The Holy Maiden’s training lasts two years. It begins in summer, like a new season swallowing the old.

The summer that buried Priest John drew a hard line, a horizon cut clean. Alina’s life split, like an axe biting a ridge, and the plants on each slope changed overnight.

At the start, her whole being recoiled. Emotion surged first, like a sleepless night gnawing its own tail; her body felt like a husk with the soul hovering just above it.

Before sunrise, her eyes snapped open, quick as a sparrow’s startle. She brushed her teeth and dressed, movements pared to bone, then sprinted for the Sacred Cathedral’s garden, where ceremonial drills began, the spine of becoming a Holy Maiden.

At night she walked back alone to an empty dorm, anger riding her breath like hot smoke. She leaned against the bedframe and cursed the cruelty of the regimen.

The room’s gloom gaped like a torn seam. She saw only clouds thick with emptiness. She heard only silence pressing her eardrums like heavy wool.

During breaks, Alina helped Sister Bertha clean the Sacred Cathedral. She didn’t chat. Even when words crowded her throat, she held her lips shut, because Sister Bertha had said, “A Holy Maiden doesn’t waste words.”

A month slipped by like sand through a tall hourglass. Alina got used to the grind. She got used to living as one, even with Sister Bertha nearby like a shadow that didn’t warm.

Over time she spoke less. The world’s noise faded, like rain beyond shutters. When tired, she locked herself in and slept. Or she roamed the Sacred Cathedral with no map, a drifting leaf in a stone garden.

Townsfolk came in and stared at Alina like she was a rare animal behind glass. They sighed to Sister Bertha, “Such a pretty, obedient girl.” Then they added, “We’ve never seen her like this before.” In that moment, Alina saw how change makes new faces for old eyes.

She changed clothes every day and bathed four times a week, hygiene turned ritual, as clean and exact as bells at dawn. Laundry, bathing, brushing—each one a daily rite that pinned the hours in place.

She ate by Sister Bertha’s strict chart, weighing herself like a merchant balancing silver. When hunger bit, she’d pinch a small handful of bread crumbs in the kitchen, just enough to quiet the growl.

At bedtime, she measured a small cup of water, precise as taking medicine, against the thirst of night. That season brought no dreams. If one did visit, it broke like foam on stone and slid away—dreams skimming down a smooth slope into the blank at the far end.

The push that drove Alina toward the Holy Maiden’s path was clear as frost. Priest John’s passing struck like a hammer to the heart. Old companions drifted off, like birds gone with winter. Melvina turned her back on the Sacred Cathedral, and the nuns kept insisting she was still the chosen one.

Those stones piled, one on another, until a wall rose that no detour could dodge. It left a single straight road in front of Alina, bright and ruthless. That road looked firm, but beneath it, her anger smoldered—her answer to Melvina’s coldness and the nuns’ stubborn gaze.

Quitting was easy. One sentence could cut the knot, easier than counting calories and drills. But quitting would harden Sister Bertha’s choice of Melvina like clay in a kiln.

Alina could already hear the scorn: “Knew you couldn’t stick it out.”

So she doubted as she trained and trained as she doubted, a tide pulling both ways. She kept asking herself if Sister Bertha’s decision was inching toward her, like a compass needle shaking toward north.

The feeling was strange and split, like a figure in scripture swallowed by a giant whale. She felt devoured by something unseen, trapped in its gut, breathing air that stank like old salt and choked like smoke.

Day by day, time turned, and her nineteenth birthday arrived like a lantern at dusk. That day, she passed Sister Bertha’s test. She can still see Sister Bertha’s disbelief, as sharp as winter light—this intensity would break a grown man, let alone a slender girl.

“Good work,” Sister Bertha said, folding the paper along a neat crease. Her sallow skin bleached toward chalk. Years had carved crosshatched lines on her face, and her spine had bent, like a sapling forced by wind.

Now she had to lift her head to read Alina’s expression.

“Give me another year and a half,” Alina answered, calm as still water. “I’ll become the Holy Maiden.”

Sister Bertha said nothing. She shuffled back into the Sacred Cathedral, steps thin as dry leaves, worry gnawing at her. What if Alina passes every trial—then what? Calling the training a trick would be too cruel, a blade under a smile.

In her mind, Alina had always been a three-minute spark. Yet she kept burning. It didn’t fit. It scraped against belief.

So Sister Bertha raised the bar, notch by notch, hoping a single test would touch Alina’s limit and flick the urge to quit. Unexpectedly, Alina held steady, no shake, no crack.

The strain hung over Sister Bertha like a low, stormy sky, and her body faltered under it. When she saw Alina tending her with careful hands, she couldn’t hold the truth back.

Alina didn’t answer. She blew across the medicine in the spoon, breath soft as mist.

“Cheryl…” Sister Bertha started again. “I lied to you… I committed the sin of falsehood…”

“You just never acknowledged me,” Alina said, voice flat as stone.

“I—”

“This isn’t good news for the townsfolk,” Alina said, and touched the cooled spoon to Sister Bertha’s lips. “How could mischievous Cheryl be the Holy Maiden? She’s not built for it.”

“The faithful’s recognition matters,” Sister Bertha said, following the line like stepping-stones. “Even if you’ve changed, you’ve stayed in the Sacred Cathedral. People still hold the old picture.”

“Everyone loves Melvina. They hate Cheryl.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?” Alina’s face darkened, thunder under her skin. She stared straight at Bertha, gaze like a nail.

“Then why say it now? Afraid I’ll pass your unfair drills? Afraid I’ll become the Sacred Cathedral’s Holy Maiden and stain its walls? Or is Melvina the only one in your heart?”

“I’m the one who cares for you. I’m the one who stays. I’m the one who sweeps the yard. Melvina left Naghtown long ago. Bertha. Long ago.”

“Cheryl… I… the Priest chose Melvina…”

“So your talks back then circled Melvina the whole time?”

“There wasn’t a better choice.”

“Not even me as I am now?”

Sister Bertha fell silent. The quiet pooled, black as ink.

Alina fed her the medicine, the spoon a small silver moon, and suddenly remembered the doctor’s warning.

In the white ward, the doctor’s brows knotted over the chart, weighing, like a scale stuck between measures. Time ticked in the sterile air. No prescription, not yet.

At last he sighed, wrote a string of bristling marks, then lifted his eyes. His gaze through the frame of his glasses was stern as a rule. “Don’t brew too much at once.”

“What if I brew more?”

“Every medicine carries poison. It can kill.”