The bells of Vandor rang at dawn deep, hollow notes rolling through marble corridors and silk curtains that framed the royal palace. To most, they were a call to celebration. To Amelia Vandor, they were the chains that marked another day of obedience.
From her balcony, she looked at the courtyard below. Knights who trained there every morning: armor clashing, voices shouting, drills, swords flashing brightly under the cold sunrise. Each metallic ring bit into her chest like envy.
If I had been born a man, she thought, my heart would sing with that sound instead of bleeding from it.
She pressed her palms to the railing, feeling the chill of the carved stone. Somewhere below, a stable hand laughed; the smell of iron and sweat rose on the wind. It smelled like freedom.
Behind her, soft footsteps approached.
"My lady," whispered her maid, nervous as ever. "The royal dressmakers are waiting. The engagement ceremony is in three days."
Amelia's reflection in the glass showed silver eyes, clear, exhausted, and rigid.
"Then tell them they'll be waiting a long time," she said quietly.
The maid froze. "My lady?"
Amelia turned, smile faint and brittle. "You heard me."
And before the woman could protest, Amelia was already gone.
Midnight settled over the palace like an envelope. Candles faded out one by one until only the moon remained, covered in cloud. Amelia moved silently through servant tunnels she had memorized since childhood, back corridors where stone walls whispered of the forgotten.
Each step echoed like a heartbeat in her ears. She had smiled her whole life: smiled while fathers chose her fate, smiled through lessons on etiquette and silence.
Beyond the final archway, the courtyard gate is closed to everyone after sunset. She pressed her hand against the old lock and whispered a prayer to the gods that no longer answered. The chain snapped with a dull sound. Cold night air hit her face.
Freedom had a scent of wet grass, distant rain, and smoke from training forges.
She didn't even look back at Vendor's white tower as she crossed the outer fields. By morning, they were just dim shapes on the edge of sight, disappearing into the fog. Ahead waited the dark sea of trees known as Blackwood Forest, a cursed place whispered to devour all who entered. Monsters, spirits, and broken-hearted wraiths roamed beneath its Roof. The air itself seemed alive, pulsing faintly with mana.
She entered without hesitation.
Days turned into weeks. Her hands blistered, bled, and scarred. She crafted a crude sword from scrap metal scavenged near an abandoned watchtower and fought anything that moved. Hunger burned away fear. Her soft voice roughened into something sharp.
Sometimes, she spoke aloud to the emptiness. "Is this strength? Or madness?"
Obviously, the trees did not answer.
At night, she slept beside a dying fire, gripping her sword across her chest, afraid that even dreams might steal it away. She learned to listen to the crack of sticks that warned beasts, to the whisper of wind carrying mana through the branches like a second heartbeat.
One stormy, soaked evening, she dragged herself from a battle with a horned wolf; her arm gushed to the bone. Blood polished her fingers as she tried to channel healing magic, but it stuttered uselessly. She bit her lip until it bled.
"This is nothing," she hissed, forcing herself to stand. "If I fall now, then every girl chained in that palace stays chained forever."
Lightning cracked above, white and merciless. Rain washed her wound clean, cold enough to sting her awake. Somewhere, far off, a voice murmured through the thunder too clear to be windy.
"You'll die training like that."
Amelia turned; the sword raised. The figure standing a few paces away was… wrong. Neither man nor woman. Their robes flowed like liquid shadow edged in light, shifting with every blink. Eyes pale as twin moons regarded her with calm curiosity.
"Who are you?" She demanded.
The stranger's smile barely moved their lips. "A wanderer without a name. People once called me the Nameless."
"Never heard of you."
"Most haven't." Their tone carried no pride, only weariness. "I walk where silence goes."
Amelia steadied her sword. "Stay back."
"You shouldn't waste mana when your body fails," they said gently.
She ignored them and tried to sense their presence through mana sight. Instantly, her vision shattered into light, space twisting, lungs collapsing. She fell to her knees; air crashed from her chest. Reality itself bent around the stranger like ripples around a stone.
