She was born a boyar’s daughter, promised to a fate she would not take.
She remembers the clean field where she cast them down, the cheers of the crowd, the songs and feasting as the sun gleamed over the golden fields.

She remembers the dark night that followed, the shadows that stole her sister;

the tired look of her father as his strength waned.

Her heart growing colder.

So she swore an oath and rode from her father’s hall with her brother, her guard, and Milosz whose laughter once kept fear at bay.

She remembers the river, black water dragging riders under, and her brother hauling them gasping to the bank.
She still hears the pale-eyed priest in the mist, placing a bone toy in her hand and whispering of a child who would never return home.
She still sees the tavern brawl, sudden and wild, and the parchment at dawn that sent her brother back to guard their father’s hall.
She remembers Milosz, clumsy in the water, joking through the fight, and the terror in his eyes when the poison claimed him.

She still feels the forest pressing close, its whispers biting, its shadows wearing the faces of the lost.
And beyond it the swamp awaited, black and endless, its mire pulling her down step by step.

As she stands on the mire's edge, she remembers it all.

But the way home, she cannot remember it anymore.