Eden "An Ember"

Velka Solvaine has been blessed.

A loving family. A respected name. A place within the Republic. And faith strong enough to carry her through anything.

She knows there is a God.

She knows there is a Promised Land.

And she knows that death is nothing to fear when paradise waits on the other side.

So Velka smiles often.

She laughs loudly, loves deeply, and carries herself with the peculiar certainty of someone who has never once wondered whether the voice guiding her might be wrong.

There are things House Solvaine does not speak of.

Prayers whispered behind closed doors.

Names that disappear from ledgers.

Bodies that are never found.

To Velka, none of it is strange.

Faith has never required an explanation.

Only obedience.

But what happens when the faithful begin to question?

What happens when the path to paradise leads somewhere it shouldn't?

And what becomes of a woman who has built her entire existence around God...

when her faith is shattered?

Before the Republic knew what House Solvaine truly was.

Before Dhar.

Before Deryk Mustaf.

Before the woman she would one day become-

there was Eden.