That night, the sky bore no moon.
Only a faint fracture at the edge of the cosmos—
a pale scar between the realm of the living and the dead.
The sea, ink-black, held its breath in silence.
A human girl's body was cast into the tide —
a cruel slash had severed her throat before her blood could even cool.
Her head fell slower than her limbs.
Her hair—black as mourning ink—spread into the waves like smoke.
The wound on her neck did not bleed red.
It glowed.
Each drop fell into the water like a shooting star beneath the sea.
Gentle. Trembling.
Unwilling to fade.
In a place no star dared to gaze upon,
a Nameless Entity stood at the brink of the world.
No light crowned Her. No form revealed Her.
Only a towering silhouette in robes that curled against a wind no one felt—
Her hands clasped behind Her back,
Her eyes opened toward a place where hope had long since vanished.
She paused.
A ripple.
Something had broken the symmetry.
A scent—no, not scent. A thread of something finer—
wove itself into the space around Her.
Not rot.
Not salt.
But... emotion.
Raw, unfiltered.
Unbidden, She stepped forward.
The sea parted.
Waves dared not touch Her feet.
She bent low.
A wet crown of black hair floated just beneath the surface,
and from within it, blood shimmered like a quiet constellation.
When Her hand met the girl's skin, the world trembled—
not from flame, nor from thunder—
but from the birth of something softer.
"What are you...?"
"Why does a mortal weep such light?"
She looked long into the girl's broken face.
Though the body had fallen still,
her blind eyes still wept—
tears shining down her cheeks in silence, as if whispering a prayer the gods forgot.
This goddess—this nameless force that had passed through a thousand deaths without turning back—
lowered Herself.
With care that could shatter time,
She touched her hair.
Drew Her fingers through it.
Let the blood kiss each strand.
Not as ritual.
Not as pity.
But like a poet painting meaning into the void.
The black faded.
A red emerged—deep as rubies veiled in mist.
A new hue born not of birth, but of witnessing.
She looked at her like one beholding the first metaphor.
"A soul like this… does not belong to soil."
She pressed Her forehead to the girl's.
Her voice, almost silent:
"You shall have a name."
"You are Astraea."
"No longer human. No longer corpse.
You are what I keep—
so that this world may not be entirely hollow."
Then, within the trench of silence, She released her.
But she did not fall.
Her form dissolved into crimson vapor—
a breath of mourning and light—
then gathered again
into a seed of luminous stillness cradled in Her palm.
She encased it in a sealed pocket of space—
a home that was not a home.
A room with no time, no edge,
only the breath of Her voice and the hum of artificial wind.
Astraea awoke.
But the world did not.
No birdsong. No morning light. No rustle of leaves.
Only silence—
thick as a veil pressed against her skin.
She lay upon something smooth. Too smooth. Too still.
It was not stone.
Not earth.
It was as if the air had hardened into shape beneath her body, cradling her without warmth.
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Nothing.
The darkness in her vision did not shift.
No edges. No shadows.
Just a deep, unwavering black.
Her hand reached upward, trembling—
not in fear,
but in instinct.
Touch was all she had now.
Fingers brushed the air—cold, unmoving.
She reached further, and touched... nothing.
No walls. No roof.
Just... space.
Still.
Perfect.
"...Where... am I...?"
Her voice broke the hush.
Thin. Cracked. Like a string stretched too far.
"Is anyone… there?"
Nothing replied.
She pushed herself upright, slowly.
Each movement strange—like her body was newly grown.
Her limbs obeyed, but felt distant. Borrowed.
Something stirred behind her.
No sound.
No breath.
Just… presence.
Vast.
Contained.
Astraea turned toward it, blindly.
She could not see—
but she felt Her.
A weight in the air.
A stillness sharpened into shape.
The girl froze.
The voice echoed not in her ears—
but in the hollows between her ribs.
"...Who are you?"
"Where is this?"
"Why can't I—"
She stopped.
A pause.
A hand to her face.
Her fingers trembled.
"Why… can't I see?"
The silence held its breath.
Then, the voice answered:
"Because you are no longer human."
