AMAIA
AMAIA FEARED FOR LIFE, but not for her own.
They had forced her into this strange outfit. Thick, without buttons, adorned with odd bulbs and protrusions. A large glass jar was placed over her head, and they strapped her into a soft chair, leaving her no room to move.
“You are safe,” they assured. “Everything is going to be alright.”
Except it wasn’t.
This pod, as they called it, barely fit the three of them. It rattled more violently than the capsule they had originally travelled in. But the capsule burnt.
“We gotta problem,” one of them said when it all started.
“What’s going on?” this cracking voice of the capsule asked, distorted and sharp. “We can see you getting off course. Fix it immediately.”
“We cannot,” replied the other one while tapping everything in front and above their seats.
“We need to execute the emergency procedure,” said the first one, urgency rising in his tone.
The crackling voice paused before answering, heavy with finality.
“Do it. Make sure the girl is safe. We’ve invested too much in her to lose her now.”
Amaia’s hand drifted instinctively to her stomach. She couldn’t feel anything, but her heart was saying that he was alright.
And then they hit something.
***
“ALL THIS TIME?” Amaia couldn’t believe own eyes.
The air in the room buzzed faintly, like lightning waiting in the walls. The walls themselves were smooth and seamless. The same strange material everything in this place was built with.
She sat on a table that was too soft to be stone and too warm to be wood, clutching the thin fabric of her borrowed robe like a shield.
The woman beside her stood tall in flowing white, her voice a whisper of wind gliding over frozen lakes. And yet, she wielded it with the grace of silence, speaking only when the world required a ripple. She touched the glowing edge of a pane on the wall, and a strange blue light spilled across Amaia’s belly.
“Is it sorcery?” Amaia flinched.
“No,” the woman said gently. “Just sound. Translated into image.”
She might as well have said ‘moonlight woven into silk’. It meant nothing.
How can sound be made into an image? Amaia thought. Then it appeared.
On a black mirror, floating in shadows, something flickered. Small, no bigger than a plum pit. A faint curve. A shimmer of motion. A flickering beat. Like a moth’s wings trapped under glass.
“That’s…” Amaia’s breath caught. “That’s it?”
“That’s him,” the woman said. “That’s your son.”
The beat again. A steady blink.
Alive.
Amaia’s hands rose slowly to her mouth. Her eyes burned.
“But I… I fell,” she whispered. “With Yanick. Off the cliff. I was already…”
Her fingers drifted to her stomach, as if the truth might rise through her skin. “How is it even possible I didn’t lose the baby?”
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The woman in white turned, slow as moonlight spilling over stone. For a moment, she said nothing. Then:
“We had to intervene. To protect what was growing.”
“How?” Amaia asked. “How something like this can be done?”
“We use our…” the woman paused, as if the weight of honesty caught her tongue. Then with voice like frost over glass she finished. “We used our magic.”
Amaia blinked at the glowing image. “He’s so small.”
“They all are,” the woman replied. “In the beginning.”
The lights dimmed slightly, and the image faded into black. The woman touched Amaia’s shoulder lightly.
“He is strong. You are strong.”
Amaia stared at the screen, though it was blank now.
“Will he be like me?” she whispered. “Or like... him?”
There was no answer. Only the soft hum of the room, and the echo of a heartbeat still thudding behind her ribs.
The other woman approached without haste. The one who had questioned Amaia not long ago. Not a strand of her hair was out of place, and her expression remained untouched by urgency or fatigue, as if interrogation and revelation left no mark on her at all.
“He will be special,” she said.
***
THE POD DRIFTED, cradled by the waves.
One of them kicked the latch open. It was the last thing he managed before collapsing, limbs slack, breath gone. So it seemed. Amaia wasn’t sure how many times she herself had slipped under, pulled down into the soft dark of unconsciousness — but now, she was awake.
And she heard them.
Voices. Angry. Sharp. Splintering the hush of the sea.
