Offerings to the Gods always brought good fortune to Niffred, but that year, the children whispered that something was different in the sky.

Yara kicked her legs on the windowsill of the parish house, watching the bonfires dance in the central square. The sound of flutes and lutes blended with the laughter, creating a symphony that made her heart beat in rhythm with the festival. At nine years old, she had already memorized the sermon her father would repeat: the Gods protected those who offered the best of their harvest.

“Yara, come help me with the baskets,” her father, the priest Korde, called, as he adjusted the holy symbols on his ceremonial tunic.

She leapt off the window and ran to the table where wicker baskets overflowed with golden grains. Her small hands picked the finest ones while she watched her father polish something that gleamed like a star—an ancient relic he kept for special ceremonies.

“Father, why is the sky so red today?” she asked, pointing toward the horizon through the open window.

Korde stopped polishing the relic and followed her gaze. For a moment, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he smiled, ruffling her brown hair.

“It’s just the light of the bonfires, little one. The Gods are happy with our celebration.”

But when Yara turned back to the grains, she didn’t see her father quickly hide the relic within his robes, nor how his fingers trembled as he made the holy sign.

Outside, the music went along, and no one noticed that the stars flickered strangely. The square bustled when Korde emerged from the parish house, with Yara skipping by his side. Baskets of offerings piled around the central bonfire while families gathered in concentric circles.

“My children,” Korde’s voice echoed across the square, “today we thank the Gods for another bountiful harvest.”

Yara smiled with pride. Her father was respected by all, and his words capable of calming even the most worried hearts. She didn’t even realize that he avoided looking towards the sky.

“For you, little hunter” Korde whispered, handing her a perfectly carved oak bow. “So that one day you may protect what you love.”

Yara’s eyes sparkled. The bow was light and well balanced, as if made especially for her hands. She took it with reverence, mimicking the posture she’d seen other hunters do.

“Thank you, Father!” she whispered, hugging his legs.

The ceremony continued, voices rousing in ancient chants. But on the horizon, a distant rumble shook the air. The adults paused, uneasy.

“Just a storm,” Korde said, his voice sounding forced. “Let us continue.”

The first flash tore through the sky like a falling star, but rising instead of descending.

Yara pointed, fascinated. “Father, look! The Gods are dancing with the earth!”

Korde paled. The dwelling of the Gods appeared in the distance, bringing forth an ancestral memory in his mind. Something the ancient manuscripts mentioned as an ill omen. When the blue ray of divine protection is invoked from the cave, it means danger is near.

“Yara,” he said, his voice hoarse, “come here. Now.”

But it was too late. Divine light descended furiously, burning everything around the temple, exploding in flames that were unlike any normal fire. The metal bells melted instantly and stone disintegrated like sand. People ran, screaming, while more flashes tore across the sky.

“It’s not common fire,” Korde murmured, pulling Yara against his chest.

Panic spread through the square. Entire families ran in opposite directions, but Korde moved with purpose, carrying Yara toward the hills.

“Father, where are we going?” she shouted over the thunderous explosions.

“To a safe place, little one. Where the Gods cannot see.”

He ran up the steep trail that led to the cave where he used to take his daughter to teach her about medicinal herbs and pass on everything he had learned from the priestess of Beladium. The refuge was hidden among ancient rocks, invisible to those looking from the sky.

Inside the cave, Yara clung to her father’s robes, trembling. “Why are they doing this? We made the offerings!”

Korde knelt in front of her, quickly removing the leather quiver from his shoulders and pressing the bow into her small, trembling hands. The holy relic came next, still warm against his palm.

“Listen carefully,” his voice was firm despite the desperation. “Stay here. Don’t leave for anything. There’s clean water at the back of the cave and dried fruits in the niche there.” He pointed to a crack in the wall. “This relic belonged to the ancients,” Korde whispered, pressing the warm metal into his daughter’s hands. “It awakens near dangerous artifacts. If you feel it heat up and vibrate, run. It means cursed things are nearby. I’ll return as soon as I can get the others out of there.”

“No!” Yara clutched his tunic. “Don’t leave me alone!”

Korde kissed her forehead, tears rolling down his face. “You are brave, my little one. Braver than any hunter. I promise I’ll return.”

Outside, a scream cut through the air—the voice of Marta, the elder who cared for the temple orphans.

