Sara's Awakening
In the center of the Holy Kingdom of Lumandile, many people prospered under King Leopold III. The royal palace stood as the heart of the capital, its white spires reaching toward the heavens like prayers made manifest in stone and glass.
The royal capital sprawled outward in three distinct directions, each street connecting to the outer walls like arteries feeding the kingdom's lifeblood.
The eastern quarter belonged to wealth. Merchant lords had claimed these streets generations ago, building their grand estates with coin earned from distant trade. Their shops lined the broad avenues—perfumeries, jewelers, silk merchants, and spice traders—creating a miniature city within the city. Here, the eastern trade routes poured their treasures: Kaelish silver, Verendian porcelain, Thornwick wool so fine it felt like water between the fingers. Gold changed hands as easily as pleasantries. The cobblestones gleamed, washed clean each morning by servants who lived elsewhere.
The western quarter thrived with common purpose. Craftsmen, laborers, and their families filled the modest homes that crowded these narrower streets. The market square buzzed with life from dawn until dusk—bakers calling out their morning bread, blacksmiths hammering at forges, washerwomen laughing as they worked. The air smelled of sweat and smoke and honest labor. These people had little, but they had enough. They prospered with what they owned and found happiness in the space between hunger and excess.
But the south...
The south was different.
The southern district carried no grand title, no proud designation. People simply called it what it was: the slums.
Here, the cobblestones gave way to packed dirt. The buildings leaned against each other like exhausted travelers, their walls patched with whatever materials could be scavenged—warped wood, rusted metal, cloth stretched thin over gaps. Narrow alleys twisted between structures that seemed held together more by habit than construction.
The people here had no homes in the way the eastern quarter understood homes. They had shelters. Spaces claimed and defended. Corners where the rain didn't reach quite as badly.
They came from everywhere and nowhere—refugees fleeing wars in distant provinces, farmers whose lands had failed, servants dismissed without references, children abandoned for reasons both cruel and desperate. Some had questionable backgrounds. Most had done nothing wrong except exist in a world that had no room for them.
They were not criminals, though the capital treated them as such by virtue of address alone.
They simply wanted to live their lives in peace.
Two orphanages stood in the southern district, their walls maintained by the church's coin and the dedication of clergy who believed suffering could be eased, if not eliminated. Around them clustered refugee camps—temporary structures that had long since become permanent, their canvas walls weathered gray by years of sun and rain.
The church managed these places directly. Fed them. Clothed them when fabric could be spared. Taught the children their letters when time allowed.
It was here, in the smaller of the two orphanages, that Sara slept.
---
The room was narrow and long, lined with beds so close together that the children had learned to move carefully in the dark to avoid stepping on fingers or faces. Twenty-three children called this room home. Some older, some younger. All of them knew hunger intimately, though the church kept the worst of it at bay.
Sara's bed sat near the eastern wall, where a crack in the plaster let in a thin line of moonlight most nights.
She was twelve years old.
Her hair was the color of white silk thread spun from clouds themselves—soft, luminous, almost unnatural in its purity. Her skin was pale but alive, untouched yet by the harshness that marked so many faces in the slums. Many noble ladies would have killed to possess such beauty. Would have paid fortunes to alchemists and mages for even a fraction of it.
She had been born with it. Had never thought of it as anything special.
Just another thing that made her different. Another reason for whispers.
The true name of saint was meant for girls like her, the old priest sometimes said. Girls who looked like they belonged in illuminated manuscripts, painted in gold leaf and devotion.
But Sara was just an orphan.
Or so she believed.
Until the heavens answered.
---
It began as warmth.
A gentle heat spreading through her chest, like standing too close to a hearthfire on a winter morning. Pleasant. Comforting.
Then it grew.
The warmth became light—soft at first, barely visible even in the darkness. It pulsed beneath her skin, following the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Her body began to glow.
The light spread outward from her chest, tracing along her arms, her throat, her face. It illuminated her white hair until it seemed to float around her head like a halo. The pale skin became translucent, radiant, as if she'd swallowed the sun and it was trying to escape through her pores.
The glow filled the room.
Slowly at first—just enough to cast shadows on the ceiling. Then brighter. Brighter still.
The other children stirred in their beds. Turned over. Blinked against the sudden brightness invading their dreams.
Sara's eyes were closed. Her breathing steady. Still asleep.
The light continued to build.
It touched the walls, the floor, the threadbare blankets covering the sleeping children. Everything it touched seemed to soften, to warm, as if winter itself had been banished from the room.
Then—
A burst.
Pure radiant light exploded outward from Sara's small form, filling every corner of the orphanage. It poured through the cracks in the walls, spilled out the windows, flooded the street beyond.
For one perfect moment, the slums blazed like the royal palace itself.
The light was harmless. Warm. Comforting.
Like being held by something vast and gentle that wanted nothing except to ease the ache of existence.
Then it vanished.
The room plunged back into darkness—or what passed for darkness after such brilliance. The moonlight through the crack seemed pitifully dim by comparison.
Sara's eyes opened.
She blinked at the ceiling, confused. Disoriented.
Around her, the other children were already moving. Scrambling out of their beds, rushing toward her with wide eyes and breathless questions.
"Sara!"
"You glowed!"
"What happened?"
"Are you alright?"
They crowded around her bed—a dozen voices speaking at once, small hands reaching out to touch her arms, her hair, as if confirming she was still solid. Still real.
Sara pushed herself upright slowly, her head spinning.
She looked down at her hands.
They looked the same. Pale. Small. The nails bitten short from habit.
But something was different.
She could feel it.
