I was only six years old.
Six years old when the world branded me cursed.
My younger brother had awakened his power at just two years of age—barely able to pronounce his own name, yet the stars bent to him, the wind obeyed his laughter. Songs were sung of him, priests declared omens of greatness, elders knelt to kiss his tiny hands.
Me? I had nothing. No spark. No gift. Just silence in my veins where power should have lived.
To my father, I was shame incarnate. A flaw in the bloodline. An embarrassment so great, he locked me away in the tower at the back of the Kaururse Castle, hidden like a sickness no one dared speak of.
While my brothers attended carnivals and paraded at holy ceremonies, basking in the praise of the kingdom, I was forbidden even to set foot outside. Festivals lit the skies with fire and song, yet all I saw was stone, shadows, and the frost of loneliness pressing against my window bars.
Then came the night my silence shattered.
"Get up!"
The command cut through my sleep like a dagger. Before I could move, before I could even draw a full breath, fire exploded across my back. A whip. The sting was sharp, merciless, splitting my skin open with a scream I could not swallow.
It was my maid. My maid, Miss Georgia—the woman who once tucked me into bed with lullabies, who used to braid my hair when I begged her. Her face that night was no longer familiar. Her eyes burned cold, her lips curled cruelly as though she took delight in my pain.
Later, I learned the truth. My father had ordered it. He commanded her to be ruthless, to drag power out of me with pain if kindness could not. He thought agony might awaken my gift.
So every morning, before the stars themselves could fade, I woke not to warmth, not to comfort—but to lashes.
"It's… it's 3 a.m., Miss Georgia," I cried, pointing weakly to the ticking clock by the drawer. My voice was trembling, desperate, childish.
Her whip coiled in her hands like a serpent ready to strike. Her grin spread slow and mocking.
"And you don't think you should start your chores early?"
My heart dropped. "Chores?" The word stumbled from my mouth, half-broken.
"Yes," she sneered, dragging every syllable. "Your father says if you cannot be a sage, you may at least serve like a common maid. Better that than rotting as dead weight."
The world tilted. I stood frozen, stunned, as though her words had carved themselves into my skin deeper than the whip had.
She raised the lash again. Instinct took me to the bathroom, my bare feet slapping cold stone, my tears mixing with the water as I showered in frantic panic. I didn't dry myself. I didn't even breathe. I rushed back out, clutching a towel around my small body, reaching for clothes folded neatly on the floor—no wardrobe, no drawers, just stacks like a servant would keep.
The whip cracked again.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Each stroke tore open my wet skin, the sting magnified as water seared like acid beneath it. I screamed—not the scream of a child afraid of the dark, but the scream of something breaking. My voice rasped through the stone walls, my sobs echoing back like cruel laughter.
"Who asked you to bathe?" she thundered, her voice shaking the air.
My hands trembled, my body quivering with confusion. Who asked me? Am I not supposed to bathe? Am I not even allowed to clean myself?
The whip rose again. And I—Azhurla, daughter of the Kaururse bloodline, princess by birth—collapsed on my knees before her. My forehead nearly touched the ground as I whispered, "I'm sorry."
Pathetic. That's what I was. A six-year-old begging her own maid for mercy. My voice was weak, broken, like the whine of a beaten dog.
I hated myself for it. I hated the gods. I hated my father.
From that day on, I became a puppet. A prisoner made into a servant, a princess who carried buckets and scrubbed stone floors until my fingers bled. My hair grew wild. My hands grew calloused. My pride… what pride? It was beaten out of me lash by lash.
At night, I heard my parents fighting. My mother's voice, a hurricane of fury, demanding my release, demanding my dignity. My father's voice—cold steel, unyielding—insisting that this was the only way. That pain would force power from me. That weakness was not permitted in his house, not in his bloodline.
And so I became an experiment. His experiment.
Labyrinth, my brother, pitied me. He smuggled food into the maid's quarters where I now slept, curled against rough sheets that smelled of dust and sweat. Sometimes he whispered encouragement, telling me to hold on. But his kindness was fleeting—a candle against a raging storm.
The other maids mocked me. Laughed at me. Called me "the hollow princess," "the powerless heir." Even the servants, the lowest in the castle, found strength in spitting on my weakness.
And still… I endured.
Each whip left scars not only on my back but in my soul. Each mocking laugh, each lash of cruelty, carved something deeper inside me—a seed of rage, of hunger, of a fire no one else could see.
By twelve, I had grown hollow but sharp. I was no longer just a child crying in the dark. I was a vessel of silent fury.
It was then my mother made her move. She stood before the council of elders, her voice shaking the halls of Kaururse with a power no whip could ever silence. She threatened to step down from the throne itself. She swore she would not sit beside a man who treated his own daughter as less than human.
In our kingdom, the queen's throne is not a seat—it is the other half of the crown. Without her, the king is nothing. If she steps down, he falls with her.
For once, the elders agreed. For once, my father bent.
And so, he relented. He ordered I be sent to school.
But not just any school.
The Arcane Crucible.
A place not meant for the weak. A celestial forge where sages wield the primal forces of creation and destruction. Where the air itself brimmed with raw power, where children were broken, reforged, or discarded.
It wasn't a school. It was a trial by fire.
And I, the cursed daughter with no awakening, no spark, no worth… was about to be thrown into the flames