The sun rises its light again.
The wind gasped, and the leaves of the trees in the forest rasped the silence.
The brown color of the soil changed as blood flowed down to it from the small wooden house. It crept through the dirt like a living thing, soaking the roots of the grass, staining what once was warm and familiar. Brutally stabbed eight times, the woman lay on the ground, her body curled around a smaller one. Her arms, trembling and weak, embraced her child as if her bones alone could shield her from death.
"Stay still… please," she whispered, her voice breaking.
"Don't move… until they leave."
Those were the last words she spoke.
The body that had once been warm now grew cold against Thaliana's cheek. The little girl held her mother's face, smeared with blood except for the clean paths carved by dried tears. She shook her gently. Then harder.
"Mother…?"
No answer.
No breath.
No warmth.
The people who called themselves humans had barged into their home without mercy. They screamed words Thaliana did not fully understand—*cursed*, *monster*, *prophecy*. They stabbed her mother as she shielded her, as if love itself were a crime worth punishing. Again and again, they struck, until her mother's body could no longer rise.
They said killing the child would stop the future.
Her mother refused to let them touch her.
So her mother died.
Rain began to fall, heavy and cold, as if the sky itself mourned. It washed the blood from Thaliana's skin, but it could not wash away the pain crushing her chest. She tried to cry, but no sound came out. Something inside her had gone silent—something fragile, something human.
She dragged her mother's body outside and laid her upon the straw bed beneath the open sky. With shaking hands, she placed a single flower in her mother's palm. The forest stood still, watching.
"I'm sorry," Thaliana whispered.
That was all she could say.
Behind her, the house smoldered.
Ahead of her, the world waited—already sharpened against her existence.