The blood was a bright splash of color on the otherwise drab and gray marble floor.

The surroundings were hidden by an obtrusive blur, such that one could not make out anything except
the scene that was front and center of the entire milieu. A woman, dressed in silk fineries of such quality
and aesthetic beauty that to gaze upon it would steal one’s breath away. Unfortunately, that quality was
at the present moment blemished by the splash of red garishly soaking the fabric. The woman was
splayed out in an awkward position, and her face was contorted in a rictus of pain and death.

She recognized that woman. No. It would be more accurate to say that she could not help but recognize
the woman.

She was the woman, after all.

She opened her eyes with the sedateness of the unhurried. She blinked several times, staring ahead at
the grandly designed roof of her canopied bed. She was not focused on the geometrics, however. Her
eyes stared ahead emptily, while her mind ran marathons in the confines of her skull.

This was the fifth premonition that she’d had in as many days. Premonitions involving her, that is.
Satrina had never managed to see into her future, despite her apparently prodigious abilities; the Moon
Mother had never seen fit to add one more card to her deck of blessings, for she was already at the
height of potential and power a Luna could even hope to reach. That was what the ardents of the Argent
Theocracy had assumed anyway. It seems they were wrong.

It had all started on that day. The day that her purpose, the reason for her birth, was finally explained to
her in exacting terms. She was to be betrothed to the Silver Prince, in order to give birth to the one that
would fulfill the Gilded Prophecy. All her life, all her training and her years of service to the Moon
Mother was apparently for one purpose and one purpose alone; to serve as a broodmare that would
bring to the world the one who would usher in an age of dominance for the Silver Dynasty.

Oh, Satrina imagined how the Epitomes must have laughed at her that day.

A knock at the door interrupted her internal musings. She blinked rapidly, turning her head towards the
wooden double doors.

“Come in,” she called out as she sat up, distractedly running her hands through long, sleep-ruined hair.