Tharen had seen many ridiculous things in his time.
Falling into a cursed well that turned his voice into birdsong for a week? Yes.Punching a dragon's tooth out with a spell-woven gauntlet? Been there.Seeing his daughter, proud, snarky, battle-hardened Nyra, wearing a maid outfit that sparkled when she moved?
This… this was a new level.
He didn't even try to hide the smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth.
"Laugh and I'll hex your socks into venomous worms," Nyra muttered, arms stiff at her sides, cheeks flaming.
Mira was on the floor at this point, wheezing from laughter. "Best. Day. Ever."
Kaeli had taken to braiding Nyra's newly frilled apron ribbons while making sparkly noises with her mouth.
"I don't get it," Nyra said through gritted teeth, finally turning to Seraphine. "You're supposed to train me. Why the hell do I have to be your… your maid?!"
Seraphine sat cross-legged atop a floating chair she summoned midair, sipping tea from a cup that refilled itself after every sip. Her wings fluttered lazily behind her, shimmering like starlight through a waterfall.
"Because, darling," she began in a tone that was 70% sweet and 30% condescending, "raw power without discipline is just fire in a bottle. But put that same flame in service, in humility, in routine—and it becomes divine."
Nyra raised an eyebrow. "So… you're humiliating me to teach me control?"
"Oh no," Seraphine chirped. "I'm humiliating you because it's fun. The control is a bonus."
Nyra shot a pleading look at her father. "Dad."
Tharen sighed, arms folded. "I've fought beside her. Watched her take down a demigod with a spoon and a laundry spell. She's eccentric, but she gets results. If you want to be strong enough to stand without KAIROS… you'll need her."
That stopped Nyra cold. She looked at the glowing glyph on her wrist—dull, dim, incomplete. The silence where KAIROS used to be still echoed like phantom pain in her chest.
Without him, she had been powerless. Just a girl with ambition, but no foundation. And when everything counted… she had faltered.
Seraphine floated down, placing a hand lightly on Nyra's shoulder.
"You're gifted, child. But talent is the trap. You leaned too hard on your Architect. Now, it's time to build yourself."
Nyra looked at her hand, then around the room. At Mira's teary-eyed grin, Kaeli's encouraging thumbs-up, and her father's solemn nod.
She took a breath.
"Fine," she said. "Maid uniform. Cleaning duty. Tea brewing. Whatever it takes. I want to be strong enough to never doubt myself again."
A slow smile crept across Seraphine's face. "Good girl."
Then she snapped her fingers again, and suddenly Nyra had a tray balanced on one hand and a duster in the other.
"Lesson one: balance. Literally. Don't drop the tea."
Tanya, who had just walked in and witnessed the entire scene, blinked. "…What did I miss?"
Mira raised a hand, barely able to contain her glee. "Only the best downgrade-to-upgrade sequence in magical girl history."
Seraphine twirled, wings fluttering. "Now then. Let's begin our divine rewrite."
The moon had risen high, casting a silver sheen across the quieted village. Felyari was sleeping off its trauma—bandages wrapped, wounds tended, hope flickering stubbornly through the pain.
But not everyone rested.
At the edge of the cliff that overlooked the forest, now scarred by magical fire and shattered roofs, s—two figures stood silently. The wind fluttered the hem of Tharen's cloak. Beside him, wings tucked in like folded silk, Seraphine sipped from a wineglass made of starlight.
Neither had spoken in minutes. And yet, the silence wasn't awkward. It was old. Familiar.
"A maid, huh?" Tharen finally said, half-smirking, half-resigned. "You always had a flair for theatrics."
"She needs humility," Seraphine replied softly. "And structure. Power like hers, combined with KAIROS, will warp her without grounding. You and Selya gave her love. Now she needs discipline."
Tharen let out a breath, not quite a laugh. "You sound like her mother."
Seraphine turned her head, her otherworldly gaze softer than usual. "She reminds me of you. Stubborn, impulsive, a bit too flashy. But dangerous in all the right ways."
