The Trial of Will wasn't something you could train for. It was the last requirement a consecrated had to meet to become ascendant. It had nothing to do with strength or skill, only loyalty to your god and edict. Many never faced it, because the trial wasn't something you could choose to take. It depended on being pushed into a situation where you had to prove absolute conviction in your edict. To pass it, you had to be willing to accept loss. Something important to you, or even your own life. If, in that moment, you chose to uphold your edict despite what you stood to lose, the trial was complete.
Kisaya should have gone through one too, right? If she deepened her pact twice, like Ishtal said… I wonder which one it was.
Liraya was forty now, though she looked barely twenty. Not only had she never been given that chance, she had once broken her edict.
It happened when her adoptive father, Zayren, was dying of old age. His time was clearly running out. Instead of carrying out her duties as a chosen, she chose to stay by his bedside, to be there when he took his final breath.
The moment she made that choice, the pain struck.
It was the worst pain we had ever felt. A spike so violent in the head that it felt as though it were tearing at the soul itself. She collapsed, lost consciousness, and didn't wake for hours.
But after that, there was no more pain. She was able to stay by his side without trouble, and in those final moments, she felt at peace, grateful she could be there with him until the end.
After Zayren's death, there was no family waiting for her anymore. To fill that space, she returned fully to her duties as a chosen.
Over the next twenty years, those duties took her across the kingdom. City after city, each with its own customs and way of ruling. Most were governed by kings. Sippar was one of the few exceptions, I found myself paying attention to those journeys. I had learned about these cities long ago while studying with the palace scribes, but seeing them through her eyes was different.
Now, we were in Ur, the port city. It was home to a vast temple dedicated to Nanna, and its markets were always crowded. She wandered through the stalls, scanning the goods, until something caught her attention. It looked like a roll of yellow cloth, but when she picked it up, it felt too rigid.
"Would you be interested in buying papyrus, miss?" a man asked.
She looked up.
He had straight black hair, long enough to brush his neck, skin more bronzed than any I had ever seen, and eyes that seemed caught between brown and green.
"Papyrus?" Liraya repeated.
"Yes" he said. "It's used the same way you use tablets here."
That confused us. How could something so thin be carved? The man laughed and explained that it wasn't carved at all. It was written on, using an instrument called a reed pen, along with something he called ink.
From that moment on, Liraya grew more interested in him. She began returning to the market almost every day.
His name was Nakht, a traveler who lived to see the world. He came from a land so far away that it had its own gods, something neither of us had thought possible. He spoke of endless stretches of golden sand, of an infinite sea where the horizon held nothing but water, of rivers that turned to stone so you could walk across them, and much more.
His stories fascinated her.
And, slowly, she fell in love.
Liraya had never cared much for love. She had always assumed that if she ever married, it would be for convenience, not feeling. But as time passed, that certainty faded. The more she saw him, the deeper it went. I had never been in love either, so feeling it through her was new to me.
Love was… irrational.
Together, they went to Sippar. Nakht was curious about her city, and she felt relieved when he passed through the corridor of light without any trouble. She hadn't said it out loud, but she had been worried they might not accept someone from outside.
For a while, they were happy living together.
But it didn't last.
Travel was part of his life. Nakht wanted to see new places and keep moving, and he asked Liraya to come with him. She refused. Her Edict wouldn't allow it, staying was what she believed was right. In the end, they went their own ways. He promised he would visit her someday.
When she was finally starting to move on, something unexpected happened.She found out she was pregnant and felt truly happy. At least now, she would have something left of him.
She named his son Belsar. He became both a blessing and a curse.
Wanting to make Sippar a safer place for her son—what she believed was right—she became more involved in hunts and punishments. At first, the change was small: her voice grew firmer, her hesitation shorter, her hand quicker to act.
Over time, it went further. She started telling herself that cruelty was sometimes necessary. That the system was flawed, but stable. And that stability, in the end, was the right thing.
Her son grew up in a loving home, never lacking anything. Having a child with a foreign traveler did affect her reputation, but only slightly. As a chosen, her status carried far more weight than rumors ever could.
He was raised and educated by scribes, like any noble child. And alongside that, she taught him the laws herself, always insisting that they had to be followed.
As the years passed, her son grew to look more like his father. That made him stand out, and not in a good way. When he wasn't chosen, things only worsened. I could see it in his eyes, his resentment toward the nobility growing stronger with time.
She didn't notice it.
One day, after returning from his first trip outside the city, something about him felt different. When he finally spoke, she noticed it too.
"Mother" he said, "what do you think about the ring of shadows?"
She looked at his face and understood that it wasn't a careless question. So she answered honestly. "It's necessary" Liraya said "People need to know what happens when they break the rules."
Belsar clenched his fists. "But… you can't really live there. They're barely surviving."
I could feel it, his insistence was starting to irritate her. "That's what they deserve."
"But some of them..."
"Enough!" she snapped. "The laws are absolute. The right thing is to follow them. Why do you think the city is so peaceful? It's because of order." He said nothing after that. She loved him too much to notice the look in his eyes.
Then the inevitable happened.
She received a report saying her son had been arrested. He had seriously injured an eye of shamash. Panic took her immediately. She couldn't believe it and went straight to the cell where Belsar was being held. The moment she saw him behind the bars, she grabbed them with both hands.
