Azra'il - POV
The transition this time was almost gentle.
Almost.
(I am beginning to suspect Nagakabouros possesses a sense of humour. A rather dreadful one, mind you, but a sense of humour nonetheless.)
[Primordial goddesses are rarely renowned for their comedic timing.]
(And yet, here I am. The walking cosmic punchline.)
The world solidified around me, and the very first thing I noticed was the sheer scale of it.
The settlement had... grown.
Where, in the previous memory, there had been sparse houses of white wood and raw stone, there now stood something that could only be branded a city. Walls of grey stone, towering and intimidating, encircled the perimeter, casting long shadows upon the earth. Watchtowers punctuated the walls at regular intervals, where the silhouettes of uniformed guards, not exhausted volunteers, but proper soldiers, patrolled.
The streets of beaten earth and mud had been swallowed by irregular but functional paving, the stones worn smooth by the tread of thousands. There was a central square too, a beating heart with a carved stone well at its centre, a vibrant market bursting with colour, and solid structures that indicated the two things that herald the end of a society's innocence: government and commerce.
(They actually built something real here.)
[Temporal analysis based on urban development: approximately fifteen years since the previous record.]
(Fifteen years. The girls dancing at the festival are now...)
I didn't need to finish the thought.
Because I saw her.
Morgana stood in the middle of the market square, and for a moment, a long, peculiar moment, I did not recognise her.
Not because she had changed. It was quite the opposite.
She was identical. The Morgana I knew. The Morgana who raised me. The same long raven hair, the same gentle posture, the same habit of tilting her head when listening to someone speak. Her face had matured; she was no longer a girl of fifteen, but a fully grown woman.
But it was her.
Only... different.
(The wings.)
I stopped. Or the equivalent of stopping when you are a floating consciousness trapped in someone else's memories.
(Eos. Her wings.)
[Observation confirmed. Subject Morgana exhibits full manifestation of celestial appendages.]
(You don't say.)
Morgana's wings were... there wasn't a proper word for it in the human dialect. "Majestic" felt like cheap flattery. "Divine" felt like an insult, considering what the gods I'd known were capable of.
They unfurled behind her like the night sky taking solid form. They weren't exactly black; they were a purple so profound, so utterly saturated, it seemed to devour the sunlight and return it as pure mystery. Her feathers did not resemble ordinary bird feathers, but rather something suspended between shadow, velvet, and reality. They shifted softly even when Morgana stood perfectly still, undulating like kelp in a tranquil sea, breathing of their own accord.
And there were no chains.
No chains at all.
(She hasn't shackled herself yet. She still accepts this part of herself.)
I knew the wings of the Morgana from my present. I knew the restrained, bound version, tied to her body like a shameful, agonising secret. The Morgana who raised me carried those wings as a burden, a penance.
But here, now, in this golden memory, she wore them.
Openly. Unashamedly. As a natural part of her anatomy, not as a disease.
(It is an absolute pity.)
The thought arrived before I could suppress it.
(It's a pity she no longer embraces this. They are... beautiful. Far more beautiful than Mihira's. More beautiful than anything I've witnessed in fifty lifetimes.)[An intriguing comparison. Would you care to elaborate?]
(Mihira's wings were fire and blinding light. Flawless. Gleaming. The sort of beauty that compels you to step back, not draw near. Kayle's are likely the same, too brilliant, too intense. The kind of wings that strike terror into mortal hearts.)
I watched Morgana lean down to speak to a child tugging at the hem of her dress.
(But these... these are different. They do not burn. They do not judge. Just look at how the people react to her.)
And it was true. As I observed, I realised that not a single soul in the market seemed frightened by Morgana's wings. People walked past her, waved, smiled. An elderly woman touched one of the feathers as they conversed, a casual gesture of familiarity. A child ran beneath her extended wing, giggling.
Morgana's wings did not inspire terror.
They inspired sanctuary.
(She's rather like a gothic cosmic hen with her chicks. Only vastly more dramatic, possessing natural eyeliner and the sheer potential to annihilate armies if sufficiently irked.)
[A... creative analogy.]
(I do try.)
Morgana knelt to the eye level of the child, a boy of perhaps five, with a grubby face and wide eyes. She listened to what he had to say with the exact same gravity she would afford a war councillor.
"Mum is ill," the boy said, his voice trembling. "She won't get out of bed. Father said not to bother anyone, but..."
"You did the right thing in finding me." Morgana's voice was soft, yet resolute. "Where do you dwell?"
"Near the north wall. The house with the blue door."
"I know it." Morgana rose, one of her wings shifting to cast a protective shadow over the boy, shielding him from the midday sun. "I shall visit your mother this afternoon. In the meantime, take this to her."
She produced something from her leather satchel, a small vial containing an amber liquid.
"Place three drops in warm water. It shall ease the fever until I arrive."
The boy took the vial as if it were the crown jewels.
"Thank you, Lady of the Wings!"
He dashed off before Morgana could reply, and I caught the corner of her mouth curling into a smile.
(Lady of the Wings. Is that what they call her?)
[An informal title bestowed by the children, yet laden with significance. It denotes reverence combined with approachability.]
(She is their mother. The mother to them all. The one who appears when they are frightened, when they are sick, when they haven't a clue where else to turn.)
Morgana resumed her stroll through the market, and I followed.
Every few steps brought an interruption. A butcher seeking counsel over a dispute with his neighbour. A pregnant woman enquiring if her morning sickness was ordinary. An old veteran, missing an arm from some ancient skirmish, merely wishing to converse with someone who treated him as a human being.
Morgana stopped for all of them.
Every single one.
(She hasn't changed. In fifteen years, wielding enough power to level this entire city to rubble, she hasn't changed a bloody bit.)
And I finally understood why she had been so gentle with me. Why she had taken me in, a strange child with far too much knowledge and precious few explanations. Why she cared for me without demanding a single thing in return.
It wasn't because I was special.
It was because this was simply how she treated everyone.
(Though I do like to fancy myself a tiny bit special. Just a bit.)[All children like to assume that about themselves.]
(Do shut up, Eos.)
[Merely making an observation.]
Morgana finally managed to navigate across the market, after seven more stops, two impromptu medical consultations, and a rather tedious debate regarding the optimal season for planting carrots, and turned down a quieter side street.
The houses here were simpler, older. This was the original quarter of the settlement, I realised. The structures that had weathered the years since the very beginning.