A presence inside her that hadn't been there before. Something moving through her veins like water through a streambed—cool, steady, powerful.
She closed her hands into fists. Opened them again.
The sensation remained. Waiting.
One of the older boys—Marcus, who'd lived here longer than anyone—grabbed her shoulder. "Sara, you were glowing. Like—like—" He struggled for words. "Like a lantern. But brighter. Way brighter."
"I saw light even through my eyelids," a younger girl whispered, her voice awed. "It was everywhere."
Sara swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry.
She lifted her right hand. Slowly. Carefully.
Turned her palm upward toward the ceiling.
And willed the presence inside her to move.
Light bloomed in her palm.
Soft. Gentle. Steady.
It cast long shadows across the ceiling, illuminated the faces of the children staring at her with expressions caught between wonder and fear.
Sara stared at the light.
At the impossible, beautiful, terrifying thing she had somehow called into being.
Her hand trembled.
The light flickered but didn't fade.
"Holy light," Marcus breathed. "Sara... that's holy light."
One of the younger children started crying—not from fear, but from something else. Something that felt like hope touching a heart that had forgotten what hope looked like.
Sara closed her hand.
The light went out.
The room fell into shadow once more.
But the warmth remained. Inside her. Around her.
Waiting to be called again.
Outside, the sound of running footsteps echoed through the streets. Voices calling out. The church bells beginning to ring—urgent, insistent, summoning the clergy from their beds.
Someone had seen the light.
Someone always saw.
And in the Holy Kingdom of Lumandile, where magic was the domain of nobles and the church held dominion over all things sacred, a commoner girl manifesting holy light meant only one thing.
Everything was about to change.
---
The Head Priest arrived within minutes.
Father Aldric was a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties, his gray hair tonsured in the traditional style, his white robes marked with the golden sunburst of the church. Three priestesses followed close behind—younger women in simpler vestments, their faces flushed from running.
The orphanage matron met them at the door, wringing her hands. "Father Aldric, I don't—we don't know what—the light came from inside, and—"
"Show me," he said.
His voice was calm. Steady. The voice of a man accustomed to miracles and crises in equal measure.
She led them through the narrow hall to the sleeping quarters.
The door stood open. Moonlight and lamplight spilled out into the corridor.
Father Aldric stepped inside.
Twenty-three children stood or sat around a single bed near the eastern wall. Their faces were pale, eyes wide, but not with fear—with something else. Something closer to awe.
On the bed sat a girl.
Twelve years old. White hair catching the dim light like spun silver. Pale skin. Wide eyes that looked too old for her face.
Sara.
Father Aldric knew her. Had seen her at morning prayers, at the communal meals the church provided. A quiet child. Polite. Unremarkable except for that striking hair.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring down at them.
One of the older boys turned at the sound of footsteps. "Father Aldric!" Relief flooded his voice. "Something happened—Sara—she—"
"I know, Marcus." The priest moved forward slowly. Carefully. "I saw the light from the cathedral."
He stopped a few paces from the bed.
Sara lifted her head. Met his gaze.
Her expression was difficult to read. Not joy. Not fear. Something suspended between the two.
"Child," Father Aldric said gently. "Can you show me?"
For a long moment, Sara didn't move.
Then, slowly, she raised her right hand.
Turned her palm upward.
Spread her fingers wide.
Light bloomed.
Pure. Radiant. Steady.
It filled her palm like water cupped in the hands, casting golden shadows across the ceiling, illuminating every face in the room.
The priestesses gasped. One of them dropped to her knees immediately, pressing her forehead to the floor.
Father Aldric remained standing, but his breath caught.
Holy light.
True holy light.
Not the pale flicker some clergy could summon after years of prayer and meditation. Not the borrowed glow of enchanted relics.
This was raw. Primal. The kind of light the scriptures spoke of—the light that had guided the first pilgrims, that had sanctified the founding of the church itself.
And it came from the hand of an orphan girl.
Sara closed her hand.
The light vanished.
The room fell into shadow once more.
Father Aldric swallowed hard. Found his voice.
"How long?" he asked quietly.
"Just tonight," the matron whispered from the doorway. "She was sleeping. Then—then the whole building lit up. Like—like the sun had risen inside."
Sara said nothing. Just sat there, hands folded again, staring at something no one else could see.
Father Aldric approached slowly. Knelt beside the bed so he was at eye level with her.
"Sara," he said gently. "Do you understand what has happened to you?"
She looked at him. Blinked.
"No," she said quietly.
Her voice was steady. Too steady for a child who had just manifested divine power.
Father Aldric studied her face. Saw the confusion there. The fear barely held in check.
But something else, too. Something he couldn't quite name.
"The heavens have chosen you," he said. "You have been blessed with holy light. Do you know what that means?"
Sara's jaw tightened.
"It means everything changes," she said.
Not a question. A statement.
Father Aldric nodded slowly. "Yes. It does."
He rose to his feet and turned to the priestesses. "Send word to the cathedral. Immediately. The Archbishop must be informed."
"And the palace?" one of them asked.
"Yes. Send a rider to the royal palace. King Leopold must know." He paused. "A new saint has awakened."
The words hung in the air like a pronouncement of fate.
One of the priestesses hurried from the room. The other two remained, watching Sara with expressions of reverence and wonder.
Father Aldric turned back to the girl on the bed.
"Sara, you cannot stay here any longer. The church will take you under its protection. You will be safe. You will be cared for. Do you understand?"
Sara's fingers tightened in her lap.
"I understand," she said quietly.
But her eyes said something else entirely.
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