"Bel" she said, her voice breaking, "tell me what happened. Tell me you had a good reason."
He laughed.
"Maybe it was a good reason for me" he said calmly "but not for you, Mother."
Her grip tightened around the bars. She was devastated, fully aware that she could free him with a few words if she chose to.
But was it right?
No.
So she did nothing. She stepped back and let others decide his punishment.
That was her greatest mistake.
Hours later, the eye he had struck was found dead. Belsar was accused of murdering him, and the sentence came immediately, death. It was manipulation, clearly the work of a High Chosen, likely meant to harm the one who stood above Liraya. The signs were there.
But she didn't see them.
Panic clouded her judgment. The evidence seemed enough, and if it was enough, then he had to be guilty. With her heart breaking, she told herself the same words she always had.
It's the right thing.
And she did nothing.
When she watched her son be executed, something inside her changed. Her spiritual energy sharpened, purified. In that moment, she became Ascendant.
She laughed and cried at the same time. She couldn't believe it had come to this, that she had needed to let her son die to ascend.
After that, she fell into a quiet depression. She kept fulfilling her duties, but only out of habit. Everything became automatic. There was no conviction left in it. I felt it firsthand, she refused to feel anything at all.
Until one day, an eye she had never spoken to before stopped her and said a single thing.
"Your son was framed."
She froze.
By the time the words truly reached her, the eye was already walking away. In the shock, it didn't even occur to her to stop him. But the idea stayed. It lodged itself deep in her mind, and she began to look for answers. She followed traces, spoke to people she trusted, and little by little, the truth surfaced.
It was real. He had been framed.
That was when she finally understood. Everything she had been doing, everything she had upheld, was part of someone else's design.
The high chosen.
I have to get rid of them. It's the right thing to do.
She couldn't do it alone, so she started looking for allies. It wasn't easy. At first, only ordinary people supported her cause, but she needed other chosen.
And those were hard to reach.
Whenever she hinted at her intentions, the chosen became cautious. They listened, offered polite smiles, and kept their distance. That pattern repeated itself for years, then for decades.
Her plan never stopped, it just changed pace. She learned how to choose her words, how to influence people without exposing herself, how to plan ahead and wait for the right moment. She even looked beyond the cities. When she turned her attention toward Uruk, she found it consumed by civil war. The king's brother, Kudur, was trying to seize the throne.
So she set it aside.
More time passed.
Eventually, she managed to gain the support of a few chosen. Some truly believed in her cause, others as soldiers enslaved by divine oaths. One of them, unexpectedly, was Ishtal. When he arrived, she couldn't help but wonder why the former heir to Uruk had abandoned his city to start over here. But once he made it clear that he supported her cause, she didn't question him further.
Then, when she turned 168…
Kisaya and I appeared in the city. I was unknown, but she wasn't. She already had a strong reputation, the captain of Uruk. When Liraya went through the reports about her, we were both genuinely surprised. The number of dangerous creatures Kisaya had faced and killed stood out even among the chosen. She also noticed how Ishtal subtly kept other high chosen from approaching us. At first, she didn't think much of it. Since Ishtal was already with her, she assumed we would eventually join her as well.
That changed when information reached her. It came from Ishtal himself. I had protected a woman and a child from the eyes of shamash. She wanted to meet with me, but doing so inside the city was too dangerous. As a high chosen, she was under constant watch.
So she began shaping a plan to kidnap Darim, carefully arranged so he would never truly be in danger.
She already knew I wasn't aligned with the high chosen. What she needed now was certainty, proof that I would stand with her. There wasn't time to explain everything or try to convince me slowly.
The moment to act was getting closer.
So she decided that if I showed enough concern for the child, she would bind me with a divine oath and secure another ascendant for her cause. Because, in her eyes, eliminating the high chosen was the right thing to do.
I arrived at the warehouse. Everything was just as I remembered it. My face was hidden beneath a hood, but even then, I caught her attention. She couldn't explain it, only that something about me made her cautious.
"Where is Darim?" I asked, stepping forward.
That was enough. Years of experience had taught her to recognize when someone truly cared. The urgency in my voice and the look on my face told her everything she needed to know, and with that certainty, she made her decision.
She was going to force me to swear a divine oath.
When I refused, she didn't expect it. From what she had seen, she had already assumed I was young and driven by emotion. So she used Darim again, making the threat more aggressive this time. She knew she would never hurt him. It wasn't the right thing. But the threat itself was enough.
And when I accepted, she finally got the answer she wanted.
When I approached, she didn't react, convinced I wouldn't harm her. She looked into my eyes, golden. I could feel her mind working, connecting pieces.
What she didn't expect was the attack.
Confusion hit first.
Why? Didn't I want to save the child? Wasn't I worried about him?
Then my fangs sank into her neck.
Panic followed immediately. She tried to move, to reach for her weapons, to call on her spiritual energy, but without being able to move her body, it was useless. I felt the moment everything locked in place. As her blood drained away, the desperation grew stronger, sharper with each passing second.
Not like this.
Not this way.
Not before doing what was right.
In the end, she understood she was going to die, and that her goal would never be fulfilled.
She couldn't even cry, though she desperately wanted to.
And then… she died.