Sophia Miller.
Even as an infant, she was said to have the power of a small nuclear bomb.
The Miller estate sat atop a hill that overlooked nothing.
The windows seemed empty, like a false paradise. More gardens. More walls. More sky that stretched on forever but never seemed to lead anywhere.
She was three years old when she first lifted a grand piano with her mind.
Not a small piano. Not a toy. A full concert grand, the kind that cost more than most people's houses. She'd been trying to reach a cookie on top of the refrigerator and the piano had simply... risen. Hovered there in the air like it weighed nothing, its legs dangling, its keys trembling.
The tutors had been speechless.
The servants had fled.
And the patriarch, her father, had smiled for the first time in her memory.
"Remarkable," he'd said, his voice dry as old paper. "Absolutely remarkable."
He'd had the piano removed. Replaced it with a smaller one, one she couldn't lift. Not because she wasn't strong enough, but because he didn't want her to practice.
The estate was her whole world.
Not because she couldn't leave, she'd never tried.
"Only scary things are outside, things that even you can't handle. YOu'll go out when you grow older, okay?"
The walls were too high. The gates were too heavy. The forest beyond was too dark, too wild, too full of things she'd only seen in books.
Her days were measured in lessons. Magic in the morning, history in the afternoon, etiquette in the evening. Her tutors were the best money could buy, imported from across the globe, and they all said the same thing.
"She's a prodigy."
"A genius."
"The strongest we've ever seen."
She surpassed all of her tutors in a matter of days.
She grew tired of lifting things with her mind when she wanted to lift them with her hands. Tired of reading about places she'd never visit, people she'd never meet, lives she'd never live.
She wanted to play.
She'd seen children in the books her tutors gave her, children running through fields, children climbing trees, children laughing with their mouths open and their faces red. She'd asked once, very quietly, if she could have a friend.
The patriarch had looked at her for a long moment.
"You have me," he'd said. "And the tutors. And the servants. That is enough."
It wasn't.
She was six when she first saw a video game.
It was in one of the illegitimate children's quarters, a child that couldn't even use magic, a servant, she'd wandered there by accident, following the sound of music that wasn't classical, wasn't proper, wasn't anything her tutors had ever played. The door was slightly ajar, and through the gap, she saw a young girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, a controller in her hands, her face illuminated by the glow of a small television.
On the screen, a small man.
Sophia watched, transfixed.
The girl noticed her eventually. Her face went pale. She dropped the controller, scrambled to her feet, began apologizing in a rush of words that Sophia didn't quite catch.
"I'm sorry, young mistress, I didn't mean to-I know I'm not supposed to-please don't tell the patriarch-"
"What is that?" Sophia asked.
The girl blinked. "It's... it's a game, young mistress. It's-"
"Can I try?"
The girl's eyes went wide. She looked at the controller, then at Sophia, then back at the controller. Her hands were shaking.
"The patriarch said you aren't supposed to-"
"I'll tell him you were playing."
The girl's fingers shook.
"Fine.."
The plastic was warm from the girl's hands. The buttons were sticky. The screen was small and the colors were too bright and the music was repetitive and annoying.
Sophia pressed a button.
She pressed another.
He moved forward.
She was enthralled.
"This is, it's so-"
Then the door opened.
The patriarch stood in the doorway.
He didn't yell. He didn't punish. He simply looked at the girl, her face white, her hands trembling, her whole body shaking and said, very quietly: "You're getting kicked out."
The girl was gone by morning.
Sophia never saw her again.
The years passed.
She'd never tried.
There was no need to.
Her power eclipsed everyone and anyone.
"It's so…boring."
The patriarch kept her busy. Lessons in the morning, training in the afternoon, studies in the evening. He kept her fed, clothed, sheltered. He gave her everything she asked for.
Books, Instruments, Art supplies, anything except the two things she wanted most.
The servant she found on a random night was young, maybe eighteen, with dark hair and dark eyes and a small handheld console that glowed in the darkness.
"Let me play," Sophia whispered.
The servant's eyes went wide. He recognized her, everyone recognized her, and for a moment, she thought he'd refuse, thought he'd run to the patriarch, thought she'd have to erase his memory or worse.
Instead, he handed her the console.
She played for hours.
When dawn began to lighten the horizon, she handed the console back.
"Thank you," she said.
The servant nodded. His hands were shaking.
She was fourteen when she decided to run.
The estate was comfortable. The servants were kind. The patriarch, for all his coldness, had never raised a hand to her.
Black Scene.
'When you have everything, nothing feels special.'
[I feel like a bird in a cage]
She left at midnight.
The gates were locked, but she could balance herself on her own swords. The walls were high, but she could lift herself over them. The forest beyond was dark, but she managed her way through.
The cold hit her immediately.
Winter in the mountains was brutal, the air sharp enough to cut, the ground hard with frost.
"I'm so cold, my fingers feel like they're about to freeze off."
She shivered.
She kept walking.
The city at night was different from how she'd imagined it.
The real city was dark. Cold. The streets were empty at this hour, the shops shuttered, the only light coming from the occasional streetlamp and the distant glow of convenience stores that never seemed to close.
She walked for hours.
Her shoes, chosen for style rather than practicality, were already soaked through. Her coat, thin and fashionable, did nothing against the wind. Her hands, bare and pale, had gone numb.
"This isn't, this isn't what I imagined."
But she kept walking.
The first night, she slept in a park.
Not a nice park, the kind with benches and fountains and carefully maintained gardens.
A small, forgotten patch of green wedged between an apartment building and a convenience store, its only furniture a single bench with a broken slat and a trash can that smelled of old beer and regret.
"It feels terrible."
She'd found a cardboard box behind the convenience store, flattened it, laid it on the bench. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't warm.
She smiled.
The snow had stopped sometime around midnight. The clouds had cleared, revealing a sky full of stars, more stars than she'd ever seen from the estate, but the sky was always hazy with light pollution.
She lay on her back, her coat pulled tight, her hands tucked into her armpits, and watched them wheel overhead.
"This view sucks. I thought it'd be prettier."
"I'm free, so many choices, I don't have to be controlled anymore. I don't even know what to feel anymore."
She was cold. Hungry. Alone.
[But I can finally do anything I want to.]
The second day.
Hunger.
The kind that gnawed at her stomach, that made her head spin, that turned the world slightly gray at the edges.
She'd brought money, of course. A stack of bills she'd taken from her mother's desk, enough to live on for weeks, maybe months, if she was careful.
"I didn't think it'd be this cold. I should be more responsible."
She found a convenience store.
The man behind the counter watched her with flat, incurious eyes as she picked out a rice ball and a bottle of water. She paid with a large bill, and his expression shifted, a flicker of interest that made her skin prickle.
"You're not from around here," he said.
"No."
"Where are your parents?"
She didn't answer.
He studied her for a long moment. His eyes traveled over her coat, her shoes, her face.
"You're one of them, aren't you?" he said. "A witch."
Sophia's hand tightened on her rice ball.
"I'm not going to cause any trouble," she said.
"You already are." He jerked his thumb toward the door. "Get out."
"But I paid-"
"I don't want your dirty magic money. I don't trust you, these bills probably have some kind of magic that will probably explode if I just left it." He pushed the bills back across the counter. "I don't want you here. Now get out before I call someone."
Sophia stared at him.
[I could kill him right here]