Chapter Text
The thrill of battle. Once, Vi had thought she understood it—believed she loved it. The rush of adrenaline as she stepped into the ring, the electric hum in her veins when fists met flesh, the satisfaction of a perfect counter, the sting of bruises blooming beneath her skin. She had convinced herself that all of it—the pain, the exhaustion, the sheer force of will that kept her standing through each round—was what made her feel alive.
Now, she wasn’t so sure.
The pit had become something else entirely. She didn’t fight for sport, not anymore. She fought because it was the only thing she could do, the only way to keep the storm inside her from tearing her apart. Rage burned in her chest, an ember threatening to consume her, and the only way to smother it, even for a moment, was through violence. She needed that release. The impact of her fists against flesh, the roar of the crowd, the fleeting seconds where nothing mattered but instinct and movement. That was the only thing keeping her together.
And for a while, it worked.
She had thrown herself into it with everything she had, and the pit had welcomed her with open arms. The fights had become her lifeline, the pain a grounding force, the victories an excuse to keep going. The winnings funded her nights at the bar, drowning in alcohol and music, the haze numbing everything just enough to make it bearable. Loris had been good company. He had laughed with her, drank with her, and when the nights stretched too long and the drinks hit too hard, he was the one who made sure she got home in one piece. In those moments, she had almost believed she was still human, still capable of feeling something other than raw, unfiltered anger.
But even that illusion faded, the world losing its colour, its taste. The nights blurred together, and the mornings were nothing more than a dull ache behind her eyes, a pounding reminder that she was still alive when she didn’t want to be.
It all made the world seem small, distant, and insignificant. Let her stop caring about a city that had never cared about her.
She even had a nickname now. The Hound . She had almost laughed when she heard it for the first time—or cried. She couldn’t remember. She just knew she both hated and loved that name. It was ironic, considering a similar title being held once by the father figure she failed the most. She supposed it was because of her jacket, as it had two hounds snarling in opposite directions. Like her. Always pulled in two different ways—toward the past and away from it, toward the anger and away from it. The world had a very twisted sense of irony.
Nonetheless, the cycle continued. Fight. Win. Drink. Repeat.
And for a time, it had been enough.
But nothing ever stayed enough. Things just had to change.
The fights started to lose their spark. The victories felt hollow. The alcohol dulled the edges of her thoughts, but it didn’t quiet them completely.
And then came the visions.
At first, they were nothing. A flicker at the corner of her eye, a shadow where there shouldn’t be one. She had ignored them, brushed them off as exhaustion or a trick of the dim lights. But they didn’t go away. The commander’s ghost stood in corners, in alleyways, sometimes even in the pit. Silent. Unmoving. Mocking her. An illusion that made her heart lurch before reality crashed down, reminding her that she was alone, that she was one of those animals.
Then it got worse.
One day, she mistook her for a real person. Then another. And another. The commander’s shadow blurred into the faces of strangers until Vi couldn’t trust what was real anymore.
She even began to see the commander— or was it General? —for minutes on end. Doing nothing, or mimicking her mood at the time. Her image haunted Vi wherever she went, at all hours. It hurt, it hurt so much that it made her blood boil.
The rage only festered.
Vi threw herself harder into the fights, let the crowd’s cheers swallow her, let her own howls join theirs as she slammed her fists into whatever poor bastard had the misfortune of stepping into the ring with her. She let the pain and bloodshed consume her. She drank more, pushed herself further, and sought oblivion with reckless abandon. She lost herself in it.
But it didn’t help.
And that—more than anything—enraged her.
She hated that it wasn’t enough. Hated that Loris had left her—(you pushed him away, just like you do with everyone else). Hated that she was starting to lose in the pit. Hated that no matter how much she drank, it never burned enough.
Hated her. Commander Kiramman. Whatever title she had almost given her, whatever she had once meant to Vi—it didn’t matter. She was just another ghost now.
Hated the flashes of her sist—Of Jinx .
