Miracleborn Saga

The courtyard behind the Church of Hazaya basked in the amber blush of late afternoon. Winter's fingers were not yet fully curled around the earth, but the breeze had begun to carry a dry crispness, swaying the mango tree above like an old lullaby remembered.

Roze sat alone on a stone bench, weathered by years and softened by moss. She wore her long, travel-worn coat, and atop her head rested her feathered hat—a signature as much as a shield. Her figure was composed, chin slightly lowered, eyes half-closed, as though drawing breath not just through her lungs, but through her very skin. The golden light filtered through the leaves in fractured patterns, dappling the old stones around her feet.

Beside her on the bench was her companion—an eagle with feathers like charcoal brushed with frost, talons gently clutched against the edge. Its eyes, sharp and still, surveyed the peaceful grounds with the timeless serenity only beasts of sky can hold. It made no sound, only shifted once, as if in rhythm with the soft wind curling beneath the mango tree.

In Roze's hands was a violin. Wooden, weathered, old as the bench she sat upon—but clean, polished, lovingly kept. The bow touched strings without ceremony. No performance, no audience. Just her, the eagle, the wind, and the golden light.

A single note, long and soft, slipped through the space like breath through stained glass.

Then another.

Soon, the slow weave of melody emerged—thin, delicate, like silk thread drawn through time. It rose and fell like the sway of a prayer, neither happy nor sad, but rich in memory and weightless in its passing.

Children's laughter echoed faintly from somewhere beyond the old wall. Birds fluttered in response to the soft song. Blossoms trembled on the mango branches, their petals shedding in small gusts of wind—carried across the ground in swirls of soft yellow and brown.

She played without flourish, eyes half-lowered. Not practicing. Not expressing. Just being. Letting sound and stillness fill one another like river and sky.

Above her, the eagle fluffed its feathers and settled, and the world—for a moment—seemed to forget its noise.

And somewhere beyond, even the wind held its breath.

—The Past That Made Her—

There were things that Roze never spoke of. Not because she was silent—but because some things rot if brought to light.

Mosedonia Kingdom—vast, green, and teeming with golden grain—was never cruel. But the town where she was born, buried deep in its southwestern fracture, was a place forgotten by providence. Narrow streets choked with smoke and silence. Rusted roofs. Drunken stares. The stench of boiled rags and failed promises.

It wasn't poverty that ruined people there. It was hunger mixed with hopelessness.

Roze was born to a pair of parents whose love outshone their circumstances. Her father, a broken-voiced man with rough hands, worked day and night in scrap yards and sewage pits just to earn half a loaf. Her mother… she was quieter. Tired. Always tired. They didn't eat most nights. They saved scraps, tucked them under cloth to keep them warm, and smiled as they watched their daughter chew—eyes wide, bones beneath her skin growing thin but sharp. Roze never knew they were starving for her until much later.

When she was eight, her father died coughing black, bloody sludge. The town doctor hadn't come—said there was no point in curing rot. Roze remembered watching the color of her father's lips change, as if some invisible hand wrung the life out of him.

And that was the first time she saw her mother cry without a sound.

By ten, she was no longer a girl—just a body among other bodies in a place where innocence was currency and filth was religion. Men would touch, take, and leave. And the world would move on. No one punished them. No one cared. She would walk home—if cardboard and slum corner could be called that—blood and shame trailing her feet. Her mother never asked. They simply held each other and slept hungry.

Unfortunately, Her mother passed away because of starving.

At thirteen, she had a child. A boy.

She didn't name him right away. Not because she didn't love him—but because she didn't believe love could survive in a world like hers.

But he lived. She fed him scraps, worked as a maid in foul-mouthed merchant homes, scrubbed floors till her nails tore, and endured glances that peeled the skin from her soul.

When she couldn't pay rent, they threw her into the alley. She made a bed from cardboard and broken crate lids, cradled the child through winter's bite, singing lullabies through chattering teeth.

But he grew. And laughed. At seven, he could speak with wit, dance barefoot in mud, and make her smile again. That small smile—the one Roze never wore before or since—was reserved for him. He was her world. She told herself, "Even in rot, roses bloom."

He called her " Momma " which hit Roze like a divine word straightly touching her heart from Heaven. He asked her why moon moves. Why they can't have a comfortable couch or have a ride on those horse vehicles.

Roze simply answered, " Because the world is not worthy of us. "

She was happy that she had a person to play with. Who she can call her beloved. They together hang around in rain under umbrella even though people addressed them autistic. But for them, that little coward moment was like Eden within Eden.

Then came the rain.

A heavy monsoon evening.

They were soaked before they left the alley. The boy, feverish, shaking. She held him against her soaked dress and ran barefoot through waterlogged streets. Everyone else had umbrellas. She didn't even have shoes.

She remembers thinking, "I don't belong to them. I'm not even one of them. I am not human to them."

At the hospital gates, she screamed. Cried. Begged. The receptionist looked past her. The guards told her to wait. The doctor glanced, frowned, asked how much money she had. Roze opened her pouch—just a few copper shards and three buttons.

He turned away.

"No insurance. No card. No bed."

She fell to her knees.

"Please… please… save him. Take me instead. Anything. Just save my son."

But the security pulled her back, spat on her, and dumped her outside.

The rain hadn't stopped. The water was now muddy, running with garbage.

And in her arms…

Her boy was still.

His lips were pale. His body limp. The fever had claimed him.

Roze screamed.

Not like a woman. Not like a mother.

Like an animal being butchered.

People passed by. Looked. Didn't stop.

She screamed so hard her voice cracked forever.

No one came.

