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A silhouette loomed beneath a massive cathedral, where stained windows had long ago been shattered. Its bare, delicate feet, porcelain against the dreary landscape, almost floated over the shards of glass that were scattered over the floor. They moved with such care that not one drop of blood was left behind.  Down the stone steps it carried itself, with a perfected and ghostly posture, and over the soft dirt which grew more unstable as the rain began to fall gently--very gently.  The figure was that of a young girl, who had pulled the length of her robes to her ankles, to avoid soiling the precious, black cloth. There was no decor to be had on her, aside from a velvet choker, a necklace, and a ring, which glinted beneath the moonlight. The wine-red backdrop of the sky looming above, beginning to show its first glimmer of starlight, its satin folds deepening with the hours, breathed a hushed wind over the land; it coursed through the veins of those still living in this place with a chill of despair from memories, and brought with it the feel of war from the Northern lands.  She had moved down a path in the forest ahead, and soon--very soon--the towering emerald walls gave way to a clearing.  She stepped over the torn ivy and the logs, and over the moss as if a practiced dancer, and into the grass.  The canopy above prevented the rain from coming here, and so the beautiful water of the lake was still and silent.  Around it slept the weeping willows, whose tendrils of bark and leaves dipped into the surface, taking of its purity.  A small feline hiked its way over the log, nearly tumbling into the mud when it lost its balance.  It was, in contrast to her, an off-white color, with a dark brown face, ears, paws, and the very tip of its fluffy tail.  "Come now, Kura.  Don't fool around."  Said the girl, whose whisper-soft voice broke the silence abruptly, yet did nothing to really disturb the serenity of the place.  Kura trotted up by her and stared at the water, seeing a cat (exactly like her!) in the surface.  She gave scowl and poised to pounce on the other cat, until the girl put her finger in the water and the reflection rippled, leaving poor Kura baffled--for the cat had run away!  "It's only your reflection," she laughed, and dipped a pewter cup into the water.  Soon she stood again, after stroking her friend, and walked over to the cluster of graves on the other side of the water.  Above it towered a large statue, that of an angel, who was their everlasting guardian.  She began to drip the water on the graves, murmuring to herself a prayer as she went around to each.  Kura occupied herself with jumping on top of the stones, meanwhile.  All this month it had been the same--death, famine, disease, war, and more death.  The cycle never stopped.  Then again, it wasn't supposed to; which meant that her work would never be done.  She tried not to linger on the thought, and instead focused on her current task; none of these bodies had been buried properly, only thrown in a hole and marked, and they had to be blessed.  Though it didn't seem that even a blessing would save these wretched souls, now.
Dead leaves crackled beneath her feet as she stepped away from the graves.  The place stank of death marked in blood and forgotten screams.  But, unlike all others that ventured here, she could hear them still, echoing in the depths of her mind.  This was the curse of the third sight--most could see the flesh and bone, and others could see the spirit.  Her vision touched, not only on those, but on something more abstract; the past and the future.  When she looked over the horizon, she could hear the clashing of swords and the groans of misery as they fell to their knees in front of their opponents.  And here, in this desolate, sickly place, she could hear the restless sounds of the wounded being tended to, and she could see the faint outlines of their bodies on the ground in spirit; and this was why she stepped so carefully, as if avoiding some unseen obstacle.  It was out of respect, though she knew they were not truly there.  She set the pewter cup by a tree, which was wrapped in a twisted metal wire, believed to ward off bad entities.  Many wondered at this woman.  For millenia, all of her kind had been male.  And yet here, suddenly as war devours the land, she appears--not male, and not rich, if she even had money at all.  Every breath she took spoke of practice and precision, as if each movement she made was vital to this strange and foreign process.  Perhaps it was.  She stared at the cup for a moment's time, and murmured to herself in absence.  "Synne, the prophetess, the holy-woman.  A curse and a blessing in one body," mused the girl.  She had identified herself after a long period of silence, as if in that span of time, she had forgotten who she was.  Synnove, the prophet of the Eastern lands.  How could she forget?  Her name spread over the villages like wildfire in a hayloft.  She slid her hand into the cup and held the water in her palm, and moved to the center of the burial ground. The prophetess lowered her eyes and sprinkled the water in a small circle in front of her, whispered something too low for the natural human ear, and dropped a sphere of silver in the exact center of the water, which soaked into the ground.  And so too did the marble slowly sink, until it could be seen no more against the dark soil.  And then, so casually and gracefully, Synne stood. She gathered up her pewter cup again and emptied it onto the ground in front of her and tucked it away in her robes.  She could no longer think of the souls, for they had shimmered away into a peaceful place, leaving her alone in this eerily silent hollow amongst the ancient trees.

