Editing CMU Chapter 01 (section)

= <span style="color: #FFFFFF !important;">Chapter One: Weight of Wakening</span> =

On the 10th of Yistolê, 502nd Year of Remembered Time (14 days to the Eve of Snows).

In the shadowed glade of a rain-soaked forest, Poleen Juvukis dangles at the end of a rope, her neck snapped, her life extinguished. Or so it seems. The hemp bites her flesh as she plummets into a void, a liminal abyss where her consciousness floats, untethered from the mortal coil. Here, in this eternal emptiness, whispers slither like serpents, probing her essence with questions: Who are you? What is your name? Why are you here? Panic and anger war within her as she grapples with her identity, clinging to the name Poleen Juvukis and the ritualized declaration, I am dead. Yet a defiant second voice, eerily her own, snarls, I refuse to die, shaking the cosmos of her soul. This internal schism—between the doe who surrenders and the predator who feasts—hints at a fractured self, a woman whose past is as elusive as the Bliss promised by the Listening Gods. As her essence quivers, a distant heartbeat reverberates, pulling her back to the world of the living, where rain patters on leaves and the stench of mildew and whiskey fills her nostrils.

Returned to her body, Poleen lies paralyzed, her neck broken but inexplicably healing, as two men bicker over her corpse. One, a vile raper, tears at her dress, mocking her lifeless form, while the other, repulsed, retreats into the dark. The scene is grim, visceral, and charged with the weight of betrayal—her brother Benê lies dead nearby, a victim of the same noose. As sensation creeps back, Poleen’s fingers twitch, her heart thuds, and her predator’s instinct awakens. With chilling precision, she strikes, gouging the raper’s eyes and snapping his neck, her actions devoid of remorse, only a cold thrill. The second man, fleeing in terror, becomes her prey in a moonlit hunt through the woods, her naked form a blur of vengeance. She corners him, extracts fragmented truths—the Berjer tê Aprelêu ordered her death, branding her a thieving witch—and kills him with dispassionate ease. Left with two pouches of meager coins, a dagger, and a name that feels both hers and foreign, Poleen stands over her brother’s body, wrestling with an alien emptiness within. The chapter closes as she ties a sash around her waist, lantern in hand, and steps onto a trail that might lead to answers or more blood, a woman reborn as both hunter and haunted, driven by a need to reclaim her shattered self.

[[CMU Chapter 02]] — Debts of Living<br>
[[The Contessa of Mostul Ûbar]] - Main Chapter Listing

[[Category:Poleen]]
[[Category:Benê]]
[[Category:Berjer tê Aprelêu Mention]]
[[Category:Nindi’vilu Mention]]
[[Category:Sedûnyâ Road Mention]]
[[Category:CMU Chapters]]