Arrival Unto Luyarnha

7/26/1255

It’s been three days since I was sent to this gods-forsaken place. Whatever it’s called. I don’t even know if it has a name. It feels like a holding cell outside the world.

That dragon woman—Rita—has me caged until I learn how to suppress my divine form. As if I haven’t tried. As if I can just will it smaller, quieter, obedient. I can’t. It’s too much. It’s always been too much. So instead, I’m locked in this miserable room with nothing but stone walls and my own thoughts. At least she had the decency to give me this journal. Maybe she thinks it’ll bleed some of the fire out of me.

She told me to write. To “process.”

Fine. Here are my thoughts.

I hate her.

I fucking hate Kazumi Caelamor.

What a joke of a name. Ascended to godhood and suddenly she stands above the rest of us, untouchable and righteous. As if that makes her better. As if that excuses anything. She let my mother die. Her daughter. She could have intervened. She chose not to.

She told me she would have been a tyrant if she had.

I don’t believe her.

That’s the lie gods tell themselves when they decide that principle matters more than blood. More than love. More than family. My mother is dead, and Kazumi still burns, still rules, still pretends her hands are clean.

I hate her with every part of my being. I wish she were dead. I wish she had stayed dead. I wish, with every breath I draw, that it had been her instead of my mother.

I attacked her.

I didn’t plan it. I didn’t care what would happen after. I just wanted her to feel something. I wanted Kazumi, the so called Living Flame, to feel even a fraction of what I feel every waking moment. Rage. Grief. Loss. Anything other than that distant, sanctimonious calm.

Now I’m here… Paying for it.

And Rita. Rita… that fucking tart of a woman. Apparently she’s Kazumi’s wife! As if this situation needed to be worse. The thought alone makes my stomach twist. She’s rough. Sharp. She said—casually mind you—that she’s killed my kind before. Seraphim. As if it were nothing.

Why would my grandmother marry someone so willing to kill those like us?

And yet… there’s something about Rita I can’t quite place. Something that doesn’t fit the picture I want her to be. It unsettles me more than her threats ever could.

I don’t know how to feel about her.

I just know I can’t stay in this room forever. I won’t shrink. I won’t smother what I am just to make gods comfortable. I am a seraph. I was never meant to be quiet.

8/3/1255

I want out of here.

I still cannot suppress it. This cursed form. My emotions rage inside me like a fire that refuses to gutter out, no matter how desperately I try to smother it. How am I supposed to do this? Every attempt to slip into my mortal form ends the same way: pain. Real pain. Agony that sears through me until I can barely breathe. I am grieving. I am raw. I am far too emotional to control any of this, and Rita expects me to master restraint as if sorrow can simply be commanded into silence.

I am alone here. Truly alone. No voices. No comfort. No one to speak to but these pages. The walls do not answer, and the quiet only makes my thoughts louder. I cannot help but wonder how my sisters are faring, if they are safe. If they miss me. And my father… oh, my father. He warned me, again and again, to learn to temper my flame. I wanted to listen. I tried. But the fire was too much, too bright, too overwhelming to cage without breaking myself in the process.

Now it all feels like punishment.

The nightmares will not leave me be. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. My mother, standing just beyond reach in the forest. I run to her, heart in my throat, calling out her name—but the faster I run, the farther away she becomes. Trees blur past me, my chest burns, my wings ache, and still she slips away until there is nothing left but empty forest and the echo of my own voice.

She was my light. One of the few who never tried to force the teachings of the Selesnya Conclave upon me. She saw what they were doing, how my flame was being unnaturally dulled, pressed into something smaller and quieter than it was ever meant to be. When she moved to Brightwater all those years ago, it felt like salvation. A place where I did not have to pretend. Where I could simply exist as myself, unashamed and unrestrained.

I was happy there.

I want to go home.

I just want to go home.

8/14/1255

Grief. Terrible grief. The sadness, the overwhelming sense of loss. It hurts in a way I cannot describe, only endure.

Please. I’m sorry.

I want out. I need out.

Occasionally, Rita comes in and sits with me. She doesn’t demand anything of me. I don’t say much, and she doesn’t push. Sometimes we sit together in silence. Sometimes she speaks, telling me about Luyarnha, about what I should expect, about what waits beyond these walls. I listen when I can.

But in the spaces between her visits, there is only silence.

The silence is unbearable. It presses in on me until it feels louder than any crowd ever could. Too much time alone with my thoughts. Too much space for them to echo without mercy. I have begun to hallucinate. Or perhaps I have simply stopped fighting it, letting my mind fill the emptiness on its own.

Sometimes I speak with my mother.

Full conversations. Clear as day. I can hear her voice, gentle and familiar, as if she is sitting just beside me. She is gone. I know that. And yet she is here all the same. It is strange how grief reshapes reality when there is nothing else left to hold onto.

She inspires my singing.

I sang for her today. I sang until my throat burned and my wings ached, until the sound felt like the only thing anchoring me to myself. I wrote the lyrics below for her. For us. Singing is the only thing that keeps me sane now. When the notes fill the room, the silence retreats, if only for a little while.

I am so tired.

8/20/1255

I’ve done it. I finally did it.

It hurts more than I thought it would. Suppressing my form is agony—an agony I don’t think the divine was ever meant to endure. The light inside me was not made to be caged like this, yet here I am, forcing it down, day after day.

Five days now.

Every moment feels like holding my breath while my body begs for air. Sometimes I feel as though I’m going to rupture from the inside out. The divine claws at my skin, restless, furious, waiting for the smallest weakness so it can tear free.

Rita came in today. She said she was proud of me.

I don’t understand why.

All I feel is exhaustion. After a month of this—of the pain, the strain, the constant restraint—I don’t want clarity or strength or faith. I just want to be numb.

All I want to do is drink.

8/20/1255 — Evening

I couldn’t hold it.

Gods, the pain.

It came all at once, sharp and overwhelming, like my soul was being pierced from every direction. I screamed. I couldn’t stop myself. Rita heard me and brought a bottle of whiskey, pressed it into my hands like a mercy.

There’s blood everywhere.

The pain doesn’t just sit in my body—it moves, wracking through me like needles driven straight into my soul. Worse still… I can’t transform back. I don’t know why. My mortal form won’t answer me. My strength is gone, my thoughts slipping through my fingers like water.

I’m weak. Dazed. Trapped inside myself.

8/23/1255

I have learned that I can only hold my divine form for a few days at a time.

Rita says I need to pack my things and leave now that I’ve learned how to suppress my divine form. After I finish this entry, I will be escorted to the Cathedral, where they will set me up at a local inn. After that… I do not know. I truly do not know where I am meant to go from here.

All I want is to forget. The past month. The past year. It is too much to carry, and I am so very tired. I have been warned never to reveal what I am to anyone, and never to anger the Jaegars, whatever they are. I suppose this is what Kazumi meant when she said I would have no celestial favor. If so, I do not understand what lesson I am meant to learn from this. I only feel stripped and small and afraid.

I want to go home.

I want to go home and feel safe, and whole, and known. Instead, I am being sent to a strange place, to a Cathedral where I do not know my purpose. I do not know what they expect of me there. All I feel is the urge to cry, to hide myself away from the world until it forgets I ever existed.

But there is no time for that now.

It is time to finish packing… time to go.