The disconnect between what her mind knew she could do and what this frail vessel could actually accomplish sent a spike of frustrated panic through her chest. She’d been a deity. Now she was seventeen again, trapped in a body that felt like a child’s toy after wearing the form of a cosmic entity.
But weakness could be fixed. Bodies strengthened. Power reclaid. She just had to rember—patience. Sothing she’d learned the hard way.
What mattered was understanding exactly where and when she’d landed.
The calendar hanging crooked on the wall caught her attention, pages yellowed and water-stained but readable. Her eyes traced today’s date: 1st Day of Cycle 1, TC 1853. Just past midnight, then. The final hours of the Void Days, when Ascara existed in twilight—neither day nor night but caught between. Those five strange days each year when the world bore its scars from the Great Upheaval.
Fitting, sohow, that her cosmic journey should end where the world itself carried ancient wounds.
But her finger moved past today, tracing forward through calendar pages until it stopped. Burned into her vision like brands: 01.06.1853.
That date lived in her soul. How many tis had she lain under alien stars thinking back to that exact morning? How many nights staring into the cosmic void, whispering this date like a prayer or a curse?
The 6th Day of Cycle 1. The day that taught her the aning of the two most heartbreaking words in any language: If only.
If only she’d been stronger. Seen through Amara’s sches. Fought back instead of accepting fate with the resigned despair of the thoroughly broken.
The familiar spiral started pulling at her thoughts, threatening to drag her toward that other date—TC 1858, when everything truly ended. No. She slamd that door shut before mories could take hold. That path led to madness, to the kind of rage that would see her paint these walls with blood.
Not yet. Not until she was ready.
The irony wasn’t lost on her, though. She, who had conquered realms and faced cosmic entities, had been undone by sothing as simple as a drugged drink and false accusation. The girl who would beco Raven—who would transcend mortality itself—was destroyed by petty sches from mortals too small to comprehend what they were unleashing.
Today was the beginning. In five days, Amara would make her move. Five days until the trap that would chain Mara Brenner to years of hell—first as an unwanted wife, then... she slamd that door shut before the mories of what ca after could surface.
But this ti, she knew it was coming.
Seven-Tee-Nine’s absence gnawed like an infected wound. Through every life, every death and rebirth, he’d been there—sardonic, logical, occasionally insufferable, but constant as gravity. The mory of their first eting rose unbidden, clear as if it happened yesterday instead of over two millennia ago...
First Contact rit World #1 - The Frozen Realm of Thyrallia
Consciousness returned like a slap, sudden and brutal and accompanied by bone-deep cold that turned breath to crystals. She’d still been Mara then—the na not yet burned away by pain and rage—lying in snow so white it hurt to look at.
The sky stretched in impossible purples and blues, colors shifting like liquid aurora across visible stars even in daylight. Trees twisted toward alien heavens, silver bark reflecting light, crystalline leaves singing when wind touched them. The air tasted of ozone and sothing indefinably other, as if physics had been rewritten by a cosmic poet.
"What... where am I?" Her voice was small and lost in the vast frozen wilderness.
That’s when she heard it—electronic static mixed with distant waterfalls, resolving into sothing that might be called a voice.
"Designation: Human Subject, rit Acquisition Candidate. Status: Functional. Beginning orientation protocols."
She scrambled up, spinning wildly, searching for the source. Nothing visible explained the words emanating from the air itself.
"Who’s there? Show yourself!"
"Visual manifestation is unnecessary for current interaction paraters. I am Autonomous Overseer 7T9, the Seventh Tasking Nexus of the Ninth Alignnt, Custodian Adjunct of the Great Transcendent Network, Iteration Pri of the Celestial Protocols. I have been assigned to facilitate your rit acquisition journey across the designated trial realms."
Mara blinked. Twice. The absurdly grandiose title hung in frigid air like waiting icicles, each word more pretentious than the last. In another ti, another life, she might have been intimidated by such cosmic authority. Instead, she found herself fighting back what might have been her first genuine smile in years.
"Yeah, no," she said firmly, breath misting in alien cold. "I’m calling you Seven-Tee-Nine."
A pause—brief, but conveying a digital equivalent of sputtered indignation.
"That designation is... insufficient. My full title encompasses eons of service to the—"
"Seven-Tee-Nine." She crossed her arms despite the cold seeping through her thin clothes. "You can be my cosmic babysitter if you want, but I’m not spending however long this takes stumbling over syllables every ti I need your attention."
Longer pause now, as if her assigned overseer was processing an unprecedented breach of protocol.
"...Acceptable. For efficiency purposes, the abbreviated designation may be utilized."
Just like that, across a frozen alien landscape under an impossible sky, the most important friendship of her existence began.
***
The mory faded, leaving Raven alone in gray dawn light through her grimy window. His absence ached like a physical wound, threatening to drag her back into despair that had defined so much of her existence. But alongside grief ca sothing else—sothing that made her pulse quicken.