Tharen chuckled. "And here I thought I'd buried all that flash in a quiet village and raised a normal kid."
"You don't get to bury legends, old friend," she said, eyes glowing faintly. "Especially not when your family name was etched in fire across four continents."
The wind blew harder. A branch snapped in the distance. Tharen's shoulders tensed.
Seraphine turned fully to him now, voice serious. "When will you tell her?"
"She doesn't need the weight of that name yet."
"She already carries it," Seraphine said, stepping closer. "In her spine. In her fire. And soon, the world will remember it."
Tharen looked out across the treeline, jaw clenched.
"You were the Iron Wolf of Elendra. Slayer of the Chimaera Prince. The man who made the Ivory Faction bow," Seraphine whispered. "Your daughter deserves to know the blood she comes from."
"She deserves better than what I was," he said quietly. "We all made choices… back then."
A moment of stillness. Then Seraphine extended her hand, and a flickering illusion sparked to life between them—a young Tharen, roaring in battle; Seraphine in radiant armour; a rogue with silver knives; a beastkin bard laughing through blood; a masked monk wreathed in flame.
The old party. The old days.
"We were gods to them," Seraphine murmured. "And we paid for it."
Tharen reached out and let the illusion dissolve into smoke between his fingers.
"I'm scared, Sera," he admitted, barely above a whisper. "What if she becomes… what I was?"
Seraphine looked at him, wings glimmering with pale fire.
"She won't," she said firmly. "Because she has something we didn't."
Tharen raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Seraphine smiled. "A village. A family. People who love her for more than what she can destroy."
They stood there a moment longer—two warriors aged not by years, but by choices.
Then Seraphine raised her glass once more. "To the past," she said softly.
Tharen clinked his wooden mug against it. "To what's coming."
Morning in Felyari Village had never quite felt like this.
Nyra stood stiffly in the hallway of the chief's house, dressed in a perfectly crisp black-and-white maid outfit — complete with frills, lace cuffs, a delicate apron, and a ridiculously oversized ribbon on the back. Her face? Equal parts deadpan disbelief and brewing fury.
Across the room, Kaeli sat cross-legged on a cushion, mouth agape.
Mira? Mira had collapsed on the floor, howling with laughter, tears streaming from her eyes as she pounded the ground.
"I can't breathe! I can't—maid Nyra! My dreams have come true!" Mira cackled, clutching her sides.
"This isn't funny," Nyra muttered, cheeks pink with a storm of humiliation and barely contained rage. "This is psychological warfare."
"And yet you wear it so well," purred Seraphine, lounging on an impossibly luxurious floating chaise, sipping morning tea brewed in a levitating porcelain set. Her wings shimmered behind her, catching sunlight like blades of pure light. "Poise, obedience, and presentation — all essential for a disciple of divine magic."
"I thought you were training me in spells and combat," Nyra grumbled.
"Darling, I am. But first, we break the ego," Seraphine said, eyes glinting mischievously. "Only the humble can wield the divine. Also, you forgot to fluff my pillow this morning. Tsk."
Nyra clenched her fists. "I am this close to rewriting your aura."
"I dare you," Seraphine smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Let's see how well your mortal code stands against divine architecture."
Kaeli, still stunned, cleared her throat. "Are we just gonna ignore the fact she arrived on a sky-chariot drawn by literal angel creatures and now she's turning Nyra into a full-time servant?"
"I am not a servant!" Nyra snapped, then paused. "...Technically."
"You make great tea, though," Mira grinned, sticking out her tongue.
Nyra shot a glyph at her, which Mira dodged with a barrel roll and a smug laugh.
"Enough play," Seraphine said, rising from her chaise in one graceful movement. Today marks the first day of Nyra's training. Divine magic is not a thing of brute force. It is elegance, intention, and unshakable command of one's "
She reached into the air and, with a lazy swirl of her finger, created a halo of magical glyphs that rotated around Nyra's head like orbiting stars.
"And you, my little stormcloud," she said with a smirk, "have no self-control, no discipline, and no finesse."
