(AFKW) CHAPTER ONE

Despite carrying Annette’s soul, her memories, and her affections, it still took Shemira time to fall into the rhythm of this new life.

The world was different, almost unsettlingly so. Esperia was a vast magnificent realm, home to mortals and mythical beings alike, and where the miraculous was as natural as breathing. But here, the air was heavy with pollutants, thick with the whirr of machines. Strange boxes droned in every home, their bright lights painting shadows across the walls. Towers of steel and concrete rose where once she had known buildings made from magic. People hurried through their lives with eyes fixed on odd glowing screens, their faith placed not in gods or legends, but in technology, in progress, and in the illusion of safety.

And yet, beneath the strangeness, they were not so different. 

Esperia had been consumed by the Immortal War, an endless clash of powers between higher beings and their chosen few. This world, too, had its own Immortal War with an evil force. Here they called them Endbringers, and the consequences of those battles affected every life she saw. People spoke of them in hushed tones, the way Esperia’s mortal denizens whispered of the demonic forces, Hypogeans, that lurked in shadows. The Simurgh, Behemoth, and Leviathan carried the same awe and terror as the enemies Shemira had once faced.

For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she had been cast into this place as one of the Dimensional Heroes that had so often appeared in her homeland: strangers pulled from beyond time and space to help shoulder the fate of nations. But if she was, she felt ill-suited to the role. What could one soul, even one with powers she barely knew how to use, do against monsters that could level continents? Against the white-winged goddess she had glimpsed in a news broadcast, her mind whispered a truth she could not silence: I am nothing.

But that was not her concern yet.

For now, she had a role to play, and a family to tend.

The Heberts—her family, she reminded herself—were struggling. The accident had left them with hospital bills they piled up higher than she could bear to look at, and though Danny never spoke of it aloud, she could feel the tension in him plain as day: the way his hands lingered too long over the checkbook, the weary slump of his shoulders, and the creases that deepened on his brow when he thought no one was watching. Taylor tried not to notice, but Shemira saw the way her daughter’s gaze flicked to her father’s expression at dinner, her small shoulders tightening in a quiet worry she shouldn't have.

It had been a month since she was discharged from the hospital. Long enough to recover. Long enough to stop being a burden.

And so it was time to return to work.

The idea unsettled her more than she cared to admit. Annette had been an English professor, respected for her insight and her kindness. Shemira had been many things—wife, mother, healer’s aide—but never a teacher, at least not in a professional capacity. Words and literature, metaphors and essays… they were a different kind of battlefield, one she felt poorly armed to fight on.

But necessity left no room for hesitation.

Her life—Shemira’s life—was gone. Esperia, her husband, her son, and even the faint hope of reunion with them had been torn from her. What she had left was this family, this world, and this precarious existence balanced on the edge of debt and grief.

So she buried her misgivings, forced herself to mimic Annette’s familiar characteristics, and resolved to walk back into the classroom.

For Danny, for Taylor, and for the chance, however false, that she could come to love this family as much as her true one.

And in the quiet corners of her soul, where her pessimistic thoughts whispered and her grief still ached, Shemira told herself that she could endure. She had to.

Because if she didn’t, if she let the mask slip and reveal who she really was, the fragile life she had stolen would crumble, and she could not bear to lose another family. Not again.