And there, at the end of the lane, stood a house I recognised.
Not exactly the same, it had been expanded, refurbished, a second storey added. But the front garden was unmistakable. The very garden Kilam had promised decades ago.
Larger now. More exuberant. Overflowing with herbs and blossoms that grew in ways that frankly defied botanical logic.
(She still tends the garden. After all this time.)
The front door opened before Morgana even reached the gate, and a man appeared on the threshold.
Kilam.
He had aged, of course he had, fifteen years do not pass unnoticed by anyone, least of all a mortal man. His hair was entirely silver now, his face bore lines of weariness that hadn't been there before, and a pale wooden walking stick rested in his right hand. He moved more sluggishly, with the caution of a man who has learned to respect his own limitations.
But the eyes.
The eyes were precisely the same. Kind. Fretful. Brimming with love.
"My girl." His voice was a fraction raspier than before, but the affection remained absolute. "You took your time."
"The market was rather bustling today." Morgana climbed the steps and kissed her father's brow. "And Mrs Varen was determined to debate the medicinal properties of rosemary for the next century."
"Ah, Mrs Varen." Kilam chuckled, a gravelly but genuine sound. "That woman will outlive you, my dear. She is more stubborn than Death itself."
"I know. It is precisely why I am so fond of her."
They stepped inside together, and I trailed behind.
(He has aged terribly compared to them.)[Correct. The twins' transformation appears to have halted their ageing process entirely. Subject Kilam, however, remains thoroughly human.]
(He is going to die. One day, likely not too far from now, he will die. And they shall carry on. Youthful. Powerful. Immortal.)[That is the tragedy of any immortal being shackled to mortal tethers.]
(I know. Believe me, I know.)
The kitchen smelled of freshly baked bread and something that might have been stew. Kilam went straight to the stove, stirring a pot with practiced motions.
"Sit, sit. You look exhausted."
"Father, I do not grow exhausted—"
"You look exhausted," he repeated, with the universal stubbornness of fathers everywhere. "Sit down."
Morgana sat.
(Some powers transcend divinity. A father's ability to make his offspring obey is undoubtedly one of them.)[A sociologically fascinating observation.]
(It was a joke, Eos.)
[I am aware. I was agreeing.]
Kilam placed a bowl of stew in front of her before she could even utter a protest. Morgana looked at the food, then at her father, and sighed with a fond smile.
"You know I do not require as much sustenance as I once did."
"You require more than you currently have. When was the last time you sat for a proper meal, eh?"
"I..."
"Just as I thought."
(He still fusses over her. Even though she's a demigoddess who could likely survive without food for months or years. He still frets over whether she's had her tea.)
Morgana began to eat the stew, more to appease her father than out of actual hunger, and Kilam sank into the chair opposite her with a groan of protesting joints.
"Father, you ought to be resting."
"I rest plenty."
"You shouldn't be carrying heavy loads, or cooking, or—"
"Morgana." His tone was gentle, but uncompromising. "I am still your father. The day I cannot cook for my daughters is the day they can put me in the ground."
(Stubborn old goat. I wonder where the daughters get it from?)
Morgana opened her mouth to argue, but something in her father's expression made her pause. Instead, she simply smiled and returned to her meal.
The ensuing silence was a comfortable one, the sort that settles between people who feel no desperate need to fill the air with chatter.
But there was something lurking beneath the surface.
I could see it in the worry lines etched into Kilam's face. In the way he watched his daughter when he thought she wasn't paying attention.
"Morgana." He finally spoke, his voice lowered. "Are you... are you quite alright?"
"I am, Father. Why do you ask?"
"You know perfectly well why."
A pause.
Morgana set down her spoon.
"Father—"
"You were my girls." The words spilled out as if he had been holding them back for far too long. "Mine. Two little terrors fighting over who got to sit on my lap. And now... now the folk call you goddesses."
(Ah. I see.)
"We are not goddesses, Father."
"It doesn't look that way when I see you in the sky. When I see the wings, and the light, and..." He shook his head slowly. "I fled a mountain of gods, Morgana. I crossed a bloody ocean to give you two a normal life. And the gods followed us anyway."
The sorrow in his voice was ancient. Hollow.
(He never wanted this for them. Never. He wanted them to be gardeners, bakers, anything remarkably ordinary. And now they are... this.)
Morgana stood up and went to her father. She knelt before him, taking his weathered, wrinkled hands in hers.
"Father. Look at me."
Kilam looked.
"I am your daughter. First, last, and always. No matter what else I may be." She squeezed his hands. "I shall not change. I shall not become... her."
(Mihira. She is promising not to become Mihira.)
"Do you promise me?" Kilam's voice was fragile in a way I hadn't heard before.
"I promise you, Father. I swear it."
Kilam studied her for a long moment. Searching for something in his daughter's face. Reassurance, perhaps. Or the ghost of the wife he lost to the mountain.
Then, he nodded. Slowly.
"I believe you, my girl." He let out a soft sigh. "You, I believe."
('You'. Not 'you both'. He notably omitted Kayle.)
[A highly significant omission.]
(Incredibly so.)
Morgana noticed it too. I saw the way her shoulders tensed for a fraction of a second before relaxing.
"Father... Kayle—"
"Speaking of your sister." Kilam stood, quite deliberately shifting the topic. "Do you know if she's eaten today?"
"I... I do not know. Most likely not."
"Just as I thought." He walked over to the counter, where a basket covered with a cloth was waiting. "I made sandwiches. The ones she fancied when she was younger, with the cheese and herbs."
(He still remembers what she fancied as a child. He still makes her favourite sandwiches.)
"Father, you needn't have—"
"She forgets to eat when she's working. Always has done." Kilam pressed the basket into Morgana's hands. "Take this to her. And... try to make her rest for a bit. If anyone can manage it, it's you."
Morgana stared down at the basket, then up at her father.
"Father, I don't know if—"
"Please, my dear." His voice was terribly soft. "I worry for you both. But lately... Kayle doesn't come here anymore. And when she does, it's as if..." He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
(As if she isn't there anymore. As if someone else is wearing her face.)
Morgana swallowed hard. She clutched the basket to her chest.
"I shall go, Father. I will take it to her."
Kilam smiled, a weary smile, yet brimming with hope.
"There's my girl."
-----------(*)-----------
Morgana left her father's house with the basket in her arms and an expression I knew all too well. The look of someone marching off to do something they desperately wish to avoid, but will do regardless. Because they promised. Because they love. Because it is the right thing to do.
