Daine closed her eyes and reached out to the Goddess, reaching past the quiet certainty she had worn like armour for years.
It felt strange, this conscious reaching—a step beyond waiting for the Goddess’s murmur in the back of her mind, that gentle nudge that had steered her so many times before. Normally, the Goddess came to her, an unseen hand lifting her when she needed Strength or steadying her when anger threatened to cloud her path. Even when she had been on Tour, when the Justice of the Goddess flowed through her, she was a passive vessel. An obedient vessel, for sure. But a vessel nonetheless.
But this time was different.
Now, with Genoes’ face in her mind, his eyes streaked with tendrils of shadow, a dark weight behind his gaze, Daine found herself reaching toward instead of simply receiving.
And in this, she was not denied. Not here. And not now.
A shiver rolled through Daine as the Goddess answered, not with words but with a pull, a beckoning so gentle it felt like sinking into sleep.
When she opened her eyes, it was to a world entirely other than that of the Dark God’s realm: the home of the Goddess was a place beyond seasons. Beyond mortal senses. It was a timeless pastoral expanse of green that . . . breathed.
The landscape shifted as Daine arrived, seemingly alive to her presence in the way that mountains might be alive to the goats that tread upon their slopes—silent yet humming with an inner power. A watchful vastness that held and bore the creatures who wandered its surface.
Daine felt it as a subtle tremor beneath her feet, the ground accepting her. Here, each leaf, each blade of grass seemed attuned to her step, the meadow bending ever so slightly, as though its wildness were aware and welcoming, yet indifferent. It was the acknowledgement of the deep roots of a forest whose patience knew no bounds.
The sky above was a boundless sheet of twilight, starless but aglow with an indigo hue that held both dusk and dawn. Wisps of mist clung low to the earth, trailing like the hems of ghostly robes along the grass. Wildflowers, some as small as Daine’s thumb, others reaching her shoulder, painted the fields in impossible colours.
Nearby, a stream wound lazily through the landscape, its waters as clear as glass, yet in its depths danced strange fish with scales of opal and emerald. They shimmered, vanishing and reappearing like fleeting memories.
Daine stepped through this enchanted place, feeling the soft earth beneath her feet pulse with life. The air was warm and held scents both familiar and not—honeysuckle, iron, something like sage smouldering under the summer sun.
It was a place untouched by decay or time; here, each breath felt like renewal.
Yet, even now, the Goddess herself was elusive to Daine, a figure that flitted at the edge of perception. With each step Daine took, she felt her patron’s essence brushing against her, taking shapes that shifted with each heartbeat—a deer leaping in the distance, a girl’s laughter, a shadow slipping between trees. The Goddess was a dance of forms, ancient yet young, a thousand faces and none, moving as if she held all time within her.
Daine continued to walk until the ground rose slightly, the horizon narrowing as she ascended a low hill.
And there, waiting, the Goddess’s shape at last steadied, shifting from many into one.
Her figure stood, quiet and still, yet radiating the boundless power Daine had known for most of her life. At the moment, she took the form of a woman, neither cloaked nor armoured, but naked, serene, her eyes holding the ageless wisdom of storms and stone.
The Goddess’s face was Daine’s own age—a face weathered by fifty years but softened by something timeless. Her eyes met the Templar Ascendant’s, and in their depths, Daine felt the weight of her life lifted, seen, held within an eternity.
In silence, she bowed.
"Welcome, daughter."
That word grated surprisingly in Daine’s ears, igniting something old and raw inside her. Daine’s eyes narrowed, her temper sparking hot and sudden. Daughter. It was a word that belonged to someone else—a word with memories behind it, keen-edged and stinging.
Unbidden, the image of her real mother rose, a spectre she thought she'd buried long ago. Hard-eyed and cold, her mother’s face bore no trace of warmth or pride. Daine remembered her well: the woman who had sold her. Who had given her over to the tender mercies of the Stonehand.