When awareness returned, she lay on wet earth, gasping. The Nameless knelt nearby, hands folded.
"You shouldn't have done that," they murmured.
"Who… are you really?" She was forced out.
"I told you. I am Nobody. Perhaps a traveler who's curious about a girl trying to fight destiny."
Their words stirred anger and shame at once. "Then keep your curiosity to yourself."
"I will," they said, standing. "Unless you wish to live long enough to be strong."
That night, she dreamed of two glowing eyes watching her through endless rain.
The Nameless didn't leave.
They never offered training, not directly, but Amelia began noticing how they would watch her stances, adjust a fallen branch to show balance, or point out which fruits weren't poisonous. Days turned into a fragile rhythm: she hunted; they observed; she failed; they commented with a calm that infuriated her.
"You wish to become the strongest," they said one dusk as the sun bled behind the tree. "But that wish is impossible."
"Because I'm a woman?" she instantly replied
"No." Their voices softened. "Because you seek strength only to prove something to those who will never understand you."
Amelia stared at the fading light. "I don't need them to understand," she whispered. "I just need them to see."
The Nameless regarded her for a long moment, then nodded as if weighing something unseen.
"Then survive my training. If you do, you may earn something no mortal has ever touched."
They drove a sword into the ground between them. Its hilt shimmered like a dragon's eye, scales waving in rainbow colors.
Amelia's breath caught. "What is this?"
"The Dragon Divine Eye Sword," they said. "Only one who commands both Light and Darkness can lift it."
When she looked up, the Nameless had vanished, no footprints, no trace. Only the sword remained, humming faintly, whispering to her heart.
The forest was never quiet after the Nameless disappeared.
Even when no beast moved and no wind sighed through the trees, Amelia could hear something, a low vibration beneath the soil, the steady vibration of mana that felt like the pulse of the world itself. It called her through the sword half-buried in the clearing; its jeweled hilt shining faintly beneath the sun.
She tried to lift it that morning. Her palms slipped on the smooth metal; the blade did not stir. She screamed, cursed, and kicked the ground until her throat went raw. Nothing has changed. The weapon waited, unmoved and patient, as if mocking her.
"Fine," she whispered to it. "I'll make myself worthy."
Her first years were spent studying in pain. She learned the weight of her body, how it betrayed her when hunger dulled her focus, how to feed the heart before the muscles. She cut her hair short to keep it from tangling in fights, wrapped her arms in bark and cloth, and carved practice dummies from dead trunks.
Morning: Run until she collapsed.
Afternoon: meditate until her shaking stopped.
Night: fight the nightmares that whisper you are nothing but a bride who ran away.
Mana flowed unevenly at first, bursts of light flickering from her chest like dying fireflies. She realized the truth in the Nameless's words: her heart was wild, fragmented between light and shadow. The noble child in her wanted grace; the rebel wanted destruction. They battled inside her with every breath.
In the third year, she decided to build a small shelter near the clearing, a roof of woven branches, a wall of stone she shaped by channeling mana into her hands. She learned to harvest herbs that eased exhaustion, to sense beasts before they struck, to bind wounds with light magic that left faint silver marks along her skin. Each scar told a story she refused to forget.
Sometimes she spoke to the sword.
"I know you're watching," she would say. "Don't think I've given up."
And though it never answered, she swore she felt its hum deepen in reply.
By the fifth year, the forest began to change around her. The ground near the sword no longer grew weeds; the air glowed faintly as if heat rose from invisible fire. Amelia noticed that when she meditated there, her pulse aligned with the earth's rhythm. It frightened her and fascinated her.
One night, while meditating beneath the bleeding moon, her mana vision opened wider than ever before. She saw threads, luminous veins stretching through trees, rivers, and even the stones. Everything lived by the same current, and at its center, the sword blazed like a heart of light.
When she tried to touch that power, darkness lashed back. Visions tore through her mind: storms, collapsing cities, the corpses of gods with holes where hearts should have been. She woke screaming, lungs filled with the taste of iron.
