Read The Seventeenth Saintess :: Chapter 13: To Wield A Future

The sky was blood-orange by the time I stood at the center of the combat field on the third and final day of training. Sweat clung to my skin, my muscles sang with fatigue, and yet—I had never felt more alive.

Around me, the other maidens moved with discipline and purpose, but none with the fire that burned inside me. My every strike was firm, each parry calculated. Today was not just about survival or learning—it was about becoming someone who could bend fate.

"Excellent form, Saintess," Patron Feliphe said as I blocked a strike from my opponent and countered with a clean disarm. "You’re no longer just enduring training. You’re mastering it."

Cheers rose from a few lightmaidens watching nearby, but I barely heard them. My heart pounded with clarity.

I could fight. I could defend. I was not only a vessel of light to be sent out and wed like a sacrificial offering.

I was meant to choose.

And in choosing, I would change everything.

By midday, the tests began—simulated battles with shields, gauntlets, and wooden blades. I was the last to go, and they made me face two paladins at once. My feet shifted into stance naturally now. When they came at me, I met them with a flurry of grace and precision. A spin, a duck, a strike to the side. One disarmed. The second pushed back with a parry. A shift in balance—and I had him pinned.

Gasps erupted from the audience. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until I heard Patron Feliphe call out:

"The Saintess passes."

I bowed and stepped back. But the real victory wasn’t their applause. It was the growing certainty within me.

I would not walk blindly into a future someone else wrote for me.

I would carve my own path.

Even if I had to burn fate down to do it.

That evening, while I rested beneath the shrine’s flowering arbor, Rio approached with a folded piece of parchment in hand.

"They’ve begun posting news from the outer provinces," he said quietly, handing it to me.

I opened it—and my blood ran cold.

Reports confirm a surge of Erosion along the southern border of Kahelle Dukedom. Three small towns affected. Healers have failed to cleanse the soil. The afflicted suffer from shadow-rot and coughing black spores. Travel advised against.

The creeping sickness had been a distant fear until now. But this made it real.

Kahelle Dukedom… That wasn’t far. A few days' ride from Leilla.

My hands clenched the parchment.

Far from the shrine, in the heart of the capital, High Priestess Celesti sat in the candlelit hall of her sanctum. Before her stood the Duke of Kahelle, his white cloak still dusted with ash from his journey.

"Three towns have fallen into silence," he reported, voice low and grave. "We sent clerics. Only two returned, and they are... changed. Tainted."

Celesti’s fingers laced over her lap, her expression unreadable. "It is earlier than expected. The erosion wasn’t meant to stir for another season."

"It is no longer stirring, High Priestess," the duke said. "It’s moving."

"And so must we," she replied, standing. Her eyes turned toward the massive window that overlooked the spires of Hue Shrine in the distance. "The Saintess must complete her training swiftly. War may come not with swords, but with rot. And she must be ready to meet it."

Back at the shrine, I stood beneath the moon, the words from the parchment echoing in my mind.

Erosion has begun.

I looked down at my hands—hands that trembled once with fear, but now held power.

I can change the ending. I don’t have to die by the prince’s side.

The night wind whispered through the trees like a prophecy, and I made a silent vow:

I would heal this empire.

I would confront the vision.

And I would not be a Saintess destined to fall.

I would be a Saintess who fought back.