Hated the whispers in the Undercity that still spoke her name, still called her something to be followed, when she had never cared about their cause. How they painted her image everywhere to join forces with the commander against her.
Hated. And hated. And hated.
She didn’t know when she stopped going to the pit as often. Didn’t know when she stopped drinking as much. Didn’t know when the exhaustion set in so deeply that even hating felt like too much effort.
She just knew that she was tired.
And that was why she now sat at the pathetic excuse of a desk in her pathetic excuse of an apartment, scratching out tattoo designs that would never see skin.
She didn’t even care about them.
She just needed something to do.
Fighting took too much energy. Drinking didn’t appeal to her—not tonight, not despite the itch at the back of her throat, the craving for the familiar burn. She just needed to keep her hands busy, needed something to fill the silence, the emptiness.
The chill against her skin barely registered at first, a light brush against the nape of her neck. But when the wind pressed against her again, colder this time, she finally shivered, pulling her arms closer to her chest.
Another gust swept through, rustling the papers on her desk. A couple slipped free, and Vi cursed, lunging forward to catch them before they could vanish into the mess that was her excuse for a home.
She grabbed them too roughly. The delicate paper crumpled in her grip.
“Fuck,” she muttered, slamming them back onto the desk, this time pinning them beneath an empty cup. Her brows furrowed as she turned toward the windows, expecting to see one left carelessly open.
But they were shut.
Both of them.
A slow unease curled in her gut.
The door was bolted. She knew it was.
Another cold gust of wind, strong enough to stir her loose strands of hair.
That wasn’t right.
It was the middle of summer.
The tension in her shoulders tightened, her body instinctively tensing, muscles coiling as if preparing for a fight. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, and she quickly turned around.
Vi’s heart nearly jumped out of her throat as she saw a figure standing behind her.
Before she could even think—before she could even see any detail about the person—her body reacted on instinct. A quick right hook, fast and brutal.
It struck nothing.
Her fist passed through as if she had struck air. Then, at once, she felt all of her muscles tighten and lock in place. She felt the air pushing itself in and out of her lungs to breathe, rather than the action being done by her.
For a brief, cruel moment, her mind played tricks on her, weaving illusions from exhaustion and grief. Kiramman, lurking in the periphery, another ghost among the many that refused to leave her be. But then clarity struck—sharp, cold, undeniable. Her breath hitched, her pulse stuttered, and the weight of reality pressed down like a stone in her chest.
The figure standing before her was no hallucination. No trick of the dim light. She was real.
Long, flowing dark hair streaked with white, each strand shifting as though caught in an invisible breeze. Eyes of pure, unbroken white—vast, knowing, endless. Vi had seen those eyes before. Everyone in the Fissures had. They were eyes that did not belong to mere mortals. They were the eyes they all prayed to. The comfort and the judgment, the breeze and the storm.
She wasn’t sure if she was fully awake or passed out drunk in some alleyway.
Because Janna herself could not be standing in front of her.
Could she?
Actually—scratch that. Vi could totally believe it. After all, she and the others had all but wrecked the abandoned temple during the fight. That had to mean something. But even with that reasoning, even with the burning proof of reality twisting in her gut, it still felt wrong. Unreal.
Like she was dreaming.
But the fire in her lungs, the erratic way her breath stuttered and shuddered, the tension gripping her muscles like a vice—those were all too real. And worse, she was sober.
She hated that she knew she was sober.
Janna took a step forward.
A simple movement, yet it felt as though the entire world shifted with her. The space between them, already small, collapsed into nothing. She was taller now—had she always been? It was impossible to tell. She moved like the wind itself, untethered, weightless, impossible to grasp. Every shift of her presence carried the weight of something vast, something unknowable. Like staring into the eye of a storm and realising it had already swallowed you whole.
Then, she hummed.
The sound was beautiful. Too beautiful. Too vast. It filled the room, the air, Vi’s very bones. It did not stop at her ears but seeped into her, threading through every fibre of her being, leaving something behind that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t a mere sound—it was something deeper. Something fundamental.
