Shadowwyn Moor Hydrurga

Strength. The word reverberated in her mind, a cruel echo. What did it mean now? What did it mean in the face of what she had survived? Her mother’s sacrifices, the abandonment of her brothers to the cold, the brutal lessons learned in the shadow of the Sea—it was all too much to bear. Too much to reconcile with the idea of strength that Suliya painted so effortlessly.

The caribou grazed in the distance, indifferent to her internal war, but to Sulukinak, they seemed as distant as everything else—her family, her past, the brutal traditions she now had to confront. The image of her mother’s cold gaze, of the ritual that had torn her family apart, played over and over again in her mind.

The pause that followed was long and heavy, but it was not oppressive. It was as if the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for Sulukinak to make her choice, to understand the path she would walk—or the one she would leave behind.

Sulukinak clenched her jaw, the words sinking deep into her like a heavy weight. Strength. Was it really that simple? Was it about choosing a path—any path—and walking it, no matter how fraught with peril? She felt the heavy burden of expectation pressing down on her, the weight of her family, her heritage, the gods and rituals she had tried so hard to escape.

But in that moment, as Suliya turned her gaze to the horizon, leaving Sulukinak to wrestle with her thoughts, a part of her—however small—understood something.

There was no escaping the past. No escaping the Sea that called to her, that had claimed her family, that would always be part of her. No matter how far she ran. No matter how many times she tried to bury it, it would always be there.

And perhaps, in some way, it was a part of her own strength.

But for now, she could only stare at the caribou in the distance, her heart a tumultuous storm, and wonder if she could ever find her way back to herself again.