In the ruins of a collapsed village near the border of the Riftlands, amidst ash and silence, a girl no taller than a rifle sat in the charred cradle of her old home. Her eyes were grey. Not with age, not with dust — with absence.
She had no name anyone remembered.
She had many names shouted at her — "Witch." "Brat." "Thing."
But no real one.
So she called herself what they always called her when they thought she couldn't hear: Quiet.
She was six.
And she had seen more hell than most men who'd lived to sixty.
Her uncle had taken her in after the plague took her parents. Not out of love. Out of money. And when that ran dry, so did the tolerance. Bruises had replaced lullabies. Chains replaced arms. Silence became her only companion.
But one day, when a soldier's stray prayer stone shattered near their hovel, something ancient awakened in her chest — not divine, not demonic — something older.
The Wound.
It whispered to her like a friend. It did not ask her to forgive.
