Another 7 years had passed in the blink of an eye, and in all that time, the siblings never spoke. There had never been a single friendly word or even a basic interaction between them since that day under the apple tree.
The consequences of that afternoon were permanent. Kang was completely blind now, his eyes lost to the jagged stone Deva had used. Sera had grown up in a constant state of shadow, living in total fear of her older sister. The story of what happened spread through the small community until the whole village gave Deva a nickname that stuck like a curse, Deva the Eye Taker.
Their father didn't let her off easy. He punished her the way he would have punished any of his children for such a brutal act. For seven long years, Deva was stripped of her princess lifestyle. Every single day, she was the one forced to go out and search for animals to provide the daily mana. It was exhausting and deeply annoying. It was the one thing she had vowed she would never do, yet here she was, working like a common laborer.
Today was supposed to be the final day of that long punishment. After the sun went down, she would finally be free to go back to doing absolutely nothing.
But today wasn't a normal day. It was the festival of Goddess Kali, the biggest celebration of the year. On this day, everyone in the village was expected to bring a life to sacrifice. It was a show of gratitude and a way to keep the mana flowing.
Normally, Deva didn't put any effort into it. She would just wait until no one was looking and steal a hen from the family farm. It was the same lazy trick she had been pulling every day of her punishment.
Her mother definitely knew what she was doing. She was the one quietly replacing the missing hens so Deva wouldn't get caught. Her siblings knew too. Sera stayed quiet because she was terrified of losing her own eyes, and their father never believed a word Kang said because he had a reputation for lying. But he believed Deva. He truly thought his middle daughter was out in the deep forest, hunting and learning the value of hard work.
Then, the luck ran out. Her father caught her red-handed.
He didn't scream, but his voice was like iron. He told her to get into the forest and find a life big enough to make up for all the years she had spent faking it. He wanted an offering for Goddess Kali that was worthy of their family name. If she failed, she would face another seven years of hard labor and searching for mana.
Even though it was technically her last day of punishment, she was boiling with rage. She hated that she actually had to work for her freedom.
Deva was certain that one of her siblings had snitched on her. Maybe both of them had plotted it together, since they were always stuck to each other's side these days. As she marched toward the tree line, she made a silent vow. When she came back, she would get back at them. Maybe she would blind Sera too. It seemed only fair, since Sera had been acting as Kang's eyes for years now.
Deva gripped a heavy spear and pushed into the thickest part of the forest. She was looking for something massive. It had to be bigger than a ram, bigger than a bull, bigger than any goat. She wanted something that would shut her father up for good.
But in her fourteen years of living, she had never actually seen anything bigger than the livestock in the village.
The pressure was building. She needed to be back before the celebration started. It was her favorite time of the year, the one day where the music and the food made life worth living, and she had never missed a single one.
Hours passed, and she found nothing reasonable. The forest felt empty and mocking. At one point, she was so frustrated she actually wondered if she should just go back and present Kang as the sacrifice. That would certainly be a big enough life to offer the goddess.
But she shook the thought away.
That was going too far, even for her. She didn't want him dead. She still wanted the satisfaction of seeing him cry in pain and struggle through life. Death was too much like being free, and she wasn't ready to let him off the hook yet.
Tired from searching through the brush all day, the only thing she managed to catch was a scrawny squirrel. It was pathetic. It was far too small to offer to the goddess.
She sat down on a mossy log to catch her breath and ended up nodding off. She only meant to nap for a few minutes.
When she woke up, the world was pitch black.
Those few minutes had actually been hours. The sun was gone, and the air was cold.
The celebration had definitely started.
Panic flared in her chest. She needed to get back to the village immediately. She hoped her father would forgive her for being late and with nothing. If he didn't, she was looking at another seven years of misery.
By now, her Mojo had developed enough to be useful. She snapped her fingers, summoning a small, flickering ball of fire to act as a lantern as she hurried back toward her home.
As she got closer to the village boundaries, Deva felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. Something was wrong.
The celebration should have been at its peak. There should have been drums, singing, and the smell of roasting meat. Instead, the only thing she could hear was a terrifying, heavy silence.