"I'm right here," Nyra muttered.
Seraphine grinned wider. "Yes. And I'm about to fix that."
Before Nyra could respond, Seraphine snapped her fingers. A dozen floating brooms swept into the room, each one glowing with complex enchantments. A mop began spinning like a whirling dervish in the corner.
"Training begins," she said, pointing toward the door. "You'll clean the entire training hall without using magic. Until your body understands patience, your soul will never touch divinity."
Nyra's eyes twitched. Mira offered a half-hearted salute, still grinning.
"Oh, and Nyra," Seraphine added, pausing in the doorway with a wink, "remember to wear the heels this time. Good posture is divine."
The door shut with a click.
For a second, silence ruled.
Then:
"I'm going to kill your dad," Nyra muttered.
From the hallway, Mira's muffled voice came, "I call dibs on being served breakfast by Maid Nyra tomorrow!"
The setting sun bathed Felyari's southern cliffs in molten gold, casting elongated shadows over the valley below. The winds had settled, and the village quieted. Most would have called it peaceful.
But for Nyra, this was the eye of a very particular kind of storm.
The training hall carved into the cliffside was unlike anything she'd ever seen. Glyphs hovered in the air, shifting slowly like constellations trapped in orbit. Floating sigils, layers upon layers of invisible matrices, hummed in the background — each pulsing with divine resonance. The space sang, not with a voice, but with meaning.
And at the centre of it all, arms raised, wings outstretched like a cathedral's arch… stood Seraphine Quenara.
Gone was the flamboyant eccentric sipping tea and levitating on plush cushions. This Seraphine radiated divinity so raw it hurt to look directly at her. Her eyes glowed—not with magic, but will. Her very presence bent reality. The weight of it made Nyra's knees buckle.
Seraphine spoke. "Kneel."
Nyra dropped like her bones forgot how to stand.
"You wish to command divinity? You will first become a vessel worthy of it."
With a slow, deliberate motion, Seraphine traced a circle midair. Light burned in her wake — holy, terrifying, surgical. Glyphs formed around it: complex, alien, precise.
"This is not the magic of mortals. This is divine architecture," she said, her voice now distant, echoing through Nyra's soul more than her ears. "It does not obey, it consents. It does not answer, it chooses. You will not summon it. You will earn it."
A single note rang through the chamber.
Just one.
It came from Seraphine's throat, a pitch so high and haunting it made the glyphs shiver. One by one, the floating runes aligned, each clicking into place like keys entering locks inside the fabric of the world.
"This is the Song of Command," Seraphine said, lowering her arms. "One of many lost arts only the divine still remember."
Nyra, eyes wide, whispered, "You're not just a mage…"
"No," Seraphine said softly. "I am a former godkiller."
Silence followed. Heavy. Alive.
Nyra could only stare, her breath shallow.
Then, Seraphine turned, and with a flick of her hand, pulled a single orb of light toward Nyra. It hovered, gentle and warm, like a heartbeat in stasis.
"Touch it."
Nyra reached out, hesitating only for a breath.
And when her fingers made contact, her mind exploded.
Visions. Memories. Battlefields torn open by celestial light. Thrones shattered. Skies are crying blood. Seraphine—wounded, radiant, laughing—commanding the heavens themselves to fold at her word.
Nyra collapsed.
Seraphine caught her, almost tenderly. "That was one memory. A small one."
Nyra's voice was a rasp. "I want to learn."
"You will," Seraphine said, placing two fingers on her student's forehead. "But first…"
She pressed a divine sigil into Nyra's skin, and Nyra screamed.
Not in pain. Not in fear.
But because in that moment, she felt everything — sorrow, power, clarity, divinity — and realised just how much she didn't know.
"You'll forget who you were by the end of this," Seraphine whispered, wings folding in. "But you'll become who you were meant to be."
The sigil glowed faintly, then faded into Nyra's skin.
"Rest now," Seraphine said, already turning away. "Tomorrow, we unmake the girl... and begin forging the goddess."