It was the winter of year XX69 A.G. when she awakened.

That day the sky was dark, the air biting cold, the tiled floors of the manor glacial beneath every single step, a constant reminder, with each one taken, of the bitter truth of their cruel reality.

Selena was only six years old then. Young enough that awakening so early was considered rare, but also far too young to be exposed to the cruelty of this world.

Her thin clothes, worn and frayed by time, were little more than a ghost of a barrier against the low temperatures of winterk temperatures that crept in during that time of year like reapers come to collect the souls of the poor, and to remind everyone that warmth is temporary, but cold is eternal.

What should have been a moment of joy became the greatest curse of her life.

She stood alone on the frozen fields outside the manor, the cold biting through her thin clothes as she watched, one last time, the man who had once been her father.

They were lowering him into the mass grave, a pit already filled with countless bodies.

Her family had fallen into the hands of the Langthon.

Not because of a mistake they had made. Not because of a debt they owed.

But because of a sin committed by an ancestor long forgotten.

And like a chain that never broke, that guilt had been passed down generation after generation, until it reached them.

Her father had been the only reason they had survived this long.

He was the wall that stood between them and destruction, the shield that protected the fragile flame of hope still burning within their home.

Now that wall was gone.

And with it, the warmth that had barely endured until his last breath began to fade.

The day the small flame within her started to die.

No matter how hard she tried to stay invisible, her talent didn’t go unnoticed. Not long after it was discovered, she found herself taken under the wing of one of the Academy’s instructors, a man struck by her rare ability, who claimed he would save her from the Langthon.

She was separated from her brother and her mother, with the promise that they too would be freed from slavery.

But that promise was never kept. A month after the separation, she learned that the only two people she had left in this world were gone, lost, she was told, to a bandit attack during the journey toward the capital.

And with their disappearance, the small flame inside her finally went out completely, leaving behind an empty shell held together by one thing and one thing only.

Vengeance.

***

The blade of the wooden sword had already turned ice-cold, thin particles of mana drifting along its edge like a quiet current.

Her grip on it was tight, every ounce of restraint she had left being poured into not doing what she had thought about doing every single day.

Namely, cutting into pieces the bastard from the family that had taken everything from her.

"Bitch, you really dare—"

Driven by pain and the humiliation of his crushing defeat, Percival had been ready to shout, ready to throw her family’s name at her like a weapon, when a chill ran down his spine, and for a moment he felt as though he were one step away from death.

His trembling gaze landed on the prodigy standing before him, and he nearly felt death reach out and touch him, enough to short-circuit his mind for a brief, terrifying instant.

Whether it was the injuries or something else entirely, his senses were beginning to narrow, his vision unsteady, and just as he found himself wondering if that blade was about to move—

A whistle cut through the air, followed by a voice. Calm, but firm.

"Enough. Sparring ends here."

The combat instructor stepped forward, a woman in her forties, with the kind of composure that came not from indifference, but from years of seeing exactly what was about to happen before it did.

"Percival. You’ve taken enough for today. Fall back."

Percival didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet, doing his best to salvage what little dignity remained, and retreated to the edge of the training area. The instructor nodded toward two other students.

"You two. Step forward."

The rest of the class had noticed nothing unusual, to them it had been a one-sided sparring match, nothing out of the ordinary. The scene of Selena beating up Percival was a common one at this point, so no one really paid much attention to it.

But the instructor’s eyes had caught it. The faint trace of mana threading along the wooden blade, subtle enough to miss if you weren’t looking for it. If she had stepped in even a moment later, this wouldn’t have ended with bruises.

Her gaze settled on Selena.

’The Ice Princess,’ she thought. That was what the other students had taken to calling her, half in admiration, half in unease. Composed, cold, unreachable. And yet just now she had been seconds away from doing something that would have been very difficult to explain.

She filed it away without comment, and turned her attention to the next pair.

Selena stepped back without a word. She didn’t take a moment to catch her breath, didn’t glance at the students around her. She simply withdrew, as though the whole thing had already ceased to exist for her.

"That was... something."

A voice came from beside her. A girl with short chestnut hair and violet eyes fell into step next to her, keeping her voice low enough that only Selena could hear.

Her name was Lirien, daughter of one of the kingdom’s dominant families, someone with a talent well above average. She was also, as far as anyone could tell, the only person who had managed to find even a hairline crack in the wall Selena had built around herself.

Not because Selena had let her in. More because Lirien had never seemed particularly interested in whether she was welcome or not.

"I’m just saying," Lirien continued, glancing briefly toward where Percival was hunched at the edge of the field, "I’ve seen people lose sparring matches before. I have never seen someone look at their opponent like they were deciding which part to remove first."

Selena said nothing, and kept walking. Before long the two of them reached the locker room.

The locker room was quiet by the time they arrived, most of the other students still out on the training floor. Selena moved to her locker without a word and began changing into the Academy’s standard uniform, dark navy, clean lines, the crest stitched small on the left breast.

Lirien, changing beside her, kept up a running commentary on the class that Selena acknowledged with the occasional silence.

It was when Selena reached into her locker for her jacket that it slipped out, a pendant, old and worn, its color faded to something between silver and gray, the kind of trinket that looked like it had been pulled from a junk drawer and forgotten. The kind of thing that had no business being carried by someone like her.

It landed against the bench with a soft clink.

Selena reached down to pick it up, but the clasp had given way on impact, and the locket lay open on the bench.

She went still.

It lasted only a moment, that stillness, less than a breath. Then she picked it up, closed it with a quiet click, and slipped it into her breast pocket without a word.

Lirien had seen her freeze. She hadn’t seen that before, not once, in all the time she had known her.

"What’s that?" she asked. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Selena shouldered her bag.

"Nothing that concerns you."

Lirien opened her mouth, then closed it. There was something in the way she had said it, not cold, not sharp. Just final, leaving no room for further discussion.

She watched Selena walk out, and stood there for a moment in the quiet of the empty locker room.

Not because she had been stung by her friend’s coldness, no, it wasn’t that. It was something else.

In the brief instant the locket had fallen open, she had managed to catch a glimpse of what was inside, just a flash, barely enough to register. But the more she thought about it, the more her mind turned over the unknown past of the girl she called a friend.

Inside the locket, on one side, she had seen a small drawing. Not a photograph, a pencil sketch, careful and slightly uneven, the way a child draws when they’re trying very hard.

It depicted two figures: a girl, taller, and a boy, smaller, standing side by side.

On the other side, written in small, neat handwriting:

To my big sister. — Evan.

Lirien looked at the door for a long moment.

Then she picked up her own bag, and followed her out.