A mother who had been keen for her to be gone from the household. To be anything else than a drain on the Orban family home. Anything but a daughter.
These memories – long repressed – flashed in relentless fragments, each harsh and fast, like the snap of a whip against her skin. She’d been a terror, even at three—her attributes had been wild and uncontrollable. She’d been a tempest in a child’s body. Ridiculous Strength that fractured her toys and bruised her fingers against walls. Nightmarish Speed that meant she tore through rooms and overturned tables before she even knew how to be slow. The endless hunger that gnawed to fuel an Endurance that made her immune to any attempt at chastisement.
She remembered the tantrums that rocked the small, sparse room they’d called home. Her small fists struck out in a fury she couldn’t yet control and caused such devastation. And her mother’s hands—hitting back, lashing out in frustration, not cruelty, perhaps, but no tenderness either. Those blows had felt like empty gestures, a mother at her wits’ end, finding even her punishments powerless.
Daine hadn’t felt the sting of those hands. Her body was already beyond such things.
But what she couldn’t bear, what haunted her even now, was the feeling of her mother’s words as they fell, pleading yet hollow. The disappointment etched in every sigh, every weary glare. The unspoken truth that hung in the air, pressing down harder than any hand—she hadn’t been wanted. She hadn’t been loved.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She’d been feared.
And now here she was, in the presence of a Goddess, her supposed patron, calling her ‘daughter’ as though that word held any meaning. The old ache surged up, bitter and burning. She stood silent, fighting the urge to let her anger loose, to answer back to the woman before her with the fierceness that was all she’d ever known of being a daughter.
“You need to help me save him,” Daine said, the demand hard and unyielding. Her eyes narrowed. “You owe me.”
The Goddess’s expression shifted, a ripple of emotion that clouded her serene features. She didn’t raise her voice; she didn’t have to. Her words fell like stones into still water, each one sinking with a weight that could drown worlds.
“Owe you?” She said, her voice like tempered steel. “After everything I have done for you? After every thread I’ve bent, every law of creation I’ve twisted to make you what you are—to make you a legend.”
“I never wanted to be a legend.”
The Goddess tilted her head, her gaze taking in every scar, every victory Daine held close. “No?” she challenged. “You never felt joy when you heard the songs sung in taverns, the verses spun around your deeds? Never felt that rush when they whispered your name in awe?”
The words cut close, exposing things Daine had buried deep. But she would not give ground. “I didn’t want this,” she spat. “I didn’t ask to be given to the Stonehand. I didn’t ask to be ripped from what little I had. To be bent and broken under his hand until there was nothing but Strength left in me. Do you call that your gift?”
“Yes.” The Goddess’s response was quiet “I do. This was my gift to a Farmer’s daughter who deserved more from the world. It was a gift I crafted, one I wove into the very fabric of you. And don’t pretend you felt nothing of the satisfaction that came with it. Don’t stand there and tell me you never enjoyed the reverence in their eyes. That you never felt the satisfaction when your enemies—strong men, seasoned killers—looked upon you and felt their courage bleed from their veins. That was my gift, too. You have become a Templar Ascendant, a giant amongst dwarves, and yet you dare say I owe you anything.”
More memories flashed through Daine’s mind, the nights she’d spent on Tour, bruised and bloodied, but with the taste of victory fierce in her mouth. And, yes, she could still recall the songs, the voices lifted in raucous tribute, the thrill she’d felt in those moments.
But that thrill had never been what she wanted. It was a thing foisted upon her, a passing satisfaction at best. A hollow answer to the emptiness that had followed her since childhood.
To be on Tour was to be alone. And to be alone had been, she saw it now, terrible.
And now there was a boy, a child, that needed her. She would not let Genoes down.
“I made that power my own,” Daine said, each word full of quiet fury. “It was my blood that paid the price for your so-called gift. It was me that survived the Stonehand. And not just once. You brought him back, did you not? Made me face him again with the blood of my friends on the floor. Did that please you? Did that make you feel vindicated for your gifts? I did what you wanted, and I did it better than any Knight of the Road ever did or, I am sure, ever will. But do not stand there and claim it was some favour. You’ve had your share of what I’ve done for you. And now I’m calling in mine.”