“Hello to you too, Violet.”
Janna’s voice carried the same ethereal quality as her hum—both distant and near, gentle yet absolute. It did not need to be raised to be heard. It simply was. A voice that could soothe or command, whisper like a summer breeze or crash like a hurricane.
Vi felt the weight of it press against her. The air in her lungs turned to lead.
She wanted to speak . Wanted to demand answers, to make sense of this, to say anything—but her throat refused. Her limbs refused. She was frozen. A rabbit caught in the gaze of something far greater than any predator she had ever known.
Janna hummed again. Then, with a simple, effortless wave of her hand—
Vi collapsed.
Her knees slammed into the floor, but the pain barely registered over the sudden, violent return of her breath. She gasped and choked on nothing but air, her lungs spasming in protest. A deep, shuddering cough tore through her, her entire body trembling as if she had just been yanked from the edge of suffocation.
“Apologies for the discomfort,” Janna said, her tone as serene as ever, as though she had merely shifted a piece on a board. “But keeping you still is not an easy task with conventional methods.”
Vi would have loved to believe that. Really, she would have.
But there was amusement threading through those words. A quiet, knowing mirth.
Vi grit her teeth through another cough, forcing herself to take slower, shallower breaths. Her throat ached, her lungs were raw, her head spun. It took several agonising moments for her pulse to settle, for the frantic hammering in her chest to slow into something almost normal.
“Well,” she rasped, voice hoarse and unsteady, “I’m still breathing, so I guess I’m not dead.”
With a heavy, exhausted sigh, she reached for the edge of her desk and pulled herself up. Every muscle screamed in protest, and every bone felt wrong, but she managed. Barely.
Her gaze flickered to the deity standing in the centre of her home.
“And I’ve got a goddess in my home…”
She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel honoured or utterly doomed.
"Not asking why? Or even bowing?"
The words were not mere curiosity; they were expectation, inevitability—spoken with the weight of something absolute. They did not seek an answer. They assumed one.
Vi let out a sharp exhale through her nose, rolling her eyes in defiance. "You froze me solid and breathed for me. Pretty sure if you wanted me to bow, I’d be on my knees already."
The words felt reckless even as they left her mouth. Her instincts screamed at her—warnings clawing at the edges of her mind, reminding her that she was standing before something vast, unknowable. But whether it was the remnants of adrenaline in her veins, the dull haze of exhaustion pressing down on her, or the sheer, unyielding stubbornness she had always been cursed with—she did not feel afraid.
And that, more than anything, was what unsettled her.
She forced herself to meet Janna’s gaze, to look directly at the goddess standing in the cramped, dim excuse of a home she had pieced together. The contrast was almost laughable. A being so impossibly ethereal, existing in a space that reeked of rust, old wood, and the stale remnants of yesterday’s regrets. And yet… Janna was entirely present. As though she belonged here. As though she had always belonged here.
For the barest moment, something flickered in Janna’s expression. Amusement, perhaps. A whisper of a smile that never quite fully formed before dissolving like mist on the wind. Then, with a breath as soft as the breeze itself, she took a step forward. The very air around her shifted, responding to her presence like the tide bending to the moon.
"You want to know why I’m here?" Her voice carried no weight, yet it pressed against Vi all the same. "It’s simple, really. I’m giving you a chance to fix your mistakes before they bring ruin to all."
Vi went rigid.
The shift in the air, the words themselves, the sheer certainty in Janna’s tone—it sent ice through her veins.
Mistakes? Ruin?
She stared, her heartbeat a fractured, uneven thing.
"Surprised?" Janna’s gaze flickered away, sweeping lazily over the room as though it held some deeper meaning, some unseen history woven between its battered walls. "I can’t say I blame you for that." There was something almost contemplative in her voice. But then, she exhaled, and whatever softness had been there vanished, replaced by something solid. Unshakable.
"What I can blame you for… is your past. You were a child back then, and that is why I waited."
