The 10th Day of the Month of Wind, Year 1107 of the Imperial Calendar.
Location: The Private Parlor of Merchant Kael.
The year turned, and with it, the sands of the hourglass ran out. Aanya was sixteen.
The capital of Aethelgard was already buzzing. Banners of crimson and gold hung from every spire. The Emperor's Selection was announced for the coming spring. The decree was posted in every square: "King Darius seeks a Flower among the Weeds. Let beauty come forth."
For the Kael family, this was not a celebration. It was a deadline.
The atmosphere in the house was brittle. The debts were mounting. Kael had gambled everything on the hope that Aanya would be chosen. But there was the problem of the scar—a raised, textured map of agony that no powder in the Eastern Lands could hide.
Until today.
A heavy, black carriage arrived at the gates just as the sun began to set. It bore no crest, only the symbol of a serpent eating its own tail—the mark of the Alchemists of the Western Isles.
"He is here," Kael whispered, watching from the window. He turned to Elara. "Get the gold. All of it."
"Is it safe, Kael?" Elara asked, wringing her hands. "They say Western alchemy is close to witchcraft."
"We are past safety, Elara," Kael snapped, his eyes hollow. "We are in survival."
Aanya was summoned to the parlor. She wore her veil, the white silk hiding the right side of her face. She sat in a high-backed wooden chair, her hands folded in her lap. She felt like a specimen in a jar.
The door opened.
The man who entered brought the smell of sulfur and ozone with him. He was tall, gaunt, and wore robes of a dark, oily gray. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and his fingers were stained with inks and chemicals.
"Master Silas Thorne," Kael introduced him, bowing slightly. A merchant bowing to a craftsman—a sign of how desperate Kael truly was.
Thorne didn't bow. He walked into the room, his eyes scanning the space with clinical detachment. He carried a heavy leather satchel that clinked with the sound of glass.
"Show me the subject," Thorne said. His voice was like grinding stones.
"Aanya," Elara commanded. "The veil."
Aanya hesitated. Her hand trembled as she reached up. Slowly, painfully slowly, she pulled the silk away.
The silence in the room was absolute.
The scar had matured over the years. It was no longer a raw wound. It was a patch of thick, rippled tissue that covered her right cheek, pulling at the corner of her eye and distorting the curve of her lip. It was a violent interruption on a face that was otherwise divine.
Thorne stepped closer. He didn't flinch. He didn't look disgusted. He looked intrigued.
He reached out a stained finger and touched the scar. Aanya flinched, pulling back.
"Still," Thorne ordered. He pressed the skin. "Deep tissue damage. The dermis is fused. No powder will sit on this. It will slide off with sweat."
"We know," Kael said impatiently. "We have tried powders, pastes, paints. Nothing works. Can you fix it?"
Thorne opened his satchel. He pulled out a series of glass vials containing liquids of disturbing colors—milky white, viscous amber, and a deep, blood-red.
"I do not 'fix' flesh, Merchant," Thorne said. "I am not a healer. I am an illusionist. I traffic in the chemistry of deception."
He held up a vial of the milky liquid.
"This," Thorne said, "is a polymer resin derived from the sap of the Ghost Tree in the Western swamps. Mixed with the correct pigment, it does not merely sit on the skin. It bonds to it. It creates a second skin. A living mask."
"Will it look real?" Elara asked, stepping closer, her eyes hungry.
"It will look more real than her own skin," Thorne promised. "It will mimic the texture, the warmth, and the light absorption of human flesh. She can sweat, she can dance, she can stand in the rain. It will not move."
Kael let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for years. "And the price?"
Thorne looked at the Merchant. "Five hundred gold coins. Upfront."
Kael paled. "Five hundred? That is the price of a ship!"
"Then buy a ship," Thorne shrugged, beginning to pack his vials. "And send your scarred daughter to the convent."
"No!" Kael shouted. He grabbed the heavy bag of coins from the table and slammed it down. "Take it. Just... make her perfect."
The procedure was not a makeover. It was a surgery without knives.
Aanya was moved to a chair near the window to catch the fading light. Thorne laid out his tools: fine brushes made of sable hair, mixing palettes of glass, and small heating lamps.
"This will hurt," Thorne said flatly. "The resin generates heat as it cures. If you move, the bond will break, and we will have to start over. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Aanya whispered.