The two men inside the pod didn’t respond. Whether they were sleeping, unconscious, or dead, Amaia didn’t know.
The voices dragged the pod closer, scraping metal on metal. Hooks, maybe. Harpoons. Something bit into the hull and began to pull.
Not to shore. Up.
She felt the shift. The lurch. They were lifting the pod.
Amaia closed her eyes partway. Just enough to seem lost to the world, but still watch through her lashes.
They hauled the pod aboard a ship. She saw them now. The Faithful.
She remembered their faces from Valhafen. A few had arrived years ago. Then more. Always more. Most never stayed long. They weren’t there to settle. They didn’t work, didn’t build. They whispered in alleyways and stared from shadows.
But some did stay. They brought wives veiled from head to toe. Even little girls, hidden away in folds of fabric. To keep them unseen. Unlooked upon.
And yet the men always looked.
They had those eyes. Hungry eyes. The same kind she saw now.
“I’m telling you these are the angels,”one of the men muttered, his voice rough with awe as he circled the pod. Sea spray clung to his long beard, his hands twitching with restless energy.
“A woman?”another scoffed, narrowing his eyes at the silhouette inside. “You’re calling her an angel? It’s just a woman.”
“You saw this egg fall from the sky,” the first insisted, eyes still locked on Amaia. “What else could it be?”
“Maybe she is their trophy,” a third man said with a grin, leaning in too close, breath stinking.
“Let’s have her,” one said. “Here. Now.”
The air shifted. One of the others stiffened. The one who stayed silent so far.
“Have you lost your mind?” he asked, stepping back, a hand twitching toward the knife at his belt.
“It’s our right,” the first man growled. “Spoils of war.”
“No,”came the answer. Cold. Final.
“Are you afraid, captain?” the grinning one asked, voice low now, almost mocking.
The captain hesitated.
“Yes,” he said finally. “If these are indeed angels then yes, I am afraid.”
The first man sneered.
“I’m not.”
He lunged at Amaia. She closed the eyes tight, but instead of feeling her hair being pulled she heard a crack. A sickening sound. Bone meeting metal.
She looked and saw the man’s body jolted backward, his skull colliding with the inner rim of the capsule.
One of the sleepers wasn’t sleeping anymore.
With a grunt, he unstrapped himself from the chair, still dripping blood from the temple. His hand reached down, pulled something from beneath his seat.
Amaia didn’t understand what it was.
Not a blade. Not an arrow. But when he lifted it a thunder exploded from his hand.
Three men fell before they could scream.
Another dove for cover, shrieking. One leapt over the railing and vanished into the sea.
Smoke coiled from the strange weapon’s mouth.
Amaia’s ears rang.
Then silence.
The man lowered the device and staggered, panting, but standing.
The captain dropped to his knees and bowed, pressing his forehead to the deck. The rest of the crew followed.
“Forgive us,” the captain whispered, trembling. “We didn’t know. We didn’t know she was yours.”
The man with the thunder-weapon didn’t answer, just looked at Amaia.
“All good?” he asked.
She nodded.
The man stepped forward, slow but steady, the weapon still in his hand.
The Faithful remained on their knees, foreheads pressed to the deck, lips murmuring prayers between shivers.
He stopped before them, his voice low and commanding.
“This woman,” he said, turning to gesture toward Amaia, still strapped in the pod. “This woman is holy.”
A breathless silence followed.
“She was sent by the one and only true god who resides on the Moon.”
“Hallowed be Thy name,” all of them intoned in trembling unison.
“She carries the mark of the divine,” the man continued. “I must take her to Astoris. To your Emperor.”
“Yes, our Lord.”
“My companion is wounded,” the man said after a pause, nodding back toward the pod. “He needs a medic. Take him to the nearest settlement by boat. There’s a village near the port, isn’t there?”
The captain of the Faithful looked up, eyes wide with reverence and fear.
“Yes, Lord. A day’s row, if the sea allows.”
“Then don’t waste a heartbeat.”