Vi’s brows furrowed, confusion tightening around her mind like a vice.
"Waited for what? What the hell does that mean?" Her voice carried a rough edge, frustration seeping in. "You say all this, but you’re not explaining anything. I get that it’s a goddess’s job to pass judgment, but shouldn’t I at least know what I’m being judged for?"
Janna didn’t answer immediately. Time itself seemed to slow around her, bending to her will. Then, with an almost idle motion, she reached out, her fingers barely brushing against the scattered sketches littering Vi’s desk.
She tilted her head. "Pretty."
And then, in the space of a blink—she was beside Vi.
Every muscle in Vi’s body tensed, her breath hitching at the sheer wrongness of the movement. No sound. No motion. One moment there, the next—too close. Too near.
Janna leaned in, her voice a quiet murmur. "You make a fair point, mortal." A ghost of amusement lingered at the edges of her tone. "A point I was getting to."
The air thickened, charged with something unseen, something ancient. A pressure that settled against Vi’s skin, neither warm nor cold, was simply present.
"Have patience," Janna continued a glint of something unreadable in her gaze. "Soon, time will be something you have in great abundance."
Vi barely had time to process the words before the wind moved.
A force unseen—gentle yet unyielding—swept through the space, catching her like dust in a storm. She was lifted, weightless for a breath of a second, before being flung unceremoniously onto the worn mattress. The impact sent a sharp jolt through her spine.
"Are you—" she started, voice rising with irritation—
But then Janna was there again.
This time, all traces of humour were gone.
The glow that had once surrounded her was dimmer now. The brilliant white highlights of her presence dulled, flickering like dying embers. She seemed… smaller, somehow. Not in stature, not in presence, but in a way Vi couldn’t quite define.
"I’m speaking of the heist," Janna said, her voice softer now, yet no less powerful. "And what all of it led to."
A cold weight settled deep in Vi’s gut.
"The future you live in now…" Janna’s gaze was steady. Too steady. "Isn’t the worst outcome, but it's leading to it."
Vi’s breath caught in her throat.
"I’ve come to show you the end of it," Janna continued. "And to offer you a chance to fix it."
The words settled into Vi’s bones, sinking deep, coiling tight. A silent, nameless dread curled in her chest.
"W-wait…" she rasped, hating the weakness in her own voice. "What do you mean, show me the end of it? Fix what, exactly?"
Janna exhaled. Slow. Deliberate.
She didn’t answer her. The goddess simply raised her hand and snapped her fingers.
The world changed.
A chill swept through the room. Not natural. Not the kind that came with a shifting wind or an open window. This was wrong. It clawed its way inside her, sank deep, and filled the space behind her ribs with ice.
And the moment her eyes left Janna—
She knew that this wasn’t the same room.
Not anymore.
"The fuck?" Vi staggered to her feet, pulse roaring in her ears.
The walls—what remained of them—were barely holding. Cracks split through their surfaces like wounds, gaping and jagged, entire sections crumbling away to reveal—
The sky.
A sight that should have been impossible.
Her home was buried deep underground—there should have been buildings, scaffolding, endless layers of metal and stone above her. Instead, through the gaping fractures, she could see the sky.
But it wasn’t blue.
It was a sickly, suffocating grey, thick with clouds that twisted and churned, restless and unrelenting.
Her stomach lurched.
The city—her city—was in ruins.
Skeletons of buildings jutted out of the ruins like broken bones, their jagged edges silhouetted against the storm-laden sky. What little light managed to pierce through the thick, choking clouds was lifeless and grey, swallowed by the swirling dust that smothered the air. It clung to everything, turning the world into a dull, ashen wasteland where time itself felt frozen, suspended in ruin.
Then, through the unnatural hush, Janna’s voice rose like a whisper in the wind.
"I see a cold wind blowing through."
The words were melodic, almost a song, each syllable carrying a weight that pressed down on Vi’s chest. The tone was soft, yet stern, a lullaby twisted into something solemn.
