After the storm of feeling, Alina felt a silt-deep tiredness settle like dusk on water.

She sat in a wrecked room, knees hugged tight, eyes fixed on a black shadow in the corner that kept shifting like molten tar.

Old days tangled with scattered emotions, a net of frayed threads; try to draw out meaning, and they were only skins of memory, shining and thin.

One thing stood clear as a lone star—she had wasted time.

With that thought, her life felt like circling a single stone; she noticed only when she was back at the start. Soon her mind was a broken navigator, grooves scarred, no forward, no back.

As the night deepened like ink, she sorted her thoughts. She saw her craving for the Holy Maiden was a hunger for recognition, not faith, and small ripples spread in her chest.

Her voice rose in the silent room, strangely solemn, like borrowing a stranger’s lips from a far alley she’d never walked: “Can someone like me truly become the Holy Maiden?”

Sister Bertha clung to silence like a shut door.

“Can a short-tempered person be the Holy Maiden?”

“You—” Sister Bertha finally spoke, breath thin as a thread. “You can become the Holy Maiden.” The words came from the heart, yet carried twilight fatigue, like a reply given just to keep the evening calm.

“Then do you approve of me?” Alina narrowed her eyes and stared at her injured foot, as if studying a picture that broke the rules of the world.

“The believers’ approval matters more than mine.”

“But they take me for Melvina.”

“You can explain.”

“Before that, I want your approval.”

“You can become the Holy Maiden,” Sister Bertha repeated, the same petal falling twice.

In Alina’s ears, the words clumped like a wrong thing swallowed—neither spit out nor digested, a stone lodged in the throat.

To her, someone who’d been devoured by anger, losing poise, a heart boiling with ugly thoughts, could not win true approval by polishing manners alone—this was a matter of character, not training the flesh.

“You still don’t approve of me,” Alina said, bitter as rain on metal. A thin, self-mocking smile. “If it were Melvina, she’d glide through this.”

“What else must I do to approve you? You won’t even believe me.”

“Think about why I won’t believe.”

Sister Bertha’s bluish face floated out of the dark like a moon behind fog, and she apologized with pain. “About that matter... I’m truly sorry... you can become the Holy Maiden... I mean it...”

“There’s only one nun in the Sacred Cathedral—me. Other than me, who else could become the Holy Maiden?”

“Cheryl... what have you become?”

Alina fell silent. Indescribable feelings heaved like a black sea, and she felt her body wedged in the seams of jagged rocks.

All around, dead stillness. No trace of water, no brush of green; color and light felt extinct, like a sky with no sun, no moon, no star.

Only gloom and thin mist took turns onstage in a silent play, marking the wild borders of consciousness, and birthing a strange, wordless abundance.

When the mist fell, birds with blade-sharp beaks wheeled down, cruelly pecking flesh from her bones. When night blanketed the land and the birds vanished, the wounds would be filled by something nameless, soft as fog.

She couldn’t grasp the nature of that substitute. She couldn’t judge if it deserved to exist.

The wounded body and the filler split her in two—herself, and something drifting just beyond herself.

When the pain climbed to the unbearable, her awareness slipped free of the flesh. From a dimension without pain, she watched the shell called Alina Cheryl endure, steady as a stone in rain.

Then came a shedding, a turning over of the earth.

Colors she once knew wore a strange filter, like glass dipped in riverlight. Tiny sounds she’d ignored rang bright. What she ought to hear felt sealed in some unreachable field.

At dawn, the news of the Holy Maiden’s coronation swept through Naghtown like wind through wheat.

Residents flooded the nave of the Sacred Cathedral, a tide of faces turned to the closed side door.

Time passed like beads dropping—one by one, clear and slow.

At last, under a thousand expectant eyes, a veiled woman walked out, each step steady as a bell stroke.

She wore a long dress whose color slipped in the cathedral light. White stripes ran from collar to hem. With her steps, they fused into a bold band, then dissolved into countless fine lines, like sunlit ripples on a lake, flickering and alive.

“Sister Bertha is unwell and can’t attend today’s rite.” The woman moved to the center, sweeping the townsfolk with a calm gaze. Deep, quiet eyes shone beneath willow-leaf brows. “I’ll conduct the coronation.”

Silence fell like snow. The woman parted her lips and sang a clear hymn.

Sunlight poured through the stained glass above, ringing her outline in a soft halo.

The townsfolk listened, drifting on the hush like boats on a still bay.

Someone, no one knew who, hummed along, a small voice like a pebble tossed into a lake. Soon more joined, following the melody, a thread becoming cloth. The sounds braided with the leader’s song, climbed toward the dome, as if brushing the gaze of heaven.

At the crest of the hymn, the leader stopped singing. She turned to the statue of the Goddess Aiyr. Amid the swelling chorus, she knelt on one knee. She raised a silver-and-gold coronet, bright as frost and flame, and swore:

“In a world where light and shadow entwine, I kneel on holy ground today. I accept the weight of fate and the honor of the sacred office.

I swear to use my heart as a candle, to light the road ahead, to guide the lost back toward light.

I swear to use my mind as a blade, to cut the chains of ignorance and bias, to sow seeds of truth.

I swear to use my courage as a shield, to guard faith and justice, fearing no storm, fearing no night.

I will hold compassion. I will listen to every wounded whisper. With gentleness, I’ll smooth each scar, letting love blow like spring wind across this land.

I will treat power as duty, not privilege. I’ll measure each choice with fairness and justice, for the good of all, for peace and plenty here.

As I lift this coronet set with the gems of wisdom, courage, and mercy, I know it is not just honor. It is a promise to the days to come.

I’ll spend my life to keep these vows, until time runs thin. May the Goddess guide me. May the people’s faith hold me. I will be worthy of the name, Holy Maiden.

Thus do I, Hedi Melvina, today, this moment, and into the everlasting, swear to the Goddess.”

When the words were done, Alina set the coronet on her head and turned to the crowd.

What she saw was all bright celebration; what she heard was a wide, bright silence.

In the roar of the rite, her senses slipped into a strange isolation. The cheers fell away to the far end of the cathedral, a world apart. Only her heart remained, beating like a war drum, shaking her frame.

That night, Alina entered Sister Bertha’s room wearing the coronet.

The coronation could be heard through the window, and because of that, Sister Bertha looked at Alina with a tangle of feelings. “You used someone else’s name.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I didn’t tell you to steal a name! I asked you to explain it to the townsfolk. Why go this far?”

“Bertha—” Alina sat by the bed. “From today on, call me the Holy Maiden.”

“You’ll regret it...” Sister Bertha’s lips trembled, and she fought for breath. “My dear Holy Maiden...”