Damned if you do

Run

The pain is almost gone, years of the familiar pain from the gold paint burned into her skin. Now, eight years later, she can finally say that it's almost a diminished itch.
she's has never been one to complain, but when the Priest of the Cròwm came for her, it was bad.

This is the half dead planet called Zento, in the universe Draxn. We have two suns, one promptly named Cimber and the other Aign.
On this planet there are many different types of people, you're either born a Cròwm, an Ânasteel or an O'saey, the outcasts are rejected from their tribes for not fitting their predefined roles.

Some believe Zento is cursed, that it is savage for Ânasteel blood. The whole planet sucked dry by the Cròwm's god's hatred for the Ânasteel people.
Making the Cròwm believe that the Ânasteel needed to be captured, tortured and killed for their gifts, causing chaos and fear, in doing so it pushed the O'saey tribe deep into the mountains, those Ânasteel who managed to escape their caged fate became Drifts, wandering the planet in search of peace.

When the Priests from Tribue enslaved the Ânasteel villages and cities, they marked the captured as pieces of time, they stopped at nothing, killing warriors and chiefs, cutting off the hands of mothers who stood in the way of their babies capture, melting gold into the flesh of traitors for turning their backs on the genocide.
In the territories of the Cròwm, if you have the trait of the Time Piece, you are traditionally and forcefully marked inside the Temple of Silver.
Solid gold is burned into your skin, in patterns that the priests deem spiritual, funny how gold also enhances an Ânasteel's sight, their ability to see the possibilities in one's blood and the future untold.

The mark, so sad to say, is their eyes, a white, muted edged pupil leaking into a brilliantly bright gold iris. That's why the gold marking, gold to resemble how precious time is, and how they, the pieces of time, are disfavored and considered preposterous, petty and unworthy for seeing into it.

She looks around the outside of the confinement of her cage, over to the empty cage a few feet away, her home for the last eight years.

She had been captured and caged since her home was invaded. She was twelve, she had never known at the time that she'd be hated by so many. She had watched her childhood friends, slowly tormented by the Priests in their own small cages, wrongly starved, used for their flesh and talents, till they got moonsickness and died.

Her small barred cage, tall enough to climb right up or take three steps in each direction, this was her home.
She had a thick tattered curtain that could be opened from the outside and in, and small things, like a hard palm sized pillow and a yarn worn blanket. She had clothes, but not many, She wore most to stay hidden from the moon, Cròwm and Priests. All items were given to her from her former cell neighbor and customers looking for a future or those who took pity on her, or Roget, the only Cròwm who had ever shown her kindness. she didn't eat for days on end unless it was scraps from them.

She was a prize, an object, something that the Priests thought was special, to show to all and to any that passed through this place. They owned her, this they believed only because of how accurate her visions were, how boldly her golden eyes glow.
She has never seen past these caged walls. After her capture the only other place she has been, is inside the Temple of Silver.

The Temple, which peering upwards, she can see are layed atop the highest hills in these mountains. They are white silver on the outside, with high walls and spiraling towers in shades of grey and pink, almost like the sky.

The inside of the temple was one of nightmares for her and many others. Black slick metal walls with stringy black slime that stained your soul. Passages after passages that the smartest navigator could be lost for a lifetime. Pools of moving black goo that forced the truth from your lips, all belonging to the Priests of Silver.