Something inevitable.
Vi barely processed it—she was already moving, already forcing her legs to carry her forward, desperate to see what lay beyond the shattered walls.
She burst into the streets, looking for anything to combat the dread building within her.
And stopped cold.
Bodies littered the ground, frozen mid-motion, their expressions locked in an eternal moment of terror. Some reached out, grasping at an escape that never came. Others clung to each other, seeking warmth they would never find. Vi’s breath hitched. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
Or were they even bodies?
She took a step closer, squinting against the biting wind, and her stomach twisted. Some of them weren’t… right. Their forms were too smooth, too still, like mannequins caught in an unfinished sculptor’s work. A grotesque attempt at life.
Janna’s voice followed her still, no longer a whisper but a song carried by the storm itself.
"I see days neither fun nor free."
The words echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, swelling in power as if the wind itself had become her instrument. Vi clenched her jaw, shaking her head as she turned, forcing her feet to move again.
She ran.
Every step was treacherous, the streets riddled with sinkholes, gaping cracks that led deeper underground—deep into places where no light would reach. The wind howled, furious and relentless, pushing against her every movement, as if it wished to keep her trapped within this nightmare.
Then Janna’s voice grew louder.
"I see a future caused by you."
The wind roared.
Vi’s breath was knocked from her lungs as an invisible current shoved her back. Her boots skidded against the crumbling pavement, barely catching her balance before she fell into one of the yawning pits below.
"I see a path not meant to be."
The storm shifted.
The dust that had once danced freely in the air now moved with purpose, swirling in deliberate patterns until it began to take shape. Shadows of figures, faceless and silent, materialized before her. They reached for her with hands made of dust and air, vaguely familiar in the way they moved, in the way they felt.
Vi recoiled, dodging the phantoms as though they carried the plague, but the wind twisted around her, shoving her back into their midst.
"The future should be filled with magic."
The figures changed.
They no longer reached for her—but for each other.
The dust moulded into scenes she recognized. Painfully so.
Children ran through the streets, their laughter silent yet palpable. Two taller figures chased after two smaller ones, their movements joyful, reckless, alive.
Vi’s throat tightened.
"Dreams and wishes brought to life."
One of the girls tripped. A beat later, the other followed. The taller boy skidded to a halt, laughing as he reached to help them up—only for something to be tossed at his head, sending him stumbling back with exaggerated dramatics.
The memory struck like a fist to the gut.
Vi turned away.
She couldn’t look.
"But the days ahead are dark and tragic."
A powerful gust of wind tore through the figures, disintegrating them in an instant.
New forms emerged from the storm—men, women, children. No longer laughing, no longer playing. They ran in terror, their movements frantic, desperate. And behind them—chasing, hunting—came the figures of the mannequins.
Vi barely saw their faces.
Only the fear.
Only the inevitable end.
"No time for hope when all is strife."
She couldn’t hear their screams. The wind had grown so deafening, so all-encompassing, that it drowned out all sound.
But she didn’t need to hear them.
Her mind filled in the gaps.
The sheer panic in their movements, the way they reached for something—anything—only to be swallowed whole by the storm.
Her legs trembled.
She wasn’t sure she could keep standing.
And then—
At the centre of it all, the storm’s eye swirled, and from within it—Janna emerged.
Her voice overpowered even the wind now, ringing out like a final decree.
"Whatever might have been,"
The first thing Vi noticed was the armour.
Janna no longer bore the soft, flowing presence of a benevolent goddess. Instead, she stood clad in silver and cerulean, a war herald wrapped in the storm itself.
"All the dreams that mortals share,"
Then, she lifted her hand and pointed at Vi, and as soon as her fingers made contact with Vi’s chest—
Fire.
Pain, unlike anything she had ever felt before, erupted through her body, searing her from the inside out. Light consumed her vision, a blinding, white-hot agony that stole her breath, her thoughts, everything.
And then—
“Because of you Violet Lane, the future is a cold nightmare.”