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It had been quiet like that for over twenty years. No one spoke of the anger that ravaged these barren lands; no one touched the soil here but those ready to face the agonizing unfulfilled wishes of the dead. It was as if in a day, years of massacre dwindled to absolute nerve-wrecking stillness, where once there were only the mounting yells of battle. It spanned five lands in length and three times as many men to cover the space on just one side. Many fell within mere moments, taking but ten steps into the dark before finding home in the gravel. Iron met flesh and metal, carving into human souls and stealing from them their peasant wealth. Blood and limbs littered the grass, which burned their feet like fire; the sky was stained black and red from their cries into the heavens. Syntu, by thy grace accept me into thy arms! I fall for thee, Lord! In the name of light! And as the clouds were prickled with these echos, life after life was taken into the mercy of the deepest graves. Villages were stormed, gates were torn, warehouses were burned to the ground. With the dying flames, all hope of living seemed to fade, and many wished to die by the sword than suffer the agitating pains of starvation and sickness and poison.
It seemed there was no limit; hundreds of suns passed year by year with no relent, and hundreds spanned into thousands. Years would pass before the rage was settled. Those who opened their doors the morn it happened would have probably been woken this early from messengers screaming through the open streets:

"ALL CITIZENS ARE TO COME TO THE GRAND HALL FOR A CITY MEETING."

There, holding their remaining beloved, if any at all, widowed mothers, abandoned parents, orphan boys and girls, would gather about and hear the news. The king had passed in his sleep earlier that morning. They then begged for counsel, "Who then will be our leader?" they called from the crowd. They wanted reassurance, but there was little to be had. There were rumors of a council, but that would not happen for five more years. So all the power they had then were treaties. They signed whatever need be to have their precious city, their capital, kept intact; to have their fields and farms left alone, to have their warehouses left in peace. No more destruction, no more death. They pleaded and begged with every precious metal they owned, and for a while they pretended as if all political tension had drowned itself in their lives. But there would be an abrupt end, like the sickening crunch of an already-weak bone breaking beneath the pressure of a sudden strike. . . .

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Despite the fact that she had been up so late last night blessing the burial grounds, something in the waking hours caused her to rise early. The clouds quietly crept across the vast sky, promising no easy weather this day. She trudged along the stone halls checking on the children that still slept, all of them peaceful as if nothing had ever taken their lives and smashed them up against the blade of society that constantly hammered down on them. She fixed their covers and pulled the drapes at the windows closer together to prevent the morning from disturbing their resting eyes. Let them sleep, they need it. She made her way down the winding stairs and into the Gold Hall, which ironically had no gold in it at all. However, it was the centerpiece of entertainment in the sanctum, and often the children would say that they enjoyed the gatherings there more than any amount of gold in the world, so the name came with its purpose. There was another reason it had this title, but that is for later. This room was conveniently connected to the kitchen, so that it could double as a dining-room area. They would simply push aside the Denur--the equivalent of a piano--aside to make room for all the children. Though it was still rather dark outside, she could hear shuffling in the kitchen and went to investigate.

"Oh!" She was startled in the dim light by a child dropping a wooden bowl on the floor, spilling its contents very near the priestess' feet. For a second there was no interaction, and then a hustle for both to clean up the mess.

"I'm so sorry!" piped the little girl, using the apron she wore to try and wipe off the excess from the floor of what Synnove had wiped already. She blushed furiously.

"It's quite alright. . . What are you doing down here so early?" She bent and picked up the bowl, examining it. It smelled oddly of cold soup, something they commonly had for breakfast.

"I. . ." she stammered and held her apron as she stood, wringing it with her hands. "Etaki and I were trying to make breakfast for everyone. We didn't think you would wake so early."

This made the priestess smile, and she patted the girl's head. Just at that moment, a back door swung open and a small boy strode from its darkness, holding a very large stack of bowls very similar to the one that had dropped. He set them on the wooden table, made from a much stronger tree, and started placing them in rows to be easily accessed. Then he looked up and realized that he and Ita were no longer alone.