She walked for hours. Still holding the corpse. Still wet. Still begging for help, even though the boy was gone. She finally collapsed behind a shuttered bakery. Held the cold little body. Cried until her bones shook.

Then morning came.

And she was empty.

Standing alone in the riverside. Messy, dirty clothes. A shovel was in her hand. Beside her was a grave dugged. Staring at the coffin she used to sleep in with his child, a cardboard box.

Since that day, she never sang.

Not until the violin beneath the mango tree.

Not until feathers followed her.

Not until the light no longer burned, but bowed before her pain.

She was forced to work as a whore.

Roze's voice had long vanished by the time they forced her into the brothel.

She hadn't agreed—no one ever really did. Two men dragged her one rainy night, sold her to a place with velvet curtains and rotting perfume. There, she was no longer Roze. Just another name in the roster. Just another bruised body behind silken glass.

Three years passed like blurred reflections in shattered mirrors. She stopped counting days. Every touch became a scar without blood. Her mind drifted further each night, away from her body, away from the flesh they claimed.

Until he came.

Not a buyer. Not a savior. Just a man in white robes, with silver eyes, and a silence that shook the room more than any scream could.

He placed a pouch of coins on the table—but not for service.

"I'll take this one," he said, staring directly at her.

No lust. No pity. Just… choice.

They laughed. Until he showed his sigil. Until the candles flickered and something old filled the air.

He left with Roze walking beside him. Barefoot. Numb.

But free.

....

The afternoon sun kissed the edges of the stone chapel, its golden light pouring across the mango trees and the open courtyard like honey over glass. The air was still, save for the occasional brush of a breeze that stirred the long grass and whispered through the hanging robes of the man who stepped out from the Church.

Father.

He moved without hurry, his white cloak fluttering like memory behind him. His footsteps were soft, deliberate, echoing only in spirit. He walked past the silent chapel doors and crossed the sun-warmed stone path, until he reached the wooden bench under the ancient mango tree.

Roze sat there, her feathered hat casting shadows across her face, a violin resting on her lap like a dormant memory. The eagle beside her blinked slowly, unmoved by his presence.

Father lowered himself beside her, the bench creaking gently under his weight.

"You haven't played in a long time," he said, gazing toward the open courtyard. "Will you?"

Roze didn't answer immediately. Her fingers slowly found the strings. She looked up at the tree, then toward the sunlight pouring over the grass, and nodded.

The first note was soft—trembling like breath caught in the chest. Then came another, and another. A melody formed, not from perfection but pain, raw and delicate. It moved through the courtyard like wind through paper, pulling the colors of the day closer. Flowers shimmered. The eagle shifted its wings. The very air seemed to pause and listen.

Father closed his eyes, head tilted slightly.

When the final note hung in the air like a fading star, he opened them again and said, "You carry too much."

Roze kept staring ahead.

"You're allowed to let it go," he said softly. "Don't hold your tears like swords. They won't protect you."

Her mouth trembled. Hands tightened around the neck of the violin.

And then, without warning, the sound tore from her—a sharp, broken cry like the crack of glass under pressure. A scream not of pain alone, but of everything buried beneath years of endurance. Of hunger, fear, shame, love lost, and a child never returned.

She bent forward, clutching her chest as if her soul had split open.

Father didn't move. He didn't speak. He just smiled softly—warmly—watching her fall apart as though watching a flower finally bloom from beneath a stone.

The sky, in its own mourning, darkened just slightly. The clouds passed slowly, casting soft shadows over the chapel and its trees.

The violin lay on the bench between them.

And for that one quiet, bleeding moment, the world wept with her.

.....

The sun had barely risen beyond the rooftops of East Prada, casting a golden haze over the cobblestone streets. Vendors were only beginning to pull back their shutters. The market was still asleep, its colors muted, its smells not yet awakened by heat.

Allen Iverson walked alone.

He wore a simple white shirt tucked carelessly into dark trousers, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His golden hair shimmered like sunlight in motion, tousled by the soft morning wind. In one hand, he held a brown leather-bound diary — the edges weathered, ink bleeding from older entries.

He paused at a water fountain in the center of a small square, the kind where pigeons gathered and time slowed. Sitting on the fountain's edge, he opened the diary. No lock. No runes. Just a pen slid neatly into the spine and a thousand thoughts waiting to be written.

He flipped to an empty page, stared at it.

The street was quiet except for distant footsteps and the rustle of dry leaves tumbling along the bricks. Allen dipped the pen, then began to write.

"Today is quieter than usual. I watched three clouds fight in the sky, and none of them won."

He smiled faintly. Then kept going.

"I don't like people watching me write. But I do like writing when people don't notice me at all. Like I'm invisible. It's better that way."

A dog passed by, sniffed his foot, and wandered off.

He looked up at the street — still empty — then slid his diary under his arm and stood. He wandered past old houses, placing his hand along the wooden fences, feeling their texture. Then stopped at a tiny bakery window and bought a single sweet roll with two coins. The baker, a tired old man, gave a nod.

Allen didn't speak.

He walked to a stairway leading down to the canal and sat on the lowest step. Water glimmered, reflecting fragments of him. As he ate, he wrote more.

"I think I like Roze's eagle. It doesn't talk, but it sees everything. Kind of like me."

Then he paused, chewing slowly, gazing at the ripples.

He tapped the pen gently on the page.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to become. But I wish, there was someone writing me, too."

He closed the diary. Looked at the sky.

Then he stood, dusted himself off, and walked toward the rising sun with slow, steady steps — just another shadow in the morning mist, just a boy writing stories before the world wakes up.