Strongest Among the Heavens

Noor Chodhry did not like Kazi Hossain.

From the moment she laid her eyes on him in the forest, she knew he was different from her. She knew he was something in his old life. Besides the aura in his eyes, there was the perfection in his form. His personality, his physique, even his damn walk—Noor wasn’t able to discern a single flaw. During the incident on the train, he proved all her worst fears and more. Kazi Hossain was unquestionably great.

Then there was Noor. Born, raised, and eventually dying in the city of Malerkotla in India, living her life as a servant and nothing more. She was the lone daughter of a servant family and that was how she lived her life—as a servant. Nothing belonged to her save the alleyway they sat in. It wasn’t like her family served a particularly wealthy family either. They were ordinary among ordinary. So what did that make her? Nothing?

The mistreatment of being a servant was...expected. Nothing special. Sometimes, the father of the family would bark his orders a little too loudly or the kids would be extra annoying. That sort of thing. Since her youth, the stories of terrible, inhumane treatment towards servants ran rampant. For the sole blessing that she was treated decently, that she was merely disrespected and not hit, she was thankful. So, so thankful. She lived, she ate, and for that, she was blessed compared to others.

And yet...there was something missing in her heart. Every day, her life felt stagnate and full of yearning.

All the yearning and dreaming in the world could not prevent sickness from taking her life. Noor died, surrounded by bugs instead of friends, her parents having left to work. She died without them knowing and she woke up to see a beautifully strange woman seated in front of her.

"You are dead."

The words didn’t strike her as odd. She expected an afterlife because that was what her parents always preached. But it wasn’t what she was told. The afterlife wasn’t a paradise. The afterlife was a land of equal opportunity and power. A chance to seize her dreams and to experience the extraordinary happiness she dreamed of. She gained power and hungered after her ambitions. Gate 10 was no different, no matter how much everyone around her said otherwise. She would lust after her goals and seek the happiness that she never managed to attain before.

The island, to her disappointment, wasn’t such a place. She was good at memorizing and committing to what was on paper, not complicated riddles. The longship rocked gently on the calm waters as Noor stood alongside Lala and Carla, the shieldswoman of the Sapphire Order. Her eyes were locked on the island’s shore, waiting.