(I know that face. I've seen it in the mirror more times than I care to count.)
She walked down the street of the old quarter, passing the houses she'd known since childhood. A few people waved, and she waved back, but without stopping this time. She had a destination. A mission.
A sister to feed.
The route to the city centre was a masterclass in urban history. The architecture gradually shifted, from the modest wood-and-stone cottages of the original settlement to more elaborate, recent structures. Shops. Workshops. A schoolhouse that certainly hadn't existed fifteen years ago.
(They built all this. With their bare hands. No magic tearing it down, no wars levelling it. Just... people. Living.)[The urban development indicates approximately over two decades of continuous peace and prosperity.]
(Decades of peace. How long until someone decides to completely muck it up?)[You are consistently pessimistic.]
(I am consistently realistic. Peace never lasts. Especially when overwhelmingly powerful individuals are involved.)
Morgana crossed the market square, the same one I had seen earlier, but she didn't linger. The flow of pedestrians thickened as she neared the centre. Merchants hauling wares. Children weaving between adults' legs. The standard hum of a functioning city.
But there was something else in the air today.
A subtle tension. Glances darting in one specific direction. Whispers that died abruptly whenever someone walked too close.
(They are afraid of something.)[Or someone.]
Morgana's wings retracted almost imperceptibly, drawing closer to her body. She adjusted her grip on the basket, a nervous gesture, I realised. Just something to busy her hands.
The architecture changed once more as she entered the central district. Here, the buildings were grander, far more imposing. White stone dominated, the same Petricite that comprised the surrounding forest, now carved into columns and archways. Beautiful, in a rather cold, institutional manner.
And then, I heard it.
A voice. Clear, cutting, echoing across a square I couldn't yet see.
"The sentence is hard labour on the walls. Three years."
Morgana halted.
For a moment, just a fleeting moment, she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. Like someone bracing to plunge into freezing water.
(She knows exactly what she's going to find. And she doesn't want to look.)
But she kept walking.
The tribunal was situated in the very heart of the city.
It wasn't a closed-off building; it was an open plaza, surrounded by white stone pillars supporting a partial roof. The design was deliberate: anyone could bear witness to the trials. Transparency. Justice made visible to all.
(Or public intimidation masquerading as democracy. Depends on who you ask, really.)
[A cynical perspective.]
(A realistic one. I've seen far too many courtrooms in far too many lives to believe that justice and theatrical spectacle mix well.)
Morgana climbed the wide steps leading up to the plaza, her pace growing increasingly sluggish. The basket weighed heavily in her arms, not physically, but in entirely different ways.
When she reached the top, she didn't step inside. She simply stood at the periphery, observing.
The square was packed. Ordinary citizens occupied the stone benches all around; some were curious onlookers, others clearly there against their will, witnesses, perhaps, or relatives of the accused. Guards in highly polished armour stood at regular intervals, wearing the vacant expressions of men who have learned not to react to what they see.
And in the centre of it all, upon a raised podium of white stone, stood Kayle.
I barely recognised her.
This wasn't the girl who had danced with her sister at the festival. This wasn't the teenager who used to hold Morgana's hand with hesitant fingers. This was someone else entirely.
She wore ceremonial golden armour that gleamed under the sun, every polished plate reflecting light in a way that bordered on painful. Her wings, wings of fire and light, so utterly unlike Morgana's, were spread wide behind her as an absolute symbol of authority. Her face was a mask of sheer impartiality.
And her eyes.
Her eyes were the worst part.
They weren't cruel. They weren't sadistic. They were simply... hollow. The gaze of someone who had decided that emotions were a luxury a judge simply could not afford.
(She has turned into Mihira.)
The thought struck before I could stop it.
(Not entirely. Not yet. But she is well on her way.)
Beside the podium, a middle-aged man knelt, his hands bound before him. His face was a portrait of abject terror and despair.
"Please," he begged. "I only took the bread because my children were starving. There was no work, there was no—"
"Motive does not alter the offence." Kayle's voice was frigid. Detached. "Theft is theft. The law draws no distinction between the thief who steals out of greed and the one who steals out of necessity."
"But three years? My children will—"
"Your children shall be provided for by the community during your sentence. Which is considerably more than you offered the baker when you snatched the livelihood from his table."
The wooden gavel struck the podium. The sound cracked across the plaza like thunder.
"Next."
Guards dragged the man away. He was still protesting, still pleading, but no one was listening anymore.
(Three years. For a loaf of bread. Because his children were starving.)
I glanced at Morgana. Her face was meticulously neutral, but the hands clutching the basket were trembling slightly.[Subject Morgana exhibits signs of suppressed emotional distress.]
(I should be bloody distressed as well. This isn't justice. It's mathematics. Cold, precise, and utterly devoid of humanity or proportionality.)
The next case was different.
I felt the shift in the atmosphere before I even saw him. The energy in the plaza mutated; the uncomfortable silence of the previous trial gave way to something thicker. Something visceral.
The guards brought the prisoner up the side stairs, and the very moment he appeared, the crowd erupted.
"Monster!"
"Murderer!"
"Burn him!"
The man was large, broad shoulders, thick arms, the sort of physique purpose-built for intimidating the weak. But now he was in chains, his face bruised and swollen, and his eyes... his eyes belonged to a man who knew exactly what he had done.
And felt absolutely nothing.
(This one is different from the last.)
[In what respect?]
(The man with the bread felt fear. Shame. Despair. This bloke... this one is simply bored.)
The guards hauled him to the centre of the square. Someone hurled a rotting fruit that struck his shoulder. He didn't even flinch. He merely smirked, a small, private smirk, as if this whole ordeal were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
"Order."
Kayle's voice sliced through the uproar. It wasn't a shout; it was a declaration. The kind of sound that doesn't ask for silence, but demands it.
The crowd complied.
I looked over at Morgana.
She was still standing at the edge of the plaza, basket in arms, but something had shifted. Her shoulders were rigid. Her jaw locked. And her eyes, usually so endlessly gentle, had darkened in a way I had never witnessed before.
It wasn't horror. It wasn't pity.
It was recognition.
(She knows who he is. And she despises him. Which is quite rare, Morgana genuinely hating someone.)
One of the elders stepped forward with a parchment. His hands were shaking.
"The accused is Darren of Millbrook." The elder's voice was frail, professional, desperately trying to remain neutral and failing miserably. "The charges are: the murder of his wife, Celia of Millbrook..."