“They’re trapped,” Korde said, recognizing the desperation. “I have to go. But you’re safe here, understand? The ancient Gods have protected this cave for centuries.” He paused at the entrance. “If I don’t return by dawn… go to the deep forest. Follow the stream. And Yara,” She stared at him with wide eyes. “never forget who you are.”

And then, he disappeared into the smoke and flames.

Yara waited. The screams died down, swallowed by silence. When the first sunbeam shone inside the cave, she knew she was alone.

In the first morning she dared to venture out, the ashes were still warm. In the following days, the wind carried away the last remains of the village—and with them, any hope of seeing him return walking among the ruins. Yara began counting days by the seeds that sprouted in the cracked earth. When the third flower bloomed on the same stem, she knew: he wouldn’t return.

At first, she survived on wild fruits she recognized from walks with her father. Sour blackberries, hard nuts she had to crack with stones, roots she chewed until they became bitter pulp. She drank water from the stream that ran near the cave, always careful not to get too close to the slippery bank. But the fruits became increasingly scarce, and her stomach groaned constantly. That’s when she saw the rabbit.

A chubby, slow animal, feeding on herbs just a few meters away. Yara held the bow with trembling hands, remembering the lessons from the village hunters. Breathe deeply. Aim. Release.

The arrow flew straight but missed its target, which ran away. She would need to practice to hunt with that bow. For now, she’d have to be content with what she could do. With her hands, she pulled fish from the stream, slippery and too small to satisfy for long, while she practiced her aim on knots in trunks and dry branches.

She missed. A lot. The first arrows flew so weakly they bounced off the trunks. She began repeating the movements she’d seen in her father’s hands—the firm elbow, breathing before the shot, silence before releasing. As days passed, her posture became more robust, her hands steadier, her gaze sharper. Eventually, she found a similar rabbit. And this time, her aim was true.

When she approached her prey, her father’s relic, carefully kept in the pocket of her tattered tunic, vibrated softly against her chest. She ignored the strange sensation, concentrating on a more urgent reality: she needed to learn to clean and cook that meat, or she would starve to death.

The cold arrived, cutting through the rags that remained of her festival clothes. Yara dug a shallow hole against a large stone, covering the entrance with interwoven branches. Her hands, once soft from a peaceful life, now bled from cracks caused by ice. Her stomach had stopped aching.

Snow fell heavily when she heard the moan. Among the trees, a young deer lay on its side, its hind leg trapped under a fallen branch. Large, dark eyes gazed at her without fear, only resignation. The animal panted, vapor escaping from its muzzle. Yara held the bow with trembling fingers. She had only two arrows left.

“Father said we should protect the weak,” she whispered to the wind. “How can I do that here?”

The deer tried to get up and fell again. It was injured, bleeding and weak, a low, desperate sound escaping from its throat. Yara closed her eyes, hearing her father’s words echo in her mind: “So that one day you may protect what you love.”

And her arrow was sent to end that animal’s suffering.

Emptiness spread through her chest. She was going against all of her father’s lessons. She delivered death so it wouldn’t have to suffer. The forest had taught her its first lesson: survival prevailed over kindness. Yara fell to her knees in the snow, sobbing until she had no more tears. Then, with hands that no longer trembled as much, she began the work that would keep her alive.

The meat lasted for weeks. She remembered how her mother smoked thin strips over small fires; tried burying pieces in snow to preserve them; made needles from bones, thread from sinew. The hide became a crude cloak that protected her from the cold wind. That winter, the girl from the festival had died completely. What remained was something sharper than a child from Niffred.

In the first summer, she battled hunger. She slept poorly, frightened by her own bones showing under her skin. Each fruit plucked from the wilderness was a brief victory; each day without fever, a silent relief. In the second, she learned to set traps and sleep in high branches. She imitated nesting birds and observed footprints in mud until she could track small animals. She learned that silence was more valuable than strength. In the third, she moved like a shadow among the trees. Her eyes no longer sought rescue; they hunted. Her hands, once trembling, knew the right weight of an arrow and the smell of wet earth that announced approaching storms.

When the snow melted the following winter, she found fragments of strange metal near discarded bones, and the relic on her chest vibrated. But Yara didn’t understand the warning.

When smoke once again stroked the sky, she didn’t hesitate—she followed the scent. A day later, she found Valdris. By then, she’d already known every sound of the forest, every footprint in mud, every sign of danger in the wind. Her bare feet barely made noise on the dry leaves as she followed the trail of smoke that stained the horizon.

