When she died, she expected nothing. Not darkness, not light. Just an end to the feeling. She thought she wouldn't be conscious of anything at all.
So, she didn't expect to wake up.
One moment there was cold numbness, and the next, she was lying on her back, feeling soft grass beneath her. There was no pain. She pushed herself up and looked around, her heart pounding with a confusion so deep it felt like fear.
She was in a garden, but like no garden she had ever seen. The fields stretched toward a horizon of soft, golden light, dotted with trees whose leaves shimmered with colors she had no name for. Flowers of impossible sizes and shapes bloomed everywhere, their scents mingling into something that made the air itself feel alive. It was devastatingly beautiful.
"Am I… in the afterlife?" she whispered to herself, standing up on steady, unbroken legs.
"You are not in the afterlife," a woman's voice answered, calm and clear. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. "You are simply in my garden."
Jinx turned. A short distance away, a woman was squatting, tending to a cluster of flowers that glowed with a soft, internal blue light. Jinx could only see her back. The woman was tall, and her hair was a breathtaking cascade of black curls so long they pooled on the grass around her. And the hair… it seemed to shift and stir with a gentle life of its own, independent of any breeze.
The woman stood and turned to face her.
Jinx's breath caught. The woman was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, not because it was harsh, but because it was too much to take in. Her skin was a rich, warm brown that seemed to glow with a gentle inner light, like polished wood under a sunset. Her features were both serene and powerful.
"Where am I?" Jinx asked, her voice small. "Is this a dream?"
The woman smiled, and the flowers nearby seemed to brighten. "You seem not to remember who you are talking to. That is… unsurprising, but a little disappointing."
She began to hum. It was a simple melody, but it resonated in Jinx's chest. As she hummed, the garden reacted. Vines curled toward her. Flowers Jinx hadn't noticed opened their petals, releasing fragrances that washed over Jinx in waves—scents of calm, of safety, of profound relaxation. The tight knot of fear and confusion in Jinx's chest began to loosen.
Jinx stared, the realization dawning slowly, then all at once. The impossible beauty, the power in the simple hum, the feeling of being in the presence of something vast.
"You… you are a goddess," Jinx breathed.
The woman inclined her head. "Yes. Though it seems the world you live in has forgotten to teach its children that its not only gods that exist. I am not surprised. Mortals are good at forgetting inconvenient truths."
She took a few graceful steps closer. "My name is Nythera. I am the goddess of Conflict, of Knowledge, and of the Raw Heart. Of emotions in their truest, most powerful form."
"Why am I here?" Jinx asked, taking an instinctive step back.
"Ah," Nythera said, her smile turning knowing. "We are coming to that." She gestured with a hand that seemed to leave a faint trail of light in the air. "Walk with me."
Jinx didn't feel compelled by force, but by the sheer weight of the being before her. She had no choice. She fell into step beside the goddess, her bare feet silent on the perfect grass.
Nythera walked in silence for a moment, the only sound the soft rustle of her living hair and the distant song of unseen birds. "You called out to me, you know," she said, her voice melodic.
Jinx frowned, confused. "I… I didn't. I wasn't aware of calling any goddess."
"You did," Nythera replied, glancing at her. "In the final moment, when you wished for a second chance. When you swore to get justice. That was a prayer, sent directly to me. It was loud. Desperate. Delicious." A flicker of something ancient and hungry passed through her glowing eyes. "I am the goddess of Conflict. Your vow for vengeance, born from a heart finally broken open… it was a beacon."
Jinx wrapped her arms around herself, though she felt no cold. "I didn't know."
They arrived at a seat formed from the living trunk of a great tree. Nythera sat, arranging her dress. After a pause, Jinx sat gingerly beside her.
"Are you saying… you want to bring me back to life?" Jinx asked, her voice trembling.
"Yes."
A bolt of pure terror, sharper than any she'd felt in the snow, shot through Jinx. "No. I don't want to go back there. I'm finally dead. I finally have peace. Why would I ever want to go back to the suffering? To the whippings, the contempt, the cold? I just want it to be over."
Nythera's serene expression didn't change, but her voice took on a new, razor-edged quality. "Is that so? Well, that's good then. It's very good that you learned your place so thoroughly. It's good that you allowed that man to use your love as a weapon against you. It's good that you believed that being in love meant accepting every ill treatment and then thanking him for it."
Jinx flinched as if struck.