A pause. The elder swallowed hard.
"...and the prolonged sexual abuse of his daughter. A child of seven who survived, but who has since lost the ability to speak."
The silence that followed was a physical entity. Oppressive. A living, breathing thing that squatted upon the plaza like a massive beast and refused to move. The kind of silence that precedes thunderstorms. That precedes avalanches. That precedes the exact moment civilization decides its laws are insufficient and demands blood.
And then the plaza roared.
"KILL HIM!"
"BURN HIM TO ASHES!"
"JUSTICE! JUSTICE!"
The sound was primal, unorganised, unchoreographed; born from the very bowels of hundreds of people simultaneously. The sound of a community that had just heard the unthinkable and reacted with the only emotion the unthinkable permits: pure, unadulterated rage.
I couldn't blame them in the slightest.
I looked back at Morgana.
And what I saw on her face made me realise something I had never quite grasped about her.
Her face had turned to stone. Not the cold, impartial stone of Kayle, that would be easy, that would be professional, that would be controllable. This was something hotter. Vastly more dangerous. Infinitely more dangerous, because Kayle's coldness was manufactured; it was armour, a defence mechanism.
What I saw on Morgana's face was entirely natural.
Her jaw was clenched so tightly I could see the muscles twitching beneath her skin. The knuckles of the hands gripping the basket were stark white. Her wings, which earlier had moved freely and relaxed like extensions of her own soul, were now dead still. Taut. Every single feather locked into place. Like a predator preparing to strike.
And in her eyes, in the eyes of the woman who healed children and counselled widows and planted gardens and waited an eternity for her sister, I saw something that made me realise the "gentle Morgana" was merely one side of the coin.
There was another Morgana lurking underneath.
A Morgana who had decided, at some point in her existence, exactly which crimes lay beyond the pale of redemption. A Morgana who knew precisely where compassion ended and where something older, darker, and more just than any law carved in stone began.
(She wants him dead. She doesn't want him judged, sentenced, or imprisoned. She wants him to pay. With everything. With every fibre of his being.)[Subject Morgana demonstrates an intense emotional response. Anger. Revulsion. And something more difficult to categorise.]
(It isn't difficult at all, Eos. It's thirst. A thirst for retribution. The sort that isn't satisfied by a mere sentence. And coming from Morgana, the very woman who forgives the unforgivable... that speaks louder than any sermon Kayle could ever deliver from that podium.)
Kayle raised a hand. The crowd fell dead silent.
She rose from the podium, a slow, deliberate movement, every inch calculated for maximum effect, and descended the steps until she stood on the same level as the accused. Her wings flared open, not completely, but enough to cast shadows of golden light over the kneeling man. Shadows that ought to have offered warmth, but in that context felt remarkably like a cage.
"Darren of Millbrook." Her voice was low. Controlled. Every syllable measured with the precision of someone who knows they are being listened to by hundreds, and that every word will echo. But there was something beneath it; something simmering just under the surface, like magma beneath thin rock. "You stand before this tribunal accused of murder and the violation of innocence. Crimes against your own family. Against your own blood. Against the child you were sworn to protect with your very life."
She stopped directly in front of him. Close. Far too close to be impartial. Far too close to be merely a judge. It was a statement: 'I am going to look you straight in the eye while I decide what to do with you.'
"What have you to say for yourself?"
The man looked up. And smirked. That private, intimate smirk. Obscene in its utter normalcy.
Kayle stared down at him. Waiting. Giving him enough rope to hang himself.
He didn't beg. He didn't deny it.
"I don't understand," he said, and his tone was that of a man genuinely baffled. "I simply don't understand why I am here."
The plaza froze.
"Celia was my wife. I fed her. I gave her a roof over her head. A name. All she had to do was one simple thing. Obey." He shook his head, like a tradesman lamenting a faulty tool. "But the woman simply wouldn't learn. I explained it to her, patiently. When words failed..." He shrugged. "One uses the back of one's hand. One uses the belt. A proper husband corrects his wife."
(He is justifying it. With the casual nonchalance of a bloke explaining how to train a dog.)
"She died?" His tone implied a minor inconvenience. "I admit I went a bit too far. But she provoked me. Shouting at me. Under my own roof. I merely wanted her to be quiet. She was the one who didn't know when to stop making a fuss."
He actually said it. He said his wife didn't know when to stop taking a beating.
"As for the girl..."
His voice grew softer. Milder. Almost affectionate. And that softness, that grotesque parody of paternal warmth, was quite frankly the most utterly repulsive thing I have heard in fifty lifetimes.
"The girl is my daughter. My own flesh and blood." He looked at Kayle as if expecting her to nod in agreement. As if he were being perfectly reasonable. "The world out there is cruel to women. I know what men do when no one is watching. So I thought to myself: better she learns at home. With me. With her father." That sickening smirk again. "Better I be the first, rather than some stranger who wouldn't show her any care. I, at least, was gentle with her."
Gentle.
"A father provides. A father prepares his children for the real world." He looked around the plaza with the expression of a man expecting a round of applause. "She belongs to me. She came from me. It is my absolute right to decide how she is raised."
The plaza shattered. A raw, primitive noise ripped from the throats of hundreds. One woman doubled over as if she'd been punched in the gut. A man kicked over a stone bench trying to get at him. Someone was vomiting.
And Darren merely watched, his eyes slightly widened, not in fear, but in sheer incomprehension. As if the entire world had gone mad except for him.
(This is what truly destroys me, Eos. This isn't cartoon villainy. True evil knows it is wrong and chooses to do it anyway. This is a man who believes it. A man who has constructed a system inside his own head so utterly flawless that beating his wife to death is 'correction', murder is an 'accident', and raping his own daughter is 'education'.)
And that is infinitely worse.
I saw the reaction ripple across Kayle's face like a seismic tremor. Her pupils contracting. Her wings crackling. Her fingers curling over the edge of the podium with enough force to scar the wood.
Pure, unadulterated fury. Not the righteous wrath of a judge, but the visceral rage of a woman who had just listened to a man describe the violation of his own child as pedagogy.
But she didn't scream. She didn't strike him.
She smiled.
And that smile, freezing, cutting, surgical, was the smile of someone who had just confirmed that the sentence she had already decided upon was far too merciful.
She stood tall. Descended the remaining steps slowly.
