"Alicia, wake up!" a female voice was heard, abruptly pulling the woman from her sleep. "You fell asleep again. The Priest is going to be angry with you again," the voice insisted, with a hint of reproach.

  Alicia opened her eyes from her bed, still wrapped in the rough sheets, and frowned at the woman standing in the doorway of the room. Her voice came out broken, laden with desperation: "Marta, please... kill me. I can't stand this anymore."

  The woman in question snorted, paying no attention to the words. "Stop being melodramatic and get up now. I'll wait for you in the dining room."

  With that, Marta turned and disappeared down the hall, leaving behind a silence in which Alicia almost fell asleep again.

  With a resigned sigh, she mustered what little willpower she had left and forced herself out of bed. The cold air of the room enveloped her as she stood, slowly dressing in her green tunic, the mandatory uniform that identified her as an apprentice priest. It was a loose, rough, and graceless garment, designed to be practical and durable, but not to bestow dignity.

  As she looked around her room, the feeling of emptiness hit her again, as it did every morning. Four bare walls enclosing barely four square meters. A bed, a small desk, and a trunk for her clothes: that was all she owned. No paintings, no ornaments, nothing to recall the luxury and privileges of her past life. Only austerity and silence.

  Five years had passed since that fateful moment when she joined the Church, and she still hadn't gotten used to her new lifestyle. Each day was a repetition of the previous one, a cycle of prayer, labor, and obedience, under the constant shadow of her mentors. And although she had accepted her destiny out of necessity, there wasn't a single dawn when she didn't feel trapped in an invisible prison.

  She still remembers the sudden departure of her teacher, Alexander, the news of the disappearance of the Duchy's two important mages, and her father's final order, so she could escape the suspicions of the empire. All within the span of a couple of weeks, which ended up completely changing her life.

  In the dining room, Alice sat next to her classmate and friend, Marta. In front of her, a bowl of thick, tasteless porridge steamed, barely giving off the scent of cooked cereal. Alice looked at it with disdain and couldn't help but let out a bitter sigh.

  "I don't understand how you can think this is a decent way to start the day..." she muttered, stirring the contents with her spoon. "I know I complain a lot, but a little bread in the morning would help get over this thing, which shouldn't even be called food."

  Marta, who was calmly eating her ration without the slightest discomfort, raised an eyebrow and responded ironically, "Try complaining to the priests in charge again. They might send you back to cleaning latrines."

  Alice twisted her mouth in an annoyed expression. "You don't need to remind me of that..." she snorted, then lowered her voice a little. "At least my father visits me from time to time and brings me some delicious things."

  "'From time to time' is generous," Marta replied with a mocking smile, putting another spoonful in her mouth. "He does it less and less often."

  "He must have a lot of problems in his territory..." Alice whispered, trying to convince herself.

  "Or maybe he has a new daughter. One less whiny and dramatic." Marta threw the joke like someone throwing a stone into water, completely matter-of-factly.

  Alicia didn't have the strength to respond; instead, she lowered her head to rest her forehead against the wooden table. "Why does this damn apprenticeship last so long?" she lamented softly. "Five years, and they haven't even given me a single potion to advance to the next level."

  Marta shrugged, resigned. "Ten years of community service is the rule before the Church will consider investing in you. I arrived here at four years old, as an orphan, and in all this time I've only had access to potions twice. Don't think this is personal with you. There are too many of us, and there are never enough resources for everyone."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Alice raised her head slightly, looking at her friend sadly. The normalcy with which Marta accepted her fate hurt her more than any sermon from the priests.

  The life of an apprentice in the Church was hard, relentless, and without a single day of rest. Mornings always began with endless sermons on ancient texts, nature spirits, the balance between man and the forests, and the supposed harmony that should govern all existence. Then, entire afternoons were lost in the community service the institution carried out in the cities: work that brooked no excuse or laziness.

  It was in these places that Alice experienced the harshness she had only heard about from strangers. The common people lived with a heavy burden: the oppression of local nobles who taxed them without consideration, and nature itself, which seemed to fight fiercely against the expansion of human settlements. Storms, epidemics, animal attacks, and even conflicts between nobles. Misery always found a way in.

  During her childhood as a noblewoman, Alice had lived surrounded by the kindest side of society. Her world had been one of gardens, banquets, and halls where human suffering never reached beyond rumors. Now, however, she was forced to operate on the darkest fringes, where hunger, illness, and death were not isolated tragedies, but part of daily routine.

