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Yara stood on the shores of what was once her home, the water lapping at her feet. It was a grey day, as near every day on Calernia was since she had attained her last impossible victory.
What should have been an impossible victory. But she had learned long ago that nothing in this Creation was truly impossible. Even the Gods could be cheated in their game.
Despite this, she was tired. More than anything, she was empty. Too exhausted for anger or bitterness or triumph or relief.
Soon. She would die. Even now she could feel her last tether to this continent she had bound herself to in her youth fraying.
When the last worthy died who had been spared Judgement's sickle. It would snap.
She had considered visiting Hanno of Arwad. Witness his last moments and sing for him the song that would herald the end of Calernia.
But Yara could not bring herself to do so even as where he lay dying was only across the other side of this beach.
Soon enough he left her mind, blown away as dust.
Her thoughts skimmed and jumped along the people she had fought against. People she should have fought for.
Catherine Foundling who could have replaced her.
Cordelia Hasenbach who had done all she had in service of the people she led and the ideals she held at her core.
William of Greenbury. The exact kind of person she had taken up her position for to prevent tragedies like him from being begun in the first place. To alleviate Creation's sufferings in all the ways she could and lead people to goodness.
In the end, she had not broken. Had instead grown twisted as she bent and bent and bent to serve the Gods who had made this world all the while she did what was in her power to cling to the beliefs that had driven her to seek becoming Intercessor.
It would not be a reward they gave her when she passed. It had not been service leal that she had provided. Taken and usurped the empty position of representative to guide her home to the future she had once thought she could bring everyone to.
She looked forward to what came next anyways.
Fool girl that she had been, she thought the price would have been worth the prize she sought.
Yara of Calernia hummed the last bars of the mourning song of her people long dead. Filling her hands with sand.
Hanno of Arwad died.
She closed her eyes and exhaled. The last thread snapped. She let go of the stories and the lives she had once held and the wind blew all the grains of sand far, far away to a land unknown.
And yet she remained.
Yara of Calernia remained.
As no one and nothing remained.
Yara of Calernia. Nothing-girl. Intercessor still. For nothing and of nothing. Cast aside. Permanent. Living monument. Keeper of the Stories of a dead continent.
No other way. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to fight against. Still she was not dead. And the fool girl knew she never would die.
Yara of Nothing remained.
So she lived, ever after, the girl of nothing.