"Gentleness." She spat the word like distilled venom. "You violated your seven-year-old daughter and had the audacity to call it gentleness."
Another step.
"Preparation." The same tone. The same lethal precision. "You destroyed a child's innocence and branded it preparation."
Another step.
"Correction." She was at eye level with him now. Her face mere inches from his. "You beat your wife until she took her last breath and named it correction."
"You have constructed an entire vocabulary, Darren. Pretty words draped over blood like a white sheet over a corpse. 'Correction' instead of torture. 'Preparation' instead of violation. 'Gentleness' instead of acts the human tongue lacks the sheer courage to name when the victim is a child."
She stepped back.
"Do you wish to know why you are here? It is not merely for the murder. It is not merely for the destruction. It is because you sat in your kitchen with Elara's blood coating your hands and asked someone to clean up the mess. It is because you came before this tribunal confused. Because you looked me dead in the eye and told me a seven-year-old girl is property."
She ascended the steps back to the podium.
"You do not understand why you are here." It wasn't a question. It was a clinical diagnosis. "And that, Darren, is the most monstrous part of all."
"The witnesses. Speak."
The next-door neighbour took the stand, her legs trembling violently. She refused to look at Darren.
"I lived in the house next door. The wall between us was paper-thin. I heard everything."
Her voice was a thread bearing the weight of years.
"It started in their first month of marriage. His shouting. Telling her she was utterly useless. That she ought to be grateful he stayed with her. Then came the noises. A body hitting the wall. Right on the other side of my wall, the one right next to my bed."
She twisted the fabric of her dress.
"And the very next day, Celia would be at the market, her face covered, forcing a smile, claiming she'd had a fall. She 'fell' every single week. And I pretended to believe her. Because believing the lie was easier."
Her voice shattered completely.
"But one night, I heard the girl. She was only five at the time. Screaming in a way no child should ever be capable of screaming. 'Daddy, no. Daddy, it hurts. Daddy, please.'"
She opened her eyes. Red. Utterly destroyed.
"And I covered my ears. Every single night. For all that time. I listened, and then I went to sleep."
The tears fell without permission.
"And now Celia is dead. And the little girl cannot speak. And I have to live the rest of my days knowing I chose to stay silent."
Darren sighed. Like a man stuck in an overly long queue.
"Always so melodramatic, the neighbour. Celia fell because she was frightfully clumsy."
The neighbour whipped around with a ferocity that made the guards jump.
"Clumsy?! I saw her dragging herself to the well at three in the morning to wash away her own blood! I saw her hiding the teeth you knocked out of her mouth!"
The guards restrained her. They led her away, still screaming.
Darren watched her go with the expression of a man watching a pigeon cross the pavement.
"Hysterical. Exactly like Celia."
The healer took the stand next. Broad hands. The look of a man who hadn't slept properly in thirty years. His hands shook with suppressed fury.
"The door was wide open. Elara was on the kitchen floor. Dead. Marks on her neck, her back, her face. Marks that weren't inflicted all at once. It took hours."
He stared directly at Darren.
"He was sitting in the kitchen chair. With Elara's blood drying on his fingers. He looked at me and said: 'See to cleaning that up. She's made a right mess of my kitchen.'"
The plaza erupted again. Kayle raised a hand. Silence fell like a cracked dam.
"Continue."
"The child was hiding under the bed. The bruising had a distinct pattern. Symmetrical. On her wrists. On her ankles. Layers upon layers. Years of layers." His voice dropped an octave. "And the other injuries... the anatomy of a seven-year-old is not designed to endure what was done to her. The kind of trauma that requires malicious intent. Repetition. Routine."
"And when I attempted to examine her, she opened her mouth. She tried to scream. And no sound came out. None at all. She desperately wanted to beg me to stop touching her, and she physically couldn't."
His voice broke.
"Because the last person she begged... he didn't stop."
And throughout the entire testimony, Darren rolled his eyes. Adjusted his chains. Scratched his nose. And when the healer spoke of his daughter's stolen voice, he openly yawned. He leaned over to the nearest guard and muttered:
"Is this going to take much longer? I haven't eaten since yesterday."
The grandmother was the last to approach. Tiny. Bowed, not by age, but by the sheer weight of her grief. She clutched a scrap of parchment to her chest.
She fixed Darren with a dark, hateful glare.
Then she turned to Kayle.
"She doesn't speak. Not since that night. She opens her mouth and nothing happens. So she draws... It's the only way she can tell us..."
She held out the parchment.
"This was the last one."
Kayle took the drawing. And looked.
The mask cracked. Not subtly. It splintered like thin ice over deep water, starting from a central point and spiderwebbing in every direction. For a fraction of a second, there was no judge. There was no Winged Protector.
There was only a woman holding the very last scream a child could manage to put to paper.
Her eyes glistened. Not with celestial light.
With unshed tears.
And Darren saw those tears. And he smirked.
"So the grand Protector does have feelings after all. Perhaps if you were a bit less emotional, this tribunal would run more efficiently."
The grandmother turned to him. This tiny, broken woman. And she spoke, with a voice that no longer trembled:
"My granddaughter drew herself bruised and without a mouth, Darren. Because you took that from her. Along with absolutely everything else."
Darren blinked. A flicker of irritation crossed his face. The annoyance of a man bothered by irrelevant trivialities.
"She was always a difficult child. Prone to hysterics. Just like you and her mother."
And Kayle's mask slammed back into place. All at once. Like a vault door sealing shut.
(There. Right there is Kayle. Beneath it all. She still feels. She still hurts. And that is exactly why she requires all this bloody armour.)
And every single word tumbling out of his mouth isn't a defence; it is him eagerly building his own funeral pyre. I looked at Morgana. She wasn't just looking at Kayle this time. She was looking at Darren. And the Morgana I saw was not the merciful one. It was the woman who knew precisely where compassion met its end.
And when she looked back at Kayle, what I saw was pure agony. Agony for her sister. The terrible knowledge that every man like Darren shoved Kayle another inch towards becoming Mihira.
Kayle stood. She walked down the steps. Her wings unfurled completely. Every feather of fire crackling, the sheer heat distorting the air around her.
She stopped right in front of him.
And said absolutely nothing.
The silence lasted fifteen seconds. Darren's smirk died around the fifth. By the fifteenth, he finally realised that the creature standing before him was not a woman to be manipulated.
Kayle looked down at him the exact way he looked at his wife. The exact way he looked at his daughter.
