The temple gates groaned shut behind me. No army. No blessings. Just a threadbare robe and a cracked wooden staff.
“You think I came here perfect?” I asked my reflection. “I came here hungry. I came here bleeding. I came here with nothing but thirty dawns of refusing to stay down.”
I remember the others who tried. Their names are now only echoes in empty halls. i won't lose! ~30 days a priestess
The final trial stood before me: a mirror showing every failure, every fear, every moment I nearly broke.
My hands trembled. The staff felt heavier than regret. The temple gates groaned shut behind me
The first night, the shadows laughed. By dawn, I had learned to make fire from grief.
“Thirty days,” the High Oracle had said, her voice like dry leaves. “Survive the trials of the Moonless Path, and you will earn the title of True Priestess. Fail, and your soul becomes part of the silence.” Just a threadbare robe and a cracked wooden staff
But a priestess doesn’t need to be the strongest. She needs to be the one who gets up last.