For weeks afterward, she could barely stand, yet the revelation burned inside her. Power was not something one seized; it was something one aligned with. To command both light and darkness, she would have to let them coexist within her without letting either consume her.
She began her own rituals, standing barefoot in the river until her legs went numb, feeling the flow of water and matching it to her breathing; meditating in total darkness until she could hear the beat of her heart echo with the whisper of leaves. She no longer chased strength to prove herself to others. She chased balance, even if it meant facing everything ugly inside her.
The following winter brought the hardest trial. Snow choked the forest; food vanished, and beasts grew desperate. Amelia fought a bear-like creature twice her size using only a broken spear and raw mana. When its claws shredded her shoulder, something inside her snapped, not in anger, but clarity.
I am alive because I refuse to die as they told me to.
Light flared from her wound, sealing flesh even as blood steamed away. Darkness coiled through the light, stabilizing it. For a moment, the world glowed with two colors breathing as one. The beast fell; she did not even feel the strike.
When the storm cleared, she looked at her hands and saw faint black veins threaded with silver. Her Heart had awakened its second pulse.
Years passed quietly after that. The forest had accepted her. Spirits of light flickered around her camp at dusk, watching from the trees. She spoke to them as if they were old friends.
Sometimes she still hears the Nameless's voice in memory.
"Strength gained to prove your worth will never fill the emptiness."
She would smile bitterly. "Maybe not, but it keeps me breathing."
By the ninth year, loneliness became its own trial. No laughter, no human voice. She forgot the sound of her own name until she carved it into a rock wall to remember. She began talking to the sword again, but this time not in defiance, in confession.
"I hated them," she told them once. "The ones who said I was meant only to stand behind a man. I thought if I became strong enough, their words would fade. But they still echo. Will they ever stop?
The wind sighed through the clearing, cold and gentle. The sword glowed once, just faintly. She took it as an answer.
The eleventh year started clear and silently. No birds sang. Even the mana veins she had learned to feel lay still, as if the world itself waited.
Amelia woke up before sunrise and walked to the clearing barefoot. Frost clung to her lashes, but her heartbeat was steady. The sword stood as it always had, buried to the hilt, dew glistening on its edge.
She knelt before it. For the first time, she didn't reach desperation. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and let her heart open.
Light bloomed from within her chest, soft, steady. Darkness followed, coiling around it like protective wings. Two forces intertwined, no longer enemies but partners.
Her fingers closed around the hilt.
The ground trembled. The wind screamed through the trees. A column of white-black radiance erupted skyward, splitting the clouds. She felt the sword move, not because she pulled, but because it chose to rise.
When the blade came free, she fell to her knees, crying. Energy coursed through her veins like liquid fire. Her reflection in the blade showed eyes half-silvered and partially dark
From the scorched earth beneath her, letters formed in glowing ash:
You sought to prove yourself. Now the world will witness you.
Amelia pressed a trembling hand to her heart. It beat slower now, heavier, as though each pound echoed through the forest itself. She whispered into the silence, "Then let them watch."
The forest answered with a single gust of wind that carried away her tears.
When the light faded, the forest lay silent, not with fear, but with reverence. The trees bowed beneath the pressure of released mana; the ground smoked where her energy had burned symbols into stone. Amelia knelt among the ashes, her breath misting in the cold dawn.
The sword rested easily in her hand now, light as air, as if it had been waiting for her all along. When she raised it, motes of silver and black glowed from the blade, twisting together before vanishing into the wind.
For the first time, she did not feel small. She did not feel unworthy.
She felt… whole.
But the moment of peace was short-lived. As she stood, she sensed it, a faint pulse of suffering in the distance, stretching far beyond the forest. The curse of the world.
Every time her Heart expanded, she could feel it more clearly: the dying mana streams, the cries of starving villages, the despair clinging to every corner of the land. The gods were gone, and their absence bled through everything like a wound that would never heal.
She wrapped the sword across her back and looked up at the pale sun.
"If the gods won't return," she murmured, "then maybe someone else should take their place."