The village was smaller than Niffred, but the devastation had been identical. Houses reduced to charred skeletons, the acrid smell of melted stone mixed with the sour odor of death. Yara walked among the ruins with her bow ready, examining patterns she now recognized: the village center destroyed first, the edges scorched as if fire had spread in perfect circles.

She began to wonder why the Gods were doing this to another place. Metallic fragments gleamed among the ashes. Her father’s relic vibrated against her chest when she approached.

“Girl…” the voice was a hoarse whisper.

Yara spun, arrow nocked, and saw a man leaning against a half-collapsed wall. His clothes were burned, and a deep wound crossed his chest.

“You… survived?” he murmured, trying to focus his eyes on her face.

“I’m not from here,” Yara replied, approaching cautiously.

The man tried to laugh, but coughed blood instead. “Three… three villages already. Always the same… the same curse.”

“What curse?”

“Demons from the skies,” he whispered, pointing upward with trembling fingers. “They’ve returned… like in ancient times. They seek… they seek the secrets of the first ones.”

“What do you mean? Weren’t they the Gods?”

The man strained to shake his head. “The Gods wouldn’t do this to us. They are demons.”

The relic vibrated more strongly. Yara held it, feeling the metal heat against her skin.

“What do they want?”

But the man’s eyes had already closed. Yara stood there for a long time, observing the corpse and the metallic fragments scattered around. She collected some. No longer a lost child fleeing death, but a hunter following tracks. Wherever the “sky demons” attacked next, she would be waiting. Now she was certain: her father had been wrong. They weren’t Gods. They were demons. And she would avenge Niffred and Valdris. The wind carried cold ashes as the forest swallowed her again.

At twelve years old, her eyes caught movement where others saw only shadows. Her father’s bow had become an extension of her arms, and the quiver on her back never stayed empty for long.

It was the smell of smoke that alerted her first. Yara approached through the treetops, moving between branches like a ghost.

In the clearing below, three men surrounded an overturned cart. A woman held two small children against her chest while an injured man tried to crawl to protect them. The men in black robes laughed, kicking belongings scattered across the ground.

“Please,” the woman sobbed, “take everything, but spare my children.”

One of the men spat. “Tell us, woman! Where is the key?”

“What key?” she pleaded.

“The key to the destroyer of worlds,” he replied, striking the woman’s face with his hand.

Yara felt an icy chill run up her spine. For the first time in years, she heard her father’s voice echoing in her mind: “Protect what you love.”

She didn’t know them. But that mother loved her children. There was another voice in her mind. Newer, colder: “What if they see you? What if there are too many?”

Her hands had already prepared the first arrow before she even made the decision consciously. The man had begun threatening the child by pulling her hair, but soon he had fallen with an arrow through his throat, unable to even scream.

The chaos that followed lasted less than a minute. Yara had learned that hesitation meant death. The second arrow pierced the chest of the man to the left. The third tried to flee, but an arrow in his back brought him down before he got far.

The family thanked her through tears, speaking of “forest angels.” Yara’s hands were steady, but her eyes burned. The child looked at her as if she had seen a miracle. Yara knelt and collected the arrows from the bodies, one by one, now stained with dried blood.

“Saving another costs nothing when you’ve already lost everything,” she said to no one in particular. The smell of smoke persisted. There were other attacks happening.

She followed the tracks, but before spotting another village, she noticed a familiar area. A rocky cave in the heart of the mountain, partially hidden by vines that seemed to grow unnaturally. Similar to the one where her father had hidden her the day Niffred fell.

Her father’s bow rested lightly in her hands, arrows organized in the worn leather quiver. Every fiber of her body was alert. The relic vibrated against her chest with an intensity she had never felt before. The metal seemed to burn through her clothes, pulsing in rhythm with her accelerated heartbeat. Something in that place was calling to her.

Yara slid down the rocky slope, finding footholds others wouldn’t see. As she approached the cave, a bluish glow leaked through cracks in the rock. She peered through a narrow opening and felt the air escape from her lungs.

The cave’s interior had been excavated and modified. Metallic surfaces reflected lights that didn’t come from torches. Strange symbols glowed on walls that pulsed softly. The relic suddenly burned against her skin. Yara quickly removed it from her neck and almost dropped it when the object began to float, slowly spinning in the air. Lights turned on throughout the cave, and translucent images began forming in the empty space.

