Soraya Nekova was born into a family of sorcerers called The Sisters of the Ashen Veil. Every woman for generations has possessed the natural gift that allow them to partake in their funerary magic. Even her older sister, Nereza, had the gift.

Each year the sisters tested her. They assumed with time the gift would show up when it was supposed to. They continued to mentor her as if she was part of the coven. Soraya spent her childhood convinced if she just worked harder that she would eventually feel the connection to the arcane that the sisters felt.

But it didn't come. 

Every child of the Ashen Veil begins by learning to serve their community before they are entrusted with sacred rites. They prepare meals and fetch water for long vigils, chop wood for hearths and funerary pyres, carry messages between elder sisters, tend the sick, clean shrines, gather herbs, prepare tea, and assist in washing and dressing the dead. These are the duties of apprentices, meant to teach humility and compassion before a young witch receives her veil.

As the years passed, the girls who had grown up beside her completed their initiations and joined the Sisters of the Ashen Veil, while Soraya remained behind. She found herself trapped in an endless cycle of chores that were meant for children. She tried to be content, reminding herself that every task mattered and that serving her community was an honor, but a quiet seed of resentment took root.

Soraya loved the women that raised her. They praised her reliability and thanked her for the countless tasks that kept the Ashen Veil running. Though every compliment was meant sincerely, they only stood to remind her that she was not one of them. She smiled through gritted teeth and accepted each compliment while the shame of resenting the people she loved slowly hollowed her out. 

Unable to bear the weight of it all, Soraya left home and enlisted in the army. If she could never become a Sister of the Ashen Veil, then she would prove her worth another way. Years of hauling water, splitting wood, digging graves, and carrying the dead had already made her stronger than most new recruits. Military life refined that strength into discipline, teaching her combat tactics, and the mastery of heavy weapons. 

For the first time in her life, Soraya had an identity that belonged only to her. She discovered that she loved training, the satisfaction of mastering difficult skills, and the confidence that came from earning every accomplishment through discipline and perseverance. The more she improved, the more she found herself surrounded by people who respected her abilities instead of pitying her shortcomings. Her commanding officers came to trust her judgment, her fellow soldiers relied on her strength, and she found friends who shared her love of combat.

The resentment she carried from childhood never disappeared completely, but distance made it easier to bear. Away from the Ashen Veil, she no longer measured herself against women born with gifts she would never possess. The crushing weight of failed expectations slowly gave way to a quiet pride in the life she had built for herself. 

Then rumors began to spread through the barracks. Witches from her hometown had been attacked. Soraya tried to dismiss them as gossip, but a familiar sense of dread settled in her stomach. By the time a letter from her mother arrived, she already knew it carried bad news.

Nereza had been murdered.

Refusing to accept her daughter's death, Soraya's mother and grandmother poured everything they had into the rituals that returned Nereza to life. The magic succeeded, but the effort sent them into a deep exhaustion and likely took years off their lives.Nereza herself awoke frail, Death Touched, and forever changed.

Soraya abandoned her post without hesitation and returned home expecting to find the proud Sisters of the Ashen Veil she had left behind. Instead she found the women behind barred doors, afraid to leave their own homes. The sisters who had raised her had become targets, and the family she had spent years trying to escape was suddenly in desperate need of protection.

She could never become one of the Sisters of the Ashen Veil, yet she realized there was another way to serve them. While her mother and grandmother recovered and Nereza struggled to regain her strength, Soraya stood watch. She escorted sisters on funeral rites, guarded shrines through the night, and made it painfully clear that anyone who wished to threaten the Ashen Veil would first have to get past her. 

Years later Nereza was chosen by the matriarchs to travel to the Ashen Marches. Soraya hated the idea of sending her frail sister into the marches, but Nereza and the matrons insisted on her going alone. Barely a week later, she gets a note saying Nereza has been captured. 

She almost lost her sister once, she did not want to do it again.