Three seconds passed. Maybe three eternities.
Astraea's hands fell into her lap.
Her head dipped.
"Then… what am I?"
A step.
She heard it—barely.
Not sound, but a shift in the very silence around her.
And then, the coldest fingertips brushed her chin—
tilting her face upward.
The goddess stood before her.
A shape carved from stillness itself.
Hair like the sky before creation.
Eyes like polished void—
not black, but hollow.
She said nothing.
But Astraea felt the answer settle in her bones:
You are mine.
---
She tried to speak.
But the words caught in her throat.
Not from fear—
but from something far stranger.
Longing.
For something she couldn't name.
"Did I die…?"
The goddess's hand fell away.
"You were cast away.
Broken.
Left to vanish."
"And yet…"
She moved closer.
A breath apart.
"Your tears grew roots even in salt."
Astraea swallowed.
"I… don't remember. Anything."
"My name, my family, my—"
"Your name is Astraea."
"And your past…"
"...is not what defines you now."
Silence settled again.
But Astraea, even in her blindness, turned her face toward the goddess.
"Why did you save me?"
The pause was endless.
And then—
a reply that did not sound like mercy.
"Because you were beautiful when you cried."
Astraea flinched.
But not from pain.
Not from shame.
From heat.
A warmth in her chest—sharp and sudden, like a thorn in bloom.
She didn't know if it was love.
Or terror.
Or something far, far older.
But she lowered her head.
And whispered—
"Then… will I keep crying,
so you'll keep me near?"
Seraphyne did not answer.
But Astraea felt it—
a presence like an orbit, drawing her close without touching.
And deep within the cold, blind chamber,
a vine coiled upward from the floor—
silent, slow—
bearing a single fruit that shimmered faintly in the dark.
---
.
.
.
Once, she had been human.
Just a little girl living with her parents in a forest village—where birdsong melted into morning mist, and the ground always smelled of rain-soaked grass.
Their home was simple, but full of warmth—built by hands that knew how to laugh, how to tell stories, and how to pass love through simple meals.
Her father grew herbs. Her mother copied old poems with soft brushes, teaching her how to write on rice-paper by dipping her finger in ink.
She had thought she would live like that forever.
Until the fire came.
The raiders descended like floodwater.
They didn't knock.
They tore through the trees, trampled the garden, and laughed as they slaughtered her parents before her eyes.
She hid behind a pile of firewood, biting into her sleeve to stop herself from screaming.
Her eyes—wide, burning—drank in every moment like they meant to carve it into her blood.
She ran. But not far.
An accident later at the forced labor print shop near the mines left her blind—acid splashed across her face, burning out the world.
Still, the fire in her chest never died.
In the dark, she trained herself to listen.
To feel vibration in the ground.
To map the world by echoes, to hear footsteps, breaths, heartbeats.
She could no longer see, but she could still hunt.
And her heart held only one vow: vengeance.
One afternoon, she rested by the sea—
A place where her father once brought her to float paper boats.
She sat on the shore, face lifted to the salt wind, and she cried.
Not for pity.
But for absence.
For stories left untold.
For the silence where her parents' voices once lived.
Her tears fell onto the sand.
And the earth… stirred.
Right in front of her—unseen, but sensed—a small vine broke through the wet soil.
Twisting upward, trembling.
No leaves. Just a single fruit on the tip—glowing faintly like a drop of light caught in time.
She reached out.
Touched it with her fingers.
It shattered.
No shards. No sound. Just... gone.
As if it had never existed.
She tried again.
It vanished again.
She paused, then leaned forward.
This time, she used her mouth.
Bit gently.
The fruit slipped into her mouth.
It had no flavor.
No scent.
No texture.
But it carried something stranger—
a sensation.
She tasted memory.
A hint of her mother's singing.
A sliver of her father's warmth.
A flicker of her own rage, condensed into something soft.
The fruit was emotion—born from her tears, a fruit of the soul.
Weeks passed.
She found the main camp.
The raiders.
The ones who had taken everything.
Knife in hand—one her father used to carve bamboo—
she crept forward, a shadow in silence.
She knew their movements by vibration, breath, and blood.