Yara swallowed hard. The figures in the images resembled people. But there was more order, more structure, as if each part had been built to be eternal. The cave extended much deeper than she had imagined. Metallic corridors echoed her bare footsteps as she followed the path the floating relic made beside her.

She came upon the central chamber. Polished surfaces gleamed on the walls, like water mirrors, displaying strange drawings with shapes she recognized: the outline of the river near Niffred, the curve of the road leading to Valdris. Some marked with red scratches. Others with symbols that seemed like warnings.

“I thought it would take you longer to find us. All my men are out there looking for you.”

Yara spun on her heels, bow already drawn. A middle-aged man leisurely emerged from the shadows with no visible weapons. His eyes were blue like hers, his skin marked by time, but unmistakably human.

“You’re not a demon,” she whispered, the arrow trembling on the string.

“Neither are you just a wild child.” He approached slowly, hands open. “My name is Commander Thane. And you must be the priest’s daughter from Niffred.”

“You… you killed them. My father, my people…”

“I killed the spawn of traitors.” His voice hardened. “You continue hiding the key because you’re as criminal as your ancestors.”

“What key? We’re not hiding anything!”

The man pointed to the relic floating beside Yara.

“The key to the destroyer of worlds. That one beside you.”

Yara glanced at the relic for a moment. Her father said that if it vibrated or heated up, cursed things would be nearby.

“You were after this? Is this why I feel it heat up?”

The man showed another artifact in his hands.

“We were never close enough for it to send the location signal, but you brought it to me. Your people will finally pay for the crimes they committed.”

“What crimes?”

“You abandoned Earth in its time of need. You stole resources and technology to build your selfish paradise while our home died.”

“Lies!” Yara stretched the string further. “We knew of no earth! We were farmers!”

“Ignorance is not innocence.” Thane stopped three meters from her. “You lived atop titanium mines, used defense technology you never understood. You wasted what could have saved billions.”

The sound of his voice echoed off the metallic walls. Maybe he was right about those who came before. But she wasn’t there because of them. She had no way of knowing. She was there because of those who burned Niffred. He spoke of punishment as if he were a God. But he was just a man.

“My father protected life,” Yara shouted, gripping the bow tighter.

If everything he said was true, then why did the world he wanted to save need to trample on entire villages? What kind of salvation begins with children burned where they stand?

“You’re not saving anyone,” she said. “You just chose another way to destroy.”

The man raised his eyes, surprised. Skin burned by the sun of another world, scars from ancient battles, but in his eyes was the same pain she knew.

“Child! I don’t care what you think,” a beam shot from the object he held and pierced Yara’s leg, but before she could fall to the ground, the arrow had taken flight and struck one of the man’s eyes. A scream came from his mouth, but the man was already dead.

Yara tore a piece of her robes and tried to cover her wound. She threw her cloak over the relic and dragged it with her out of the cave, as far as she could until it returned to normal. She didn’t venture far into the forest before her consciousness slipped completely.

Darkness embraced her for what could be a minute or many days. When she opened her eyes, her sight blurred, she noticed she was lying on a straw bed, inside a hut with a lit fireplace. On the corner of the bed, Yara saw herbs and bandaging materials.

“Awake?” a woman asked.

Yara blinked slowly. The ceiling was wooden, the walls stained with smoke. She tried to move, but the pain in her bandaged leg stopped her.

“Where am I?”

“In my house. I found you dying in the forest. What happened to you, girl?”

The smell of the fireplace, the herbs drying in the corner, everything seemed too real to be a dream.

“Where is it?” she moved her head, tense, until she saw her belongings piled on a chair. “Who are you?”

“Frena, priestess of Beladium. I saw you have the relic. Where are you from?”

“Niffred,” she blinked, trying to organize her thoughts. “Are you after this too?”

“No, girl. I’m after them. But from what I understand, they’re after you.”

“Why are you after them?”

“Because they destroyed my world. Do you want to help me destroy all of them?”

Yara gritted her teeth. Part of her wanted to understand who these men were, and what they wanted so badly. The destroyer of worlds.

But the part that mattered remembered the smell of burned flesh and her father’s voice saying she needed to survive. A name like that wouldn’t bring good things, and her father had told her: “Protect what you love.” And she loved this world as she had loved Niffred.

“I do.”