Vi gasped, nearly choking on her breath as she lurched upright.
She was back.
Back in her home.
Back in her bed.
The storm was gone.
But Janna—
Janna was still here.
No longer a towering force of judgment. No longer armoured or wreathed in divine power.
She sat curled into herself at Vi’s side, small, almost fragile. Her once-luminous hair—now fully white—no longer swayed with the wind. It simply lay there, limp and drained of all colour. The armour was gone, replaced by white and gold fabric draped over her frame, something that could barely be called a dress. It hung off her like an afterthought.
Vi’s chest heaved. Her hands trembled against the sheets. Every breath felt like a battle against exhaustion, against the crushing weight of everything she had just seen.
Slowly, she turned her head.
A million questions burned at the edges of her mind, clawing to be asked, but she couldn’t force a single one past her lips. And even if she could—she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers.
Janna didn’t look at her.
“It is your penance for your mistakes,” she murmured. “And the second chance you begged for.”
Silence settled between them, thick and suffocating.
Vi stared at the goddess beside her—the very figure people swore by in moments of desperation, now curled up like a lost child. By heaven and hell, it felt wrong to even think of the saying when the deity herself sat beside her, looking so… small. So utterly spent. Vi didn’t know which was worse.
Her throat felt tight. She swallowed.
“What… what happens if I agree to help? How can I stop any of that?” Her voice wavered, but she didn’t care. Janna was the one people prayed to in times of despair. If she couldn’t be honest now, when could she?
The goddess finally turned to her, her form shifting. Now, she truly was a child in form, small as she was, shuffled forward almost hesitantly before settling onto Vi’s lap.
Vi stiffened.
The goddess—weightless as a whisper—leaned against her chest, staring at nothing.
Vi had no idea what to do.
A storm of nerves burned beneath her skin, her mind overloaded with too many emotions to process. And now, on top of everything, she had to worry about Janna too? The realization nearly made her dizzy.
But she didn’t need to think. Instinct took over.
She had been a sister once—a good one at that. Her body hadn’t forgotten.
Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around Janna, pulling her close, one hand threading through her hair in slow, gentle motions. She didn’t overanalyze it—maybe that was for the best. Thinking had never been her strong suit anyway.
But she needed answers.
“Please… I need to fix this.” Her voice cracked, her grip tightening. “Y-You said this is the second chance I begged for. What do you mean?”
Janna exhaled softly.
“I’m sending you back to the past.”
Vi blinked.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, as her mind struggled to make sense of what she’d just heard.
Janna didn’t wait for her to catch up.
“You’ll return in your current body, with a few possessions to aid you,” she explained. “Your past self must still follow her course, so this is the safest way to do it. Yes, there will be two of you. If you meet, you must be careful.”
She finally looked up, turning in Vi’s lap to meet her gaze. And for the first time since the storm, Vi saw it—the weight behind those empty white eyes. The eye of the storm was the quietest, but it saw all the havoc nonetheless.
“You mortals have trusted me, prayed to me, for ages,” Janna said quietly. “I cannot give you all the answers you seek—not without unravelling what must unfold. But you’ve seen the future. You know why it cannot be allowed to come to pass.”
The air around them felt impossibly still.
“The Arcane is furious at what will be done, but it is the only way” she continued. “I only need to know one thing.”
A pause.
“ Do you agree? ”
Vi swallowed.
Was it safe? No. Was it her best chance? Yes.
She had been given second chances before—so many, in fact, that she’d lost count. And she had squandered them all.
Not this time.
This was the one that mattered.
This was the one that would save them all.
Despite the gnawing uncertainty, despite the fear curling in her chest, she saw no other path.
She took a slow, steady breath.
Then, she met Janna’s gaze—those swirling, endless eyes.
“I don’t suppose I can punch my way out of this one, huh?” A shaky smirk ghosted across her lips.
Janna said nothing.
Vi let out a chuckle, more exhale than sound.
“Alright,” she murmured.
“I’m in.”