Storm clouds formed in the depths of the Goddess’s eyes, and the world around them darkened in response, the sky shifting to a bruised shade as though sharing in her fury.
“Do you think your scars mean nothing to me, Daine?” the Goddess said. “Do you think I am blind to what it has cost you to be my sword in the world? I am the one who gave you Strength enough to endure it. Where do you think that came from! You stand before me proud of the woman you’ve become, but don’t pretend you achieved it on your own.”
“Then don’t pretend it was kindness,” Daine said back. “Don’t stand there and tell me I’m lucky, that I should be grateful for the pain you forged me with. And that I have no right to ask for more.”
“Grateful? No, child. I don’t ask for gratitude. But you will know this—I gave you what you could not have taken for yourself. A power that most could not bear. A path that few survive. I made you legend, Daine Darkhelm. You may have walked the Road, and I will not diminish your victories. But don’t mistake your anger right now for righteousness. You stand here, demanding what you feel is owed, but legends do not bargain. They endure.”
“And yet here I am,” Daine shouted, her voice fierce, yet laced with something raw, something unguarded, fraying her composure. “Asking for help. Not because I am a legend. Because I am human. Because I need you. And whether you care or not, I will not back down. I will not let your son take Genoes!”
For a heartbeat, the silence stretched between them, as if the entire realm held its breath.
The darkened sky above them stilled, the wind pausing in anticipation. The Goddess’s gaze softened at last, a flicker of something unreadable crossing her face. A shadow easing across dawn.
And then she spoke.
“Very well, Daine Orban, Templar Ascendant. The Kingdom’s Darkhelm. But know that what you ask has consequences.”
The Goddess paused as if expecting Daine to answer. She did not.
“I will not shield you from them. And, as with all things, you will have to bear what follows.”
Daine met her gaze, unflinching, her voice steady. “I’ll bear it,” she said, steel beneath her words. “I’ve borne worse.”
“I will sever the threads that bind Genoes to the shadows,” she said, her eyes searching the spirals of time and consequence, seeking the delicate paths of plots, plans that had led to this exact moment.
And, without another moment’s thought, she cut them free.
Genoes became Unbound once more.
And when the Goddess looked to see the outcome of her precipitate act - to glimpse the future her actions would shape, she found only darkness—a void, impenetrable and silent.
A flicker of fear crossed her face, a fear Daine had never before seen in her patron. This was the unknowable, the ungovernable. Genoes would be Unbound, and whatever that meant would ripple through the world, touching things she had long protected.
As the Goddess reached out, unseen by mortal eyes, she felt the cut, the tearing as the final threads fell away. And at that very moment, across the realms, every stained glass window in every Church of Dawn shattered.
The priests stood in shock as the coloured shards rained down, their beloved images of light and hope to fracture at the Goddess’s own command. Some dropped to their knees in horror, others reached helplessly, their fingers trembling as centuries-old pieces collapsed to the ground.
Dawn’s beauty fell to ruin, the careful mosaics of faith and order cast to chaos.
In that single cut, everything the Goddess had placed for stability—every check, every delicate balance—collapsed. She felt the seething anger of the Dark God stirring, the spite she had always tempered now unbridled.
The Lords of Misrule, her unruly sons, would twist this chaos to their own whims. Threads of plans she’d woven over centuries unravelled like loosened knots, all leading to this moment, all crumbling away to free one mortal boy.
All because a woman she loved more than any other had asked it.
She looked to Daine, and in her gaze, the depth of her sacrifice was raw, an emotion carved from the bones of eternity. Her voice softened, but her words held a fierce, maternal gravity.
“You do not know what I have for you here,” the Goddess said, her voice barely a whisper. “This is the depths of a mother’s love.”