"Begin."
Thorne mixed the milky liquid with a drop of the amber accelerant and a pinch of flesh-colored powder. He stirred it rapidly. The mixture began to bubble and smoke slightly.
He dipped the brush.
"Close your eyes."
He painted the hot liquid onto Aanya's scar.
Aanya gasped. It didn't feel like makeup. It felt like molten wax. It stung, biting into the sensitive nerve endings of her damaged skin.
"Hold still," Elara hissed from the corner.
Thorne worked quickly, layering the substance. He built up the hollows where the flesh had melted away. He smoothed out the ridges. He sculpted a cheekbone where there was none.
The smell was overpowering—acrid, chemical, like burning vinegar. Aanya's eyes watered, but she didn't dare wipe them.
"The drying phase," Thorne announced.
He held a small lamp near her face. The heat intensified. Aanya felt the substance tightening, shrinking, pulling at her skin. It felt like her face was being engaged in a vice. Ideally, she wanted to claw it off. She wanted to scream.
But she remembered the look in her father's eyes. She remembered the word burden.
She sat like a stone.
Minutes turned into an hour. The burning slowly subsided into a dull, heavy numbness.
"Open," Thorne said.
He stepped back. He wiped his hands on a rag.
"It is done."
Kael and Elara rushed forward. Kael held up a hand mirror. His hands were shaking so hard he almost dropped it.
"Look, Aanya," Kael whispered. "Look."
Aanya opened her eyes. She looked into the mirror.
She stopped breathing.
The girl in the mirror was a stranger. The scar was gone. Completely gone. In its place was smooth, creamy skin. The cheek was high and perfect. The lip was symmetrical. The eye was no longer pulled down.
She touched it. It felt smooth. It felt like skin, perhaps a little cooler, a little rubbery, but to the eye, it was flawless.
She was the Goddess again.
"Oh, the Gods be praised!" Elara wept, falling to her knees. "She is beautiful! She is saved!"
Kael was laughing, a manic sound of relief. "We did it! We fooled fate! The Emperor will never know!"
Aanya stared at her reflection. She didn't feel joy. She felt horror.
It was a mask. A permanent, suffocating mask. She could feel the weight of it on her face, a heavy, dead thing clinging to her. She wasn't Aanya anymore. She was a lie constructed of expensive resin.
"There is one rule," Thorne's voice cut through the celebration.
The room fell silent. Thorne looked at them with serious, dark eyes.
"The resin is hydrophobic. Water will not touch it. Sweat will not move it. Even alcohol will not dissolve it."
"Good," Kael said. "That is good."
"However," Thorne raised a finger. "Organic solvents. Specifically, heavy oils. If oil touches this resin, the chemical bond will disintegrate instantly. The mask will melt into sludge."
He looked directly at Aanya.
"You must avoid oil-based cleansers. You must avoid greasy foods near your mouth. And above all..." Thorne paused. "You must avoid the Golden Lotus Oil."
"Golden Lotus?" Elara asked.
"It is a rare perfume used by the Royals," Thorne explained. "It contains a high concentration of lipid esters. It is the only thing that breaks the bond quickly. If that oil touches her face, the illusion is over in seconds."
"We will remember," Kael promised. "No oils. Just water and soap."
Thorne nodded. He picked up the bag of gold. He didn't say goodbye. He simply walked out of the room, leaving behind the smell of chemicals and a girl wearing a face that wasn't hers.
That night, Aanya lay in bed. She touched her new cheek. It was numb. She couldn't feel her finger pressing against it.
She felt like she was trapped inside a porcelain doll.
She walked to the window. The boards had been removed now that she was "presentable" again. She opened the shutter and looked out at the city.
The cold wind hit her face, but she only felt it on the left side. The right side felt nothing.
She looked toward the slums, toward the dark, twisting streets where the thieves lived.
Does he still eat apples? she wondered.
She realized with a sinking heart that if Veer saw her now, he wouldn't recognize her. The girl with the scar—the girl he had seen in the carriage, the girl he had tried to save—was gone.
Buried under layers of expensive Western lies.
"I am ready, Father," she whispered to the empty room. "Sell me."
The trap was set. The makeup was permanent. And the one thing that could destroy it—Golden Lotus Oil—was waiting inside the Emperor's palace, a ticking time bomb wrapped in a crystal bottle.