When she finally reached the edge of the clearing, her heart dropped. She saw orange flickers that weren't from festival torches. The huts were on fire. The thatched roofs were collapsing into piles of ash, and people were scattered across the ground like discarded dolls. They had all been slaughtered.
It looked like a war zone, but there was no one left to fight.
Deva walked through the center of the village, her mind racing. How was this possible? Who could have done this in the few hours she was gone? She searched the shadows for any sign of life.
There was no one.
Not a single farmer, not a single elder, and not even the children. They were all dead.
Her first thought, sharp and painful, was of her family.
She ran toward her house, her feet heavy as she stepped over bodies. Outside their compound, the carnage was even worse.
The first person she spotted was her sister, Sera. She was lying lifeless near the entrance. Right next to her was Kang, also dead. Their feud didn't matter anymore, they were both just empty shells.
Then she looked the other way and saw her mother. This was the woman who had birthed her, nurtured her, and loved her unconditionally despite her lazy lifestyle and her sharp edges. She was gone too.
And then there was her father.
He had always been the strongest man she knew, but now his head was decapitated from his body, resting several feet away from his torso.
Deva stood there, devastated. She looked at the people she called family, the people who had been her entire world, slaughtered like the very animals they sacrificed.
Who could have done this? Who was cruel enough to wipe out an entire village in a single day? And for what reason?
She felt a wave of regret wash over her. She thought about how she never once showed her father how grateful she was for his love. She never thanked her mother for protecting her. She even regretted the way she treated the siblings she fought with. She never imagined that today would be the last day she would ever see them alive.
After staring at their bodies until her eyes burned, she turned and walked toward the temple where the statue of Goddess Kali was mounted.
The statue was gone.
It was a massive, golden icon decorated with countless gems. It had four eyes and ten hands, and it was the center of their entire belief system. The pedestal was empty.
The people who did this must have taken it, but Deva couldn't understand how. The statue was huge; it usually took a hundred strong men just to move it or mount it.
Just as she stepped forward into the temple ruins, she stumbled over a body.
It was Teacher Guru Dev.
He was covered in blood and clearly dying, but his eyes fluttered open. He was still alive.
Deva knelt down, helping him sit up. She rested his back against a fallen pillar and tried to remember what she had learned. She had been practicing a healing technique that combined the heat of fire with the flow of water.
She summoned both elements, trying to weave them together to close his wounds. But the cuts were too deep, and Deva had never been good at concentrating. Her hands were shaking too much. She was breaking down.
"You..." Teacher Guru Dev said, his voice a wet rasp. He reached out with a bloody hand and stopped her, clutching her wrist.
"You must survive. Find Goddess Kali... bring her back..."
"No, I don't want any stupid job!" Deva sobbed. She didn't want a mission, she wanted her life back. "You stop talking and let me heal you. I am almost out of mana!"
She tried again to force the elements to merge, but the light was fading.
"You have all the mana needed... to find and bring our Goddess... home... bring her home..."
Those were his final words. His hand slipped from her wrist as he took his last breath.
"Damn it, you old man!" Deva shouted into the empty air, her voice cracking with agony. "Why make me waste my mana? All you had to do was shut up! Everyone is dead! No one is left... how am I supposed to live in this world?"
She sat there in the dirt, crying. She was only 14 years old, and she was the only survivor of her entire village, her entire clan.
As she sat there, she noticed something. A blue, circular orb began to rise from Teacher Guru Dev's chest. It was his soul.
It floated slowly upward, glowing with a soft light.
Deva looked up at the sky and gasped. There weren't just one or two orbs. There were hundreds of them. Souls were floating over the ruins of the village like a sea of stars.
They were her people.
She stood up and walked to the empty spot where Goddess Kali once stood. She bowed her head to the ground, then raised it back up toward the glowing sky.
She spoke the ancient words required for the farming process to be complete.
Normally, the village shared one soul a day among everyone. It was a slow, controlled distribution. But now, there was no one left to share with. There were 500+ souls waiting to be claimed.
By her calculations, this much mana would last a person a lifetime. She didn't have to share. She didn't have to hunt or farm for mana ever again.
For the first time in her life, the energy was unlimited.
She looked up at the sea of blue light.
"Hail, Goddess Kali."
On her praise, all the souls merged into a single, blinding point of light. It streaked down from the sky like a comet and went straight into her body.