THE UNBROKEN

In Port Clairy, the blood had barely dried before the stories began.

Whispers turned to rumors.

Rumors turned to ballads.

And the ballads… turned to legend.

The tale spread like wildfire across Veracchia and through the ships sailing toward the United Territories of Yidali. No tongue could tell it the same way twice, but the bones of the story remained:

El Léon Negro:broken, disfigured, tortured for weeks without end by the Inquisition, had been rescued by his beloved wife.

Not the storm goddess of old. Not the glowing oracle.

But a blind woman with burns across her face and a weeping blade in her hands.

La Doña Guabancex.

They said she'd walked through the holy halls of the Church and painted them red.

That she screamed the names of her dead and living as she cut down inquisitors like wheat.

That she begged the man she loved to live, and that the gods wept to obey.

Even the skeptics didn't dare mock the tale.

They had seen what she left behind.

The last remaining heir of House Matteo had been sawed open and still lived. His wife was magicless and still walked through fire. Their child, burned, buried, and breathing, still smiled in childish wonder.

And so, the world bent.

Some praised them.

Some feared them.

All believed in them.

Siobhan's scream could be heard clear to the northern tower.

Parliament guards refused to approach. Maids trembled in the hallways. Servants scattered like rats from a storm-sunk ship.

Inside the chambers, chaos reigned.

Shards of glass littered the floor like fallen stars. A candelabra had been thrown against a painting of Saintess Yidali, flames licking the saint's face. The long banquet table—where she once dictated policy with a single finger—was flipped and splintered down the middle, books and scrolls drenched in ink.

A tea pot hit the wall.

Then another.

The maid who tried to clean up the spill, young, silent, trembling, was too slow.

"IDIOT!"

The handle struck her first. Then the hot iron belly of the pot cracked against her temple. She hit the floor, and Siobhan struck her again. And again. And again.

"You dare spill while I'm grieving?! While they MOCK ME?!"

When the girl stopped moving, Siobhan stood over her, chest heaving, skirt stained with blood and tea.

She didn't look down.

She turned her rage to the nearest holy banner, clawing at it with her bare hands. Tearing it down. Screaming.

The Church of Saintess Yidali began to withdraw support within days.

The Inquisition's confidence faltered.

Too many temples destroyed.

Too many relics lost.

Too many common people rising with whispers of the Storm and the Lion.

Siobhan raged louder. Threatened bishops. Tried to call in debts. But the Church had begun the quiet process of replacing her behind closed doors.

She knew it.

She could feel the rot- political, spiritual- creeping into her foundations.

Still, she refused to admit defeat.

They'll learn. They'll see what happens to those who walk away from me.

She tore through her ruined chamber, frantic now. Like a wolf searching for meat buried under snow. Her hands overturned cushions. Smashed relic boxes. Dug through splintered floorboards until her nails bled.

Then-

A laugh.

High. Cracked. Cold.

It started small. A chuckle that sounded like a gasp.

Then it grew.

Into madness.

"Oh-hohoho… I knew it."

From the wreckage of her once-immaculate parlor, she rose with a bundle of cloth clutched in her bleeding hand. Soaked in dried blood. A shard of skin. A lock of long dark hair.

Niegal's.

From his capture. From his carving.

She held it to her lips like a love letter.

"You left me a parting gift, hijo." Her voice dripped with venom and velvet.

She turned to the scorched altar that had once held a statue of the Saintess. With ritual hands, trembling and stained with her own blood, she began to lay out the fragments.

There was a relic.

Ancient. Forbidden. Long buried beneath the cathedral's oldest chamber.

Once used to strike down magic users from afar. A ritual blade that devoured blood, connected to the flesh and mana of its target.

It had not been seen in centuries.

Siobhan smiled into the rising dark of her ruined chamber.

"Let's see if you can survive this, my little lion."

And with that, she began to hum.

A lullaby.

One she had once sung to a boy she never held.

A child she gave to the Church.

A son who refused to die.