The goddess continued, her tone becoming a soft, mocking singsong. "It's good that you learned to be humiliated and then apologize for causing the humiliation. To feel that you were the one in the wrong every single time. To lie awake believing you were never, ever enough." She leaned forward slightly, her glowing eyes pinning Jinx in place.
"And it is especially good that you let them convince you that a barren womb means a barren soul. That it makes you useless. A waste of space. A Jinx. Yes, very good. You were a perfect student of suffering. You passed every test of degradation with flying colors."
Tears, hot and shameful, spilled down Jinx's cheeks. The goddess's words weren't just true; they were scalding, peeling back every layer of quiet acceptance to show the festering, stupid wound beneath.
"I have seen it all," Nythera said, her voice dropping back to a calm, terrible clarity. "Every tear, every flinch, every silent plea. And if, after all of that, your grand wish is to simply fade away and let these people continue… if you want to let Fenris live in luxury funded by your dead mother's love, to let him and his mistress raise a child on your stolen wealth, and to let them find another broken girl to devour in your place… then by all means." She gestured elegantly toward a path that seemed to shimmer into existence, leading toward a soft, beckoning light.
"Your peace awaits. Go into the afterlife. Be at rest. Let the cycle continue unbroken. I am sure the next woman he destroys will be as grateful for your sacrifice as you were."
The words didn't just hit home. They tore apart the quiet peace of the garden and the numb acceptance of death. They painted a picture not of her own end, but of a never-ending chain of misery that she was, in her passivity, allowing to continue.
The image filled her mind: Fenris smiling, Silvia laughing, another young woman with hopeful eyes walking into the same gilded trap.
The pain of the avalanche was nothing compared to this. This was the pain of truly seeing, for the first time, the full scope of her own tragedy and its potential to become a legacy.
Nythera watched the turmoil on Jinx's face for a long moment, then sighed, a sound like wind through deep canyons. "Perhaps it was a mistake to bring your soul here. You may leave. After all, you probably still won't believe that it was Fenris himself who planned the avalanche. That he paid your driver to abandon you, to lock you in, so the snow would finish the job and deliver your full inheritance to him."
Jinx's head snapped up. She looked stunned, her eyes wide. "He… he planned to kill me?"
"Are you truly surprised?" Nythera asked, her voice flat. "A man who had you publicly whipped for a crime he knew you didn't commit multiple times. A man who doesn't value you. You think a person capable of that would hesitate to simply make you… disappear?"
Jinx stared into the middle distance, the pieces clicking into a horrifying picture. The driver's strange behavior. The locked doors. The too-convenient 'accident' on the most dangerous road. She had never wanted to accept it because it meant admitting the love she'd clung to was not just dead, but had been a poison from the start. She had been wired to believe in it, to feed it, no matter how it burned her.
"You're right," Jinx whispered, the words ash in her mouth. "I am stupid. So stupid. I thought if I just stayed, if I just loved him enough, he would change. But it only made him worse. It made everything worse." She hugged herself tighter. "But I don't deserve a second chance. I don't deserve to go back. I let it happen."
"Your mind says that," Nythera countered, her finger tapping lightly over her own heart. "But your heart screams the opposite. It is screaming for justice. For vengeance. It is calling to me right now, a raw, beautiful song of fury. Do not silence it with more of your misplaced humility."
The goddess stood, her form seeming to grow taller, more immense. "Even among my kind, there is unfairness. I do not simply stand by and watch them do as they please. I answer the prayers that come from the raw heart. And I am answering yours."
She reached out, and a light like captured starlight gathered in her palm. "I will give you my blessings. Gifts you will carry back to your world you will use for your mission."
"What mission?" Jinx asked, her voice barely a breath.
"You already know," Nythera said, a true, fierce smile touching her lips for the first time. "Now tell me, what's your mission."
The realization solidified in Jinx's chest, hard and clear as diamond. "My mission is to change the rules. To break the system that says a woman's worth is only in her womb or her power. That oppresses women, rich and poor. A system that let Fenris do what he did."
Her chin lifted, a new fire igniting in her green eyes. "And if the ones in power, the patriarchy, choose not to listen… if they try to shut us down… then we will make them listen. Violence will have to speak for us."
Nythera's smile widened. "I knew I chose the right broken soul." The light in her hand pulsed. "And I know, your mother Cecilia, wherever her spirit rests, is finally proud of the woman you are becoming."