"Ah! Did you spoil the surprise? She wasn't supposed to know!"

"It wasn't my fault. . ."

He threw a bowl at the young girl, though gently. "Sure it wasn't."

She made a sound and picked it up. "That's mean!"

"Now, now." Synne removed the bowl from her hand and set it back on the table with the others. "Don't hit people, Etaki. How about I help you? I can pretend I never knew."

"Yeah!" the two responded simultaneously and hurried across the kitchen to hug at her robes.

"But you have to help me first," she said. "I can't start my day without my herbs, so dress warm and meet me at the gates. Try not to wake anyone up." She patted them and they scurried off. Their rooms were downstairs, by the entrance to the kitchen, in the Gold Hall.

At about a half hour's time they met at the large wooden walls that surrounded the grand city, Etaki being the one to rush over and open it for the ladies. They made their way out over the grasslands. It was wet with dew that was forming over it, and in the sunlight that was beginning to weep over the hills, it cast a beautiful blue tint beneath their feet and felt like silk on the children's bare feet. They'd taken several baskets with them and began to fill them up by the edge of the wood. These woods surrounded not only the city, but a secret as well. As the hour passed they progressed further in, until they reached a large pond. She began grabbing up the plants that grew within, though with an oddly practiced reluctance.

"Are you alright, Synne? Do you need any help?" asked Etaki. These children had studied language thoroughly since coming to the sanctuary, and had no issue with sounding like adults grammatically, which often impressed visitors to the city, for the children could be no more than eight or nine.

"No, I'll be fine." She murmured this with half her head disagreeing with her as she fished out the herbs from the water.

In this lake resided much more than just fish or rocks, but it was a prison. Long ago, in a last-ditch effort to get rid of the haunting of the city from the battles that had taken place before, a novice priest had banished at least half the souls to the pond in the woods, and children were often told tales of boys and girls falling in--or, rather, being pulled in--and never coming back. As such, most kids avoided this area entirely. As she mused over these past happenings, Ita and Etaki had filled their baskets and had begun using their clothing for makeshift carriers. She passed a glance to them and could not stop herself from laughing.

"You two are silly. You don't need so many! Leave some for the next time we come."

With her basket in hand she went out of the ocean of trees closely followed by the two children, trying to balance their baskets with the hemming of their robes that they had lifted and filled. Because of this overflow, Synne had to open the gates. The children passed through and waddled down the main street to the Granda Kethadrusa, as it was named, where they stayed. They fiddled with opening the double-doors for a while -- a long while. As she stepped over the threshold of the city, she realized she had absent-mindedly forgotten to get another herb. She waved to children to wait on her and she went back out by some of the large rocks that had been catapulted in an offensive maneuver against Kethadria long ago, that had since grown over with moss. It was this moss that she picked from their surfaces in layers, laying it over the rest of her herbs. She found that if she wrapped them in this, it kept them fresh. It could also be used in her healing work.
At the moment that she had prepared herself to stand, carrying a considerably heavier basket now, she faintly made out an eerie whistle in the air. And, as if it had summoned another great attack against her wonderful city, a tree snapped at its center and timbered over, falling directly on the gate which buckled under the weight of the canopy. She whipped around and was confronted with a curious sight:  a boy with the oddest color scheme she'd ever seen, from what she could testify thus far, had collided with a tree at an almost inhuman force. Good Gods, he must be dead! With this thought, forgetting entirely about her herb-collecting, she dropped the basket and dashed over to him. The crash had woken the northern part of the city, who had no idea what to think. Many simply stared dumbly at the catastrophe, while others hurried out of the gates to see the source of the disruption. The boy was unconscious, that was certain. She checked for a pulse and a breath and saw that it existed. Only slightly reassured, she allowed two men to carry him back to the sanctuary and lay him on a fresh bed while she retrieved her plants. She found herself absently searching over and over in the same area of the hills to find some sort of cause for him to be lunged so hard, but there was none to be seen.
As she returned to the city she heard people, now up and about, whispering about a Heaven-Sent, given to them to ease their worries about war. She found this unlikely, but who knew? She would wait patiently for him to wake up, for nothing was certain -- even something as simple as that. The day she'd predicted as dreary had even begun to clear up and warmth touched over the cobble streets.

Nothing in this world was guaranteed.