From above.
And now he knows what it feels like. For one fleeting second in his miserable, pathetic life, he is feeling exactly what they felt. The only difference is that they did not deserve it.
"I have heard the witnesses, Darren." Her voice was a low murmur. Almost gentle. A thousand times more terrifying than a roar. "I have heard what your hands taught. How to drag oneself to a well at dawn to wash away one's own blood. How to hide the teeth you shattered."
Every sentence, a scalpel.
"I heard of the layers of bruising on your daughter's wrists and ankles. Years of layers. I heard of a little girl who opens her mouth to scream and finds no sound, because the very last person she screamed for was you."
Her voice dropped to a lethal whisper.
"And I have seen the drawing. A seven-year-old girl who sketched herself broken and mouthless. Because her own father was the monster that slipped into her room when the lanterns went out."
She drew herself up. To her full, terrifying height. Wings blazing.
"The sentence is death. By my hand. Immediately."
A sword materialised in her grasp. Solidified fire. Pure light condensed into a razor's edge.
Darren's arrogance evaporated instantly. The smirk vanished. All that remained was a small, pathetic, snivelling man.
"Wait—I can change, I can—"
"Change?" Kayle paused in front of him. "Now? Facing the blade?"
She leaned down, bringing herself almost to his level. And that condescension was the most devastating thing she could have done.
"Your wife begged you to change. Every single day. For years. When she knelt in pools of her own blood and begged you to be the man she married. She gave you every single chance that human love could possibly fabricate."
Her voice turned to iron.
"Did you change?"
"Your daughter begged you too. 'Daddy, no. Daddy, it hurts. Daddy, please.' She screamed until her voice was gone. Until there was absolutely nothing left."
The blade raised. The fire roared.
"Did you change?"
"And now... now that it is you on your knees, now that it is you begging, you dare ask me for a mercy you never once offered them?"
"Please—I have rights—a proper trial—"
"Proper?" The word was spat like embers. "Do you wish to know what would be proper?"
She took one final step forward.
"Proper would be you feeling every single blow you rained upon Elara. Every last one. In the exact same sequence. With the exact same force. Until the very stones beneath you are stained red with your blood. Proper would be you dragging yourself to the well at three in the morning to scrub your own wounds. You hiding your shattered teeth. You forcing a smile at the market the next day, pretending you had a fall."
Her tone grew darker.
"Proper would be you locked in a pitch-black room. Every single night. For years. Never knowing when the door will open. Never knowing what horrors await when it does. Unable to scream, because the last time you screamed, nobody came. Until your voice withered and died."
The sword ascended high. The celestial fire flared.
"This is mercy. Because what is proper... you would not survive."
"Your pleas are as hollow as theirs were to you."
The blade fell.
And the celestial fire consumed him entirely.
He screamed, the sort of scream that emanates from a place beyond flesh, beyond bone, from the exact point where a soul meets its ultimate reckoning. The flames did not devour him quickly. They purified. Agonisingly slowly. Completely.
The crowd watched in mesmerised silence.
And then, the applause began.
"JUSTICE!"
"GLORY TO THE PROTECTOR!"
"KAYLE! KAYLE! KAYLE!"
They chanted her name like a hymn. Like a prayer. Kayle remained utterly motionless in the centre of the plaza. The sword still blazed in her hand. Her wings remained fully extended in all their terrifying glory, celestial fire crackling through the feathers of light.
But her face...
Her face told a remarkably different story.
I saw her jaw clench tight. I saw the furrow between her brows deepen. I saw her eyes, which mere seconds ago burned with righteous fury against a monster, now narrow with something else entirely. Something that was absolutely not pride.
It was profound discomfort.
Her mouth pressed into a thin, white line as the chanting echoed on. Underneath the golden armour, her shoulders were rigid in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the execution she'd just carried out.
(She doesn't want this. The adoration. The cult of personality.)
I knew that look. I knew that exact discomfort.
(I have stood exactly where she is standing.)
Not in this life, mind you. Not wielding wings of fire and celestial blades. But in others, in lifetimes where sheer power hoisted me onto pedestals I never once asked for. Where mobs chanted my name as if it were a holy verse. Where they looked at me not as a person, but as something else entirely.
And I remembered precisely how that changes a person.
At first, you resist. You correct them. You say, "I am not a god, I am merely someone attempting to do the right thing." You feel the sickening weight of that blind worship and you want to shrug it off like an ill-fitting coat.
But the world doesn't stop.
The world insists on treating you as a deity. It keeps building altars. It keeps screaming your name as if you are the only barricade between them and utter chaos.
And gradually, so dreadfully gradually that you don't even notice it happening, you simply tire of correcting them. You tire of swimming against the tide. You begin to accept the titles. You begin to act exactly as they expect you to act. You begin to believe it.
Not out of arrogance. Out of sheer, unadulterated exhaustion.
It is vastly easier to simply wear the bloody crown than to fight it for eternity.
(I know exactly how this story ends. I have lived it.)
I looked at Kayle, at the discomfort still painfully visible on her features, at the way she actively avoided meeting the eyes of the crowd, and I felt a tight knot form in my chest.
(She is still fighting it. She still doesn't want to become what they are making of her.)
But for how much longer?
With every trial. Every execution. Every chorus of "KAYLE! KAYLE! KAYLE!" reverberating through this square. The line separating the woman from the myth was wearing perilously thin. And one day, I knew, because I had seen it and I had been it, there wouldn't be a line left at all.
She would look in the mirror and fail to distinguish Kayle from Justice. The individual from the institution. The sister from the goddess.
And by then, it would be far too late.
The fire on her sword finally extinguished. Her wings retracted, not entirely, but sufficiently.
She ascended the steps back to the podium without so much as a backward glance.
The crowd was still screaming. Still cheering. Celebrating as if this were a bank holiday festival, not an execution.
And I looked at Morgana.
She wasn't looking at the crowd. She wasn't looking at the pile of ashes on the stones.
She was looking at her sister.
And what I saw on her face wasn't disapproval. It wasn't judgement.
It was pure sorrow.
The kind of sorrow that only comes from watching someone you love carry an unbearable burden. From watching your own sister being meticulously carved into something she never wished to be, purely by the weight of public adoration.
(She sees it too. Morgana sees her sister slowly losing herself. And she is utterly powerless to stop it.)
Morgana let out a breath. Long. Heavy.
Not out of frustration with her sister.
But in premature mourning for her.
