THE UNBROKEN

Siobhan hadn't eaten in three days.

She hadn't prayed either.

There was no point.

Her prayers had rotted in her throat the day Elena rose from the dead.

The room smelled of sulfur, dried blood, and the sickly-sweet scent of scorched flesh. Her fingers, once graceful, once manicured and praised, were blackened, peeled raw from spellwork that backfired again and again.

Curse after curse had been crafted, hurled across the miles like poison-tipped arrows.

None had landed.

Each attempt had withered her.

Each failure carved more of her away.

Now, what remained was something barely human. Hunched, twitching, mouth twitching beneath the glossy white porcelain mask she had begun to wear. It was cracked around the right cheekbone. The flesh beneath was gone.

A single milky eye peered through the mask's slit, surrounded by blistered flesh. The rest of her features were little more than a ruin.

Her voice, when it came, rasped from a throat rubbed raw with bile. "She bears the serpent."

The Inquisitor General flinched. The other three priests present crossed themselves quickly.

"She bears it, and worse… he has claimed her," she growled. "The lion rises."

She spat to the ground. Her spit came out black.

"They've copulated beneath the gaze of gods older than death. They breed an abomination beneath our very sun."

The Inquisition had heard the rumors.

At first, they'd scoffed. A witch rising from the dead? Tales to give hope to the desperate, surely. But then the reports came in. Offerings left outside her door, marks spreading like graffiti across the coastlines, soldiers carving sigils of a lion and serpent into their skin.

Then came the miracles.

Wounded healed overnight. Fires snuffed out by storm winds with no warning. A child born blind opening her eyes and seeing again after touching La Doña's shadow.

They could not deny it any longer.

Whatever had risen in Elena's bones was real.

And it was not sanctioned.

"We were too lenient," Siobhan rasped, pacing. A chunk of her hair fell from her scalp as she moved. No one dared to speak of it. "We should have killed her when we had the chance. Burned her. Salted the earth she walked on."

The Inquisitor General stepped forward slowly. "She was once your kin."

Siobhan turned. Her neck cracked as she tilted her head too sharply.

"She is nothing of mine," she hissed. "Never has been."

A priest cleared his throat. "What would you have us do, Sanctified One?"

Her laugh was dry. It rattled in her hollowed throat.

"We do what we should have done from the beginning."

She raised her arms. Blackened nails curled like talons from melted knuckles.

"Anywhere the cursed sigils rise, we burn it to the ground."

And so it began.

An entire village turned to ash in a single night. They had carved a lion and serpent above their well in solidarity. They died screaming, praying, begging La Doña to save them.

She could not hear them.

By morning, the ground was salted. The trees chopped. The homes razed.

The second town fared no better. Dozens of farmers crucified on their own fences. A warning.

"Beware the Serpent-Whore."

"Beware the False Lion."

Etched in their blood on barn doors.

The Inquisition moved silently, efficiently. The few soldiers they still held trained dogs to sniff out storm-charged mana. Children were taken. Women disappeared. Old priests collapsed in prayer, lips muttering words that no longer protected them.

Fear spread like a second fire.

But the people didn't stop believing.

They couldn't.

Because more and more arrived at the sanctuary's edges, whispering of burned homes, of friends vanished in the night. They came on foot. On broken carts. With blood on their heels and hope in their hearts.

They came seeking her.

La Doña. The Storm Queen. The one who bore the snake and danced with the lion. The one who defied death.

They brought offerings: stormglass, honey, bone, black orchids. Some wept at the gates. Some carved the sigil into their skin.

They came to kneel.

But behind them, the fires grew closer.

Siobhan stood in her darkened war room, whispering to the last of the old war priests.

"Let them flock to her. Let them kneel. When the lion mounts her again, when the child of storm and beast is born…"

She pressed a trembling hand to her own deformed belly.

"…we'll strike."

Her eyes gleamed through the cracked porcelain.

"We'll kill the child in her arms."