It had been a month since Esperanza's first cries lit up the night. A month since the world shifted on its axis and chose, for once, to let love survive.
The commander's tent flickered with candlelight and murmuring voices. Maps lay stretched across the central table, weighed down by mana-stones and obsidian markers. Elena sat quietly near its edge, Esperanza nestled against her chest in a dark teal sling. The baby's curls peeked from beneath the silk, breath soft, a tiny fist curled beneath Elena's chin.
The sight of the three of them, Niegal, Elena, and their daughter, gave even the most grizzled warriors pause.
This was what they fought for.
What they bled for.
A future worth saving.
And then… it came.
A low, guttural rumble that cracked the air like the growl of a buried god.
Niegal and Elena locked eyes instantly. No words passed between them; only instinct. Only the flare of memory passed down through blood and fire.
Inquisition cannons.
The tremor in the earth.
The metallic whine of sacred wheels.
The howling wind of mana-enhanced projectiles.
The air itself recoiled.
Elena rose, her eyes glowing faintly in the half-light.
Niegal stepped close, one hand cupping her jaw. He kissed her, long and deep, the baby pressed safely between their hearts.
"I'll see you when it's done," he whispered, forehead to hers.
"You'd better," she replied, fierce despite the fatigue in her bones.
Niegal moved with deadly grace.
He rallied his fighters: rebels cloaked in earth tones, forest hunters bearing curved blades, and practitioners whose chants tangled with wind. They anointed their faces with ash and oil, blending into the land.
Their plan was swift. Surgical.
Flank the cannon.
Move like shadows.
Disable it from the roots.
Meanwhile, Elena gathered the others, Aurora at her side, cloak billowing like stormclouds.
The injured.
The elderly.
The wide-eyed children.
Together, they led them through tangled thickets to a hidden cavern beneath an ancient cypress tree. Its bark was cracked with time, marked with spirals of old magic. Its roots curled down into the earth like the hands of a protective ancestor.
The cavern mouth opened not by force, but recognition.
As if the land remembered Elena.
As if it knew her child.
Inside, moss covered the walls like velvet. Candlelight flickered in stone alcoves carved with ancient glyphs.
Healers moved among the wounded, whispering chants that smelled of rain and rose.
Mothers hushed their babes.
Children sat cross-legged, quiet but brave.
Outside, Elena stood alone. She raised her arms skyward.
"Yaya Guabancex," she breathed. "Breathe through me now."
Her scars flared to life, those radiant spirals and feathered burns pulsing with silver fire. Her palms blazed.
She whispered the incantation not once, but three times.
Glyphs shimmered into the air like sacred spiders, spinning, weaving, forming an unseen lattice of divine protection.
And then, like a mirage dissolving into mist, the cave mouth vanished.
No entrance. No trace.
Only stillness.
Only safety.
Inside, Esperanza slept peacefully in Aurora's arms, her mana-soft skin glowing like moonlight on a tidepool.
The Behike knelt nearby, talismans and herbs strewn in a careful pattern. But her eyes watched only Elena, now slumped against the wall in shadow, her arms trembling from the spellwork.
"She burns herself for this," the Behike murmured.
Aurora didn't ask who she meant. She already knew.
"For them," she whispered.
And none more than Elena.
She didn't flinch when the pain came.
She didn't cry when her vision blurred, when her magic flared like a blade tearing her open from the inside.
She just breathed.
In.
Out.
Because her family was out there.
Because her husband was fighting.
Because the Church would not win.
Not again.
And somewhere, above and below and within-
the old gods listened.
And waited.
Just as she did.