Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

I was not coming back. I was spiraling deeper. The what-ifs were multiplying, breeding in the dark corners of my mortal mind like rabbits in a warren. What if I never remember? What if I never get my powers back? What if I’m just—just a girl? Just a normal, boring, economics-failing girl who can’t even curve a supply curve?

A shadow fell across the table.

“Sera.”

The voice was smooth. Polished. The kind of voice that had been trained to ask for things and receive them.

I looked up.

A girl stood before me. She was tall—taller than me, taller than Jiyoung and Haejin combined, it seemed, though that might have been the heels. Her hair was a waterfall of dark silk, perfectly straight, perfectly shiny, the kind of hair that had never known the indignity of a messy bun or the desperation of a hat on a bad day. Her clothes were... expensive. I didn’t know how I knew this—my celestial education had not included a module on mortal fashion—but I knew. The fabric whispered wealth. The cut whispered I have people who tell me what to wear. The bag hanging from her shoulder whispered this bag costs more than your family’s car, and I have seven more at home.

She looked at me like I was something she had found on the bottom of her shoe.

“You need to come with me,” she said. “The art room. Now.”

Jiyoung and Haejin stiffened. I felt it more than saw it—the sudden tension in their bodies, the way Jiyoung’s hand closed around her water bottle like she was preparing to use it as a weapon, the way Haejin’s eyes narrowed into slits that could cut glass.

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Haejin said, and her voice was ice.

The girl’s gaze flicked to Haejin, dismissed her, returned to me. “I need Sera alone.”

“Sera’s not—”

“It’s fine.”

I stood.

Jiyoung grabbed my arm. Her grip was tight, her fingers digging into my skin with a desperation that made something in my chest tighten. “Sera, don’t. That’s Yuna. She’s—”

“I know what she is,” I said, and the strange thing was, I did. Not her name. Not her history. But the challenge in her voice? The way she had said my name like it was something she wanted to spit out? I knew that. I had faced down demons who wore that same expression. I had faced down angels who wore that same expression. I had faced down creatures from realms beyond naming who wore that same expression.

Yuna was nothing.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, and I extracted my arm from Jiyoung’s grip with a gentleness that surprised us both. “Wait here.”

Haejin opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “If you’re not back in ten minutes, we’re coming in.”

“You won’t need to.”

I walked away from the table. Yuna turned without a word and led me out of the cafeteria, down a corridor, past classrooms that blurred into a smear of beige walls and fluorescent lights. Her heels clicked on the floor. My sneakers squeaked. It was, I realized, a fitting soundtrack for our respective roles: the predator and the prey.

Except I was not prey.

I had never been prey.

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