Hope.
She was back. Before Amara’s sche. Before the marriage trap. Before everything leading to thirty years of hell and ninety-nine lives of cosmic trials. This wasn’t just survival—this was opportunity.
He’ll be back, she told herself with fierce certainty. He has to be. Whatever cosmic forces sent here wouldn’t leave to face this alone. Not after everything.
But until then, she’d rely on what had never failed her: her own strength.
Moving to the cracked mirror above the washbasin, Raven studied the face staring back. Achingly familiar—heart-shaped features made gaunt by malnutrition, dull black hair hanging limp around shoulders too narrow for the weight of her experiences. Sallow skin marked by stress and poor nutrition, fresh acne dotting her cheeks like angry accusations.
But the eyes held her attention. Those distinctive phoenix-shaped orbs, tilted like a cat’s—unmistakably grandmother’s descendant. The shape remained true to heritage, but years of systematic poisoning had leached the color to muddy brown. Selene’s doing, keeping her true nature hidden beneath toxins and neglect. Making sure no one recognized the bloodline that should have guaranteed protection.
Not anymore, she thought, her reflection’s lips curving into sothing that wasn’t quite a smile. Now I know what’s coming. Now I’m ready.
Eyes closed, she reached inward, feeling for a familiar presence that should have been nestled in her spiritual core. For a heart-stopping mont—nothing. Just weak, barely-ford channels belonging to an untrained seventeen-year-old who’d never heard of cultivation.
Then she felt it.
Deep within her soul space—barely forty cubic centiters from what should have been a vast realm—ten points of light pulsed with gentle warmth. The blood beads. Her inheritance from ninety-nine lifetis, each containing power that could reshape worlds. Dormant now, sealed and waiting, but there. Ready to awaken when she’d grown strong enough.
The Dragon’s bead pulsed red-gold, containing fury of stars and cleansing fire of rebirth. The Phoenix glowed with earthen strength, promising patience to endure and power to rise from ashes. Eight others waited—Wood, Water, tal, Wind, Lightning, Darkness, Light, and at the center, sothing defying classification. Golden and warm, whispering of infinite possibilities.
Soon, she promised silently. Soon I’ll be strong enough to claim what you offer. But right now, there’s work.
Even focusing on the beads strained her young body. Soul power—just a fraction of what she once wielded—pressed against boundaries of what this mortal fra could contain. The cosmic forces binding most of her strength weren’t cruel, she realized. They were protective. Without restraints, channeling even a thousandth of her true power would tear this weak vessel apart like wet paper.
But what remained... she flexed her fingers experintally, feeling the constrained energy that thrumd beneath skin like caged lightning. Even limited to what this fragile body could safely channel, it was still more than Amara could possibly anticipate. Not enough to shatter mountains or rewrite reality, but enough to turn the tables on petty sches and small-minded cruelty.
The key was patience. Careful planning. Using mortal thods enhanced by immortal wisdom rather than trying to force divine power through a vessel too weak to contain it.
***
Turning from the mirror, Raven began to plan. The sche that would trap her in marriage to Kael was five days away. Barely a heartbeat in cosmic existence—but it would have to be enough.
She flexed her fingers again, testing the limits. The power was there, carefully restrained but accessible. Enough to level the playing field against Amara’s mundane sches. Not enough to simply obliterate her enemies—this body couldn’t handle that level of force—but sufficient to ensure that when Amara ca with her aphrodisiacs and fertility drugs, when she orchestrated that humiliating "discovery" in the hotel room, it would be Amara ensnared instead.
Five days to prepare. Set her own trap. Ensure that when Amara ca with aphrodisiacs and fertility drugs, when she orchestrated that humiliating "discovery" in the hotel room, it would be Amara ensnared instead.
The thought of Amara’s shock when her perfect plan crumbled sent a surge of anticipation through Raven’s chest. Let the woman who’d stolen her life, her na, her future discover what it ant to cross soone who’d faced cosmic horrors and erged victorious.
Amara thought she’d won by stealing a place in the family, orchestrating years of abuse and manipulation. She had no idea her greatest triumph had just beco her ultimate doom.
Because Mara Brenner was no longer the frightened, powerless girl who could be broken by cruelty and neglect.
She was Raven—tested by cosmos, tempered in forges of a hundred worlds, ard with knowledge of exactly how this story was supposed to end.
Five days. Five days before the banquet that would have rained humiliation on her, torn away dreams and chained her to Kael. Five days to ensure the tragedy that defined her existence would never co to pass.
The void had ended. Her true battle was about to begin.
Weak gray light through the grimy window began strengthening as dawn broke over the Brenner estate, but Raven remained motionless at the mirror. Her muddy brown eyes reflected sothing that would have terrified anyone wise enough to recognize it.
Justice, she thought, small hands clenching into fists. Not revenge. Justice. For the girl I was, the woman I beca, for every dream they crushed beneath their ambitions.
I choose my own fate.
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