  Although she is a mage, her utter lack of combat skills led her to be assigned to the Church's medical department. There, her duties didn't consist of using her magic, but rather of much more menial tasks: distributing food to the needy, assisting with outbreaks of disease, organizing funeral rites, and often cleaning and burying corpses. These were essential jobs for society, but they wore down Alice's spirit day after day.

  Unfortunately for Alicia, her level one magical potential didn't exempt her from dirty work. It only gave her more responsibilities and a leadership role alongside the civilian personnel who always accompany the apprentices on their work.

  The Church isn't just a spiritual refuge: it depends largely on the faith and will of the common people, as well as the financial support of the nobles and the Empire itself. For thousands of years, it has coexisted in seemingly perfect harmony with civil society, providing essential services to the most humble and, at the same time, building the most imposing military muscle in all of Myrrial.

  Its main mission is to protect, at all costs, the natural balance of the world. A task that has not only made them the greatest organized force in the world, but also the first and last bastion against external threats.

  On many occasions, the Church has borne almost the entire burden of defense during invasions from other worlds. Myrrial, for obvious reasons, had the reputation—or curse—of being the most coveted destination by other worlds. There were times when invasions occurred with terrifying frequency, and there were even chronicles of wars in which two different worlds had attempted to conquer Myrrial simultaneously, forcing the Church to deploy every ounce of power it possessed to prevent collapse.

  Fortunately for its inhabitants, Myrrial was a world as hostile as it was fertile, filled with beasts of immense power. Among them, the most feared were the titans, colossal creatures that dwell deep within the most inhospitable forests. Therefore, a successful invasion never depended solely on defeating local armies: the invaders also had to survive the wrath of nature itself, which seemed to defend its territory with a savagery that was even more intense in the case of foreigners.

  Famous were the campaigns of the Dornath Empire, which in its ambition attempted to subjugate one of the least populated continents of Myrrial. At first, its victory seemed assured: the local armies were crushed in a matter of weeks, and cities were conquered one by one under the advance of its legions. But soon the land itself rose up against them. From the dense forests emerged nearly twenty titans, each with the force of a cataclysm, ravaging encampments, conquered cities, and makeshift fortresses. The tragedy reached its climax when even one of the Supreme Ones of Dornath—a being once considered invincible in his own world—fell to the claws and fangs of these ancient beasts.

  Since then, the annals of the Church remembered that invasion as living proof that Myrrial did not need to be defended by man alone: ??it was a world that protected itself.

  Alicia learned a lot during those years and experienced firsthand the brutality of the world she had to live in. That relentless reality ended up transforming her irreversibly. She was no longer the beacon of joy that once lit up every place she went, nor the noble young woman who used to smile at the most trivial things. That spark had slowly faded, suffocated under the weight of misery and routine.

  In its place was a woman marked by apathy and a profound disinterest in what was happening around her. It was as if she had built an invisible wall between herself and the world, a defense mechanism to avoid suffering more than necessary. And although that armor allowed her to move forward, it was also distancing her from who she once was.

  That same afternoon, while performing one of her usual tasks with Marta and other apprentices—tending a soup kitchen for the city's poor—Alicia had a strange experience.

  As always, he was handing out food rations to an endless line of poor and destitute people. The routine was mechanical: extend the bowl of porridge, receive a brief, blank look, hear a murmur of thanks, and move on to the next. But everything changed when, suddenly, a rather unusual man appeared.

  His hair was completely white, tangled, and covered in dirt; his clothes were humble, ragged, and stained, as was his face, blackened by the dust and grime of the street. Alice didn't think much of him at first; she just handed him the bowl with her usual indifference.

  The man, however, didn't behave like the others. He sat on the ground, like many others, and began to eat slowly... but he never took his eyes off her. Throughout the day, his persistent gaze remained fixed on her, even when her bowl was empty and most of the people had already left.

  Alice's discomfort was so great that she almost spilled several bowls out of nervousness. Martha noticed her unease, but she only responded evasively. And yet, amidst that uneasy feeling, something inside Alice shuddered. There was something about that man, his gaze, his presence, that felt painfully familiar. As if she knew him from somewhere far away… but couldn't quite remember where.