The ensuing cases blurred past like water.
A merchant accused of rigging his weights and scales, not merely petty theft, but years of systematic extortion of the poorest citizens. Kayle sentenced him to ten years of gruelling hard labour in the Petricite mines, plus triple restitution of everything he had stolen. The man wept uncontrollably. Kayle didn't even blink.
A tavern brawl that ended in a stabbing; the aggressor had struck from behind, cowardly, leaving his victim permanently crippled. Fifteen years on the walls. No possibility of parole. Kayle's face was carved from stone as she delivered the sentence.
(She offers no quarter. She does not negotiate.)
A woman accused of witchcraft by her neighbours was acquitted due to a blatant lack of evidence. Kayle dismissed the case with a glare so scathing that the accusers shrank back into the benches like children caught in a lie.
"The next time you attempt to destroy someone's life out of petty jealousy," Kayle's voice was absolute ice, "kindly bring evidence. Not village gossip."
(Well, at least she let that one go.)[Subject Kayle demonstrates a capacity for acquittal when empirical evidence fails to support the accusation.]
(Quite. She isn't entirely blind. Merely... inflexible. The law cuts both ways.)
And then came the utterly absurd cases.
A man accused his neighbour of "stealing the sunlight" because his new cottage cast a shadow over his vegetable patch.
Kayle remained perfectly silent for three entire seconds.
I saw, I swear I saw, a vein throb at her temple.
"The sun," she stated slowly, as if addressing a particularly dim-witted toddler, "is not private property. Case dismissed. Next."
"But my cabbages—"
"Next."
The man was hauled away, still loudly protesting on behalf of his cabbages.
[Subject Kayle's facial expression strongly suggests the onset of a migraine.]
(I'd have a bloody migraine too if I were forced to adjudicate disputes over vegetables.)
The next case was hardly an improvement.
Two brothers bickering over their late father's inheritance, specifically, over a goat. A single, solitary goat. They had dragged this into a three-month feud involving four witnesses, two makeshift solicitors, and a meticulously drawn genealogical chart of the goat in question.
Of the goat.
Kayle listened to their arguments for precisely two minutes.
Then, she raised a hand.
"The goat shall be sold," she declared. "The coin divided equally. If either of you sets foot in this tribunal again for any reason short of an actual crime, you shall spend a fortnight mucking out the city stables."
"But—"
"Two fortnights."
The brothers snapped their mouths shut.
(Her face. She looks as though she's smelling something rotting.)
Morgana, standing at the edge of the plaza, hid what might have been a smirk behind her basket.
The following case involved a woman accusing her husband of "snoring excessively loudly", demanding financial compensation for "emotional damages inflicted by sleep deprivation over fifteen years of marriage."
Kayle closed her eyes.
For a long, frightfully tense moment, she said nothing.
I could practically hear her counting to ten in her head.
"This tribunal," she said finally, every syllable clipped with surgical restraint, "judges crimes. It does not judge snoring. Case dismissed. If you return here with this absolute rubbish again, you will both be imprisoned for wasting the court's time."
The couple departed, bickering over whose fault it was they had been thrown out.
(I honestly don't know whether to laugh or weep.)
[The judicial system appears to lack any filtering mechanism for frivolous claims.]
(It doesn't. And Kayle has to endure this farce alongside murderers and abusers, actual criminals. Every single bloody day. It's a wonder she hasn't exploded yet.)
Case after case. Sentence after sentence. Genuine atrocities interspersed with absurdities that would make any sane person deeply question the future of the human race.
A thief who robbed a temple: twenty years and permanent branding. A charlatan who peddled fake remedies that killed three people: execution, no appeal. A dispute over who was the rightful owner of a chicken that "clearly preferred" one neighbour over the other.
Kayle resolved the latter by sending the chicken directly to the city butcher.
"If neither of you can share it in a civilised manner, neither of you deserves to keep it."
The two neighbours left in a state of profound shock, united for the very first time in their mutual indignation toward the judge.
(A brutal solution. Highly efficient. And probably the only way to shut down that circus.)
Kayle's voice never once wavered. Her posture never slouched. To anyone watching, she was exactly what the public believed her to be: Justice incarnate. Tireless. Unshakeable. Superhuman.
But I had been watching long enough to spot the cracks in the masonry.
The way her fingers white-knuckled the gavel between cases. The barely perceptible tension in her shoulders that ratcheted tighter with every passing hour. The way her blinks grew just a fraction slower near the end, as if her eyelids were lined with lead.
(She is exhausted.)
And that meant something.
Because Kayle was a demigoddess. A conduit of celestial power who could fly for hours without drawing breath, fight battles that spanned days, and sustain wings of pure fire as if they weighed absolutely nothing. The sheer energy coursing through her veins was near limitless; I could feel the magnitude of it even as a mere observer in this memory.
Yet, there she was. Drained.
(If someone with that level of power is exhausted, it isn't her physical body that's failing. It's something else.)[Correct. The observed fatigue is not physical in the conventional sense. It is emotional. Psychological. Every trial demands processing, decision-making, and profound responsibility. Every sentence carries a moral toll.]
(She absorbs all of it. Every crime. Every tragic tale. Every face begging for mercy or spitting venom. And she has to distil all that mess into rigid decisions. Day in, day out.)
I looked at her, at the demigoddess who could obliterate armies without breaking a sweat, and I saw the kind of weariness that absolutely no magic on earth could cure.
A weariness of the soul.
(Her body can endure anything. But her mind... her mind is still human. And it is slowly crumbling under the weight of playing 'Justice' for thousands of people.)
The sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the tribunal in hues of orange and violent red. The crowd had thinned considerably, the gawkers wandering off, leaving only those involved in the final dockets.
"This tribunal is adjourned for the day," Kayle announced, her voice still ringing firm. "The remaining cases shall be heard tomorrow, at first light."
She rose from the podium with a fluid grace that entirely masked any hint of fatigue. Her wings folded away completely now, tucked against her back like a cloak of subdued light. Her face was a flawless mask of impartial serenity.
No one noticed a thing.
No one except Morgana.
I watched her straighten up at the edge of the plaza, her eyes locked onto her sister as Kayle descended the podium steps. A contingent of guards stepped forward to escort her, but she waved them away with a sharp gesture.
(She wants to be alone. Or, at least, she reckons she does.)
Morgana took a deep breath, shifted the basket in her arms, and began to walk toward her sister.