She raised the blade.
But she never struck.
They caught her.
Dragged her out.
"Blind freak. What are you even made of?"
They didn't know who she was.
Didn't know what ran in her veins.
They beheaded her.
No trial.
No mercy.
Her final tear fell to the shore as they threw her body like waste.
The wind stopped.
The sea stilled.
Her blood… began to glow.
Not red—
but soft, pale light.
It pulsed once.
A call.
And far beyond the veil of time—
At the edge of all things,
a godless deity stirred.
Seraphyne—ancient, nameless, watching from beyond meaning—
turned her head.
And for the first time in an eternity,
she stepped down.
And fate began to shift.
***
Since that day, Astraea asked no more questions.
She simply followed the voice that whispered in the dark.
She was used to not seeing.
But here — where there was no day or night, no scent of earth, no whisper of wind —
the darkness felt deeper than anything she had ever known.
One day — or perhaps a moment within eternity — the voice said:
"Follow the echo of your chest.
There you'll find what you must tend."
Astraea didn't understand.
But she was used to not understanding.
She touched the floor — smooth and cold — and walked by the rhythm of her own heartbeat.
Each step fell into silence.
But she didn't stumble.
Her feet remembered more than her mind did.
At last, she came to a place faintly warmer.
Not much —
just enough for her skin to feel the shift.
And there, something was… breathing.
Not a person.
Not a creature.
But a slender tree, no taller than a child, growing straight from the floor of some unknown material.
There was no soil.
No roots.
Yet it lived.
She reached out and brushed the trunk.
Cold.
But beneath her touch —
a pulse.
A quiet rhythm, like a heartbeat.
Astraea sat beside the tree.
"So… this is what I must grow?" she whispered.
No one answered.
But the tree trembled —
as if nodding.
Astraea wasn't sure what she was doing to make the tree bloom.
But every day she returned.
She didn't water it.
She didn't speak to it.
She just… felt.
And when she let her emotions drift —
unease, quiet sorrow, a shadow of loneliness —
a fruit would appear at the tip of the tree.
They had no true shape.
Sometimes soft like jelly, sometimes firm like frozen breath.
But if she touched them, they dissolved — instantly, without trace.
She learned not to touch.
Only leaned close, lips brushing the skin of the fruit —
and bit gently.
Each time brought something strange.
No taste.
No scent.
No pain.
No joy.
Just a current moving through her chest —
like a breeze through an old wound.
Then one day, Seraphyne came.
She didn't speak.
Didn't walk.
She simply appeared, as if the space itself folded into her presence.
Astraea sensed her.
"You're here," she said softly, not facing any direction, but her lips curved slightly.
Seraphyne said nothing.
Her presence always made the air grow still — cold, sharp, like a cathedral carved in starlight.
"There's a fruit today," Astraea added, her voice quiet as if offering something delicate.
The goddess did not answer.
But a breath shifted — and the fruit floated from the tree, drawn toward her like a petal in wind.
She brought it to her lips.
Bit into it.
Silence.
Then...
"Anger," Seraphyne said, low and flat — as if reciting a word from a dead language.
Astraea tilted her head.
"Was it mine?"
"No. From someone you remember but cannot name," she answered, dreamlike.
Seraphyne looked down at her.
Astraea could not see it, but she felt it —
a gaze like light pressing cold against her skin.
"Did you… like it?" Astraea asked, a small smile blooming like a hidden flower.
"It has no flavor. But… it has force."
Astraea didn't understand. But she smiled.
She always smiled like that — softly, briefly, and only in the dark.
She was obedient.
She did everything the goddess asked.
Never complained.
Never questioned too much.
But sometimes — when she thought Seraphyne had left —
she would sit alone, rest her head against the tree, and whisper:
"What if one day… I can't cry anymore?"
"What if no more fruits grow?"
"If the feelings in me fade — like those fruits that vanish when touched — will she still want me?"
No answer ever came.
But the tree kept breathing.
And she kept sitting there.
Quietly.
Waiting for the next fruit to grow —
even though she had no idea where it came from…
…or what it was slowly making her become.