Before poison had a dosage, there was a kind rose blooming in a garden of emptiness.
Before her petals withered, before her roots were poisoned, she was just a little girl—
standing by the smith's shop, taking shelter beneath a cruel storm.
She passed by every day, the same ragged clothes, the same hollow cheeks, and the same stubborn smile. The townsfolk of Wepah all saw her—how could they not? But to them, she was just a stray: too cheerful to be pitied, too quiet to be noticed. In their eyes, kindness was weakness, and weakness was disposable.
But Frenel saw her.
Not the tattered clothes or dirt on her knees—but the way she bowed to the broken sword outside his shop every morning, as if it were a holy relic.
He waited for her one day.
"Hey," he said, voice gruff, holding out a piece of bread, "don't think smiling makes you invisible."
She blinked, wide-eyed, but didn't speak. Only reached out, hands shaking, and took the bread like it might vanish.
"Name?" he asked.
She hesitated. Then:
"Lucia."
He grunted, nodded once, and walked back inside.
She followed.
Lucia stayed.
What began with a piece of bread turned into weeks, then months. Frenel, the grizzled blacksmith of Wepah, took her in without fuss or ceremony. He wasn't a man of grand gestures, but he made sure she had food, warmth, and purpose.
She learned the forge like it was second nature. Tempering, folding, shaping—her hands moved with intention, her eyes always watching. She never spoke much, but she listened. And when she smiled, Frenel would always grumble, "Stop that, people'll think I'm raising a saint."
She wasn't a saint. But she was kind. Too kind for Signo.
When Wepah was attacked by a Sealed Beast that strayed too far from its prison, it was Lucia who grabbed one of Frenel's blades and stood at the frontlines. She was just sixteen, swinging steel heavier than her arm with reckless grace.
That day, she nearly died. But she didn't.
She fought like a phantom, like something was buried deep in her bones—something ancient and angry. The resistance noticed. So did the military. And from the ashes of Wepah's terror, Lucia rose.
By nineteen, she was in command of a small battalion. By twenty-two, she led a counteroffensive against a Vanderen incursion that no one expected to survive. She didn't just survive. She won. She lost friends. She buried soldiers. But she came back.
That's when Velmira noticed.
The Grace of Senses saw something in Lucia—potential, perhaps, or maybe just another tool. Velmira came to her not as a goddess, but as a savior.
"You're strong, Lucia. But you could be unbreakable. Come with me. Let me show you what real power feels like."
Lucia hesitated. But the grief, the weight, the guilt of lives lost—it all twisted her heart. And Velmira's words promised relief.
So she said yes.
What followed was not mentorship, but manipulation. Velmira showed her the world not as it was, but as the Graces made it: cruel, divided, and corrupt. She trained Lucia not just in swordplay, but in the art of control. Her kindness? Laughed at. Her empathy? Punished. Until she learned to bury it all beneath a cold, unyielding mask.
Lucia stopped smiling.
By twenty-five, she was an underling. A monster in elegant armor, loyal to Velmira, feared across Neuraleth.
But in the quiet of the night, sometimes, she still remembered Wepah. The forge. The bread. The old man who taught her warmth before the world taught her to burn.
Azriel stood slowly within the quiet abyss of Reflection, surrounded by the silent echoes of memories that no longer wept. He turned toward her broken body—Lucia's corpse, still seated, still wearing that knowing smile etched with sadness and strength.
His voice was low but steady, like a promise carved into stone.
"I'll give you a proper burial… one made of the Graces themselves."
Her corpse didn't move, didn't speak—only smiled. Not in mockery. Not in approval. But as if she knew, at last, her story hadn't ended in vain.