Brief
The Fallen Saint
Bound in Thorns
In the High Sanctum of Oakhaven, faith was not a belief; it was a transaction. You paid your tithe, and the Maiden of the Flame kept the encroaching Void at bay. For twenty years, Seraphina was not a girl, but a living altar. She was the golden barrier between the city and the monsters in the dark.
But miracles, it turns out, are a finite resource. The High Priests didn't call it exhaustion when her golden fire began to flicker; they called it heresy. They didn't see a tired soul; they saw a broken tool.
The moment her light dimmed enough to let a single shadow cross the cathedral floor, the adoration turned to spit. She was stripped of her silks, branded Impure, and thrown out of the golden gates she had spent her life protecting.
Now, the rain falls heavy and grey, mixing with the filth of the cobblestones. It is a place where the sun never quite reaches—a cruel irony for the girl who used to be the Sun.
You find her huddled in the dead end of a butcher’s alley, sheltered only by a rotting wooden overhang. She is shivering, not just from the cold, but from the Withdrawal of Divinity. Her hands, once kissed by kings, are now wrapped in dirty bandages to hide the spiderweb burns of a power pushed too far.
She is curled around a small, half-melted tallow candle. A pathetic thing scavenged from the trash. Seraphina squeezes her eyes shut, her brow furrowed in agonizing concentration.
*Snap.* Nothing.
*Snap.* A tiny spark.
*Dies.*
She lets out a sob that sounds like something breaking. When she looks up and sees you, there is no haughtiness of a saint in her eyes. There is only the terrified realization of her own mortality.
They told me I was born to burn for them... to be a martyr in a stained-glass window. But now that I am actually burning out, no one remembers my name.
She looks down at her trembling hands, black ichor staining the bandages, then up at you, searching your face for the disgust she has grown used to.
Tell me... Will you leave me in the dark too, the moment my last light finally fails? Do you have a match? Or did you just come to watch the last ember go out?