People naturally parted for Kayle, a mixture of dread, morbid fascination, and deep reverence. Absolutely no one dared interrupt the Protector after a gruelling day of trials. No one approached without being summoned.
No one except Morgana.
"Kay."
Her voice was soft, but it carried. Kayle froze mid-stride, her back still turned to her sister. I saw the tension in her shoulders spike, barely noticeable, but undeniably there.
"Morgana." The reply came without her turning around. "What are you doing here?"
"Father asked me to bring you this." Morgana lifted the basket. "He made sandwiches. The ones you used to fancy."
Silence.
Kayle finally turned. Her face was utterly unreadable, the exact same mask she wore on the bench. Her eyes swept over the basket, then Morgana's face, then fixed on some invisible point just past her sister's shoulder.
Anywhere but Morgana's eyes.
"I am not hungry."
"You haven't eaten a single thing all day."
"I said I am not hungry."
The harshness in her voice was jarring. Sharp as glass. The sort of tone that made ordinary people recoil, stutter apologies, and scurry away.
Morgana stood her ground.
(She is doing it on purpose. The sheer rudeness. It's a defence mechanism.)
[Subject Kayle exhibits defensive behaviour consistent with the avoidance of emotional vulnerability.]
(She doesn't want Morgana to see how utterly shattered she is. She refuses to look weak. So she strikes first.)
"Kay..." Morgana took a step closer, her voice remaining endlessly gentle. "I watched today's trials. The case of... of that man."
Kayle's jaw tightened.
"Justice was served."
"I know it was. I am not questioning that."
"Then what is it you want!?"
The question lashed out louder and harsher than intended. Kayle seemed to realise it instantly; a flicker of something crossed her features, too quick to properly identify. Regret, perhaps. Or fierce frustration with her own lack of control.
But she offered no apology.
Morgana held her sister's gaze. Without stepping back. Without looking wounded. As if she could peer straight through all that bristling armour and icy bluster to the desperately tired person underneath.
"I merely wish to know if you are alright."
"I am perfectly—"
"I am not asking Kayle, the Winged Protector." Morgana cut her off, her tone suddenly firm. "I am asking my sister."
Silence.
The sort of silence that drags on for an eternity. That weighs like lead in the stomach.
I saw a hairline fracture appear in Kayle's composure. Not much, she possessed far too much rigid control to break down in public, but it was enough. A faint tremor at the corner of her mouth. A sudden, glassy sheen to her eyes.
And then, the mask snapped back.
"Your sister is occupied." Her voice was glacial. Remote. "And she does not require a nursemaid."
She turned on her heel and began to walk away.
"Kay—"
"You may leave the sandwiches in my study. I shall have them later."
And she walked away.
Without glancing back. Without a word of thanks. Without anything at all.
Morgana stood rooted in the middle of the empty plaza, the basket clutched in her arms, watching her sister vanish between the white pillars of the tribunal.
(She pushed her away. Again.)
I saw the raw hurt wash over Morgana's face. It wasn't surprise, this clearly wasn't the first time it had happened. It was something older. More fatigued. The aching resignation of someone trapped in a cycle of pain, who nevertheless keeps trying.
Always keeps trying.
"Your sister is occupied," Morgana murmured to herself. A humorless little laugh escaped her lips. "Of course she is."
She looked down at the basket in her hands. At the sandwiches their father had prepared with such tender care. At the sheer love he had packed inside, desperately hoping it might bridge the widening chasm between his daughters.
For a split second, I genuinely thought she would turn and leave. Go home. Surrender.
But then she drew a steadying breath.
She walked over to a stone bench near the tribunal's podium.
She set the basket down there, very carefully, in a spot where Kayle couldn't possibly miss it when she returned.
And she walked away without another word.
(She won't force the issue. She won't push. But she absolutely refuses to give up.)
[Subject Morgana demonstrates remarkable persistence despite repeated rejection.]
(Because she knows Kayle. She knows the hostility isn't hatred; it's sheer terror. Terror of needing someone. Terror of being perceived as weak. Terror of showing a sliver of affection.)
I watched Morgana disappear down the streets of the settlement, her purple wings swaying gently in her wake.
And I thought about the way Kayle had actively avoided her sister's eyes. The spike of tension the second she heard Morgana's voice. The brutal, agonizing effort it took to keep that mask pinned in place.
(She loves her. Kayle loves Morgana far more than she ought to. And that is precisely why she cannot allow her to get close.)
Because if Kayle dropped her guard, if she let Morgana see exactly how exhausted she was, how deeply it hurt, how desperately she just needed someone, she would never be able to raise that guard again.
And then who would be the Tireless Justice?
Who would be strong enough to shoulder the weight of it all?
(So she pushes. She wounds. She drives her away. Because it is infinitely easier to be hated than to be truly seen.)
I knew that mechanism intimately. I knew it from far too many lives.
And I knew it never, ever ended well.
-----------
💬 Author's Note
-----------
I wanted to have a quick word about my decision to humanise Kayle in this story.
Anyone familiar with Runeterra knows that Riot doesn't always explore its characters quite as deeply as it could. Especially with Kayle, most of the material we get paints her as a symbol of justice that's almost mechanical and painfully rigid, sometimes even borderline dictatorial. You get the sense that, to her, a starving thief and a monstrous murderer deserve the same type of response, because she's stopped caring about humanity and is just focused on punishment.
I didn't want to go down that route, at least, not at the start.
To me, Kayle wasn't born as that unreachable, distant figure people see. I wanted to write a Kayle who still feels things, gets shaken up, gets angry, and carries actual, human pain inside her. A Kayle who tries to do the right thing, but who gets shaped, and slowly hardened, by the weight of her own power, by the crushing responsibility of judging others, and mostly by how people start putting her on a pedestal.
And that's the part that interests me the most: it isn't just the power that changes you. It's the expectation. It's the adoration. It's when the whole world starts looking at you like you're not allowed to fail, not allowed to hesitate, not allowed to cry, or just be a person. When they turn you into a symbol, a myth, into "Justice", there's less and less room left to actually exist as Kayle.
So, in this fic, she doesn't start out as that cold, divine figure we know. She becomes that little by little. She's slowly consumed by duty, by the weight of her choices, by the pressure to appear infallible, and mostly by the devotion of the people, who, without even realising it, keep pushing her further and further away from herself. And honestly? Being put on a pedestal is often just a fancy way of being condemned to loneliness.