Chapter 101 : New Beginnings
Chapter 101 : New Beginnings
Nadya POV
The painting is slow.
Three weeks now, a few minutes each evening after the healing hall. Learning to coax the color out of the brushes Mama brought me. Trying not to be so rough with them. My hands are made for other things. Fighting. Healing. Gentleness is hard.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. Doesn’t mean I can’t fail. Doesn’t mean I can’t learn.
Tonight, I’m finishing it. The flames are golden, leaping across the canvas. But they’re not real flames. These are healing flames. Flames that warm but don’t burn.
“It’s beautiful,” Mama says from the doorway. She’s been sitting with me each night as I work on it, watching but not taking over. Not forcing my hand. Allowing me to learn my own way.
“It’s clumsy.”
“It’s honest.” She sits next to me, surveying the work. “Art isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s meant to be what words cannot express. And this—” she brushes her fingers along the side of the canvas, careful not to smear the wet paint, “—this says so much about who you’re becoming.”
Who I’m becoming. Such a strange thought. For so long, I knew exactly who I was. Weapon. Warrior. The chosen of the prophecy. Now I have to learn how to be other things. Healer. Artist. Sister in a world without the constant pressure of survival.
“I told Mira I want to take more difficult cases,” I murmur, still staring at my painting. “Things that aren’t healing properly. Chronic pain. Maybe, eventually, battlefield trauma—wolves who made it through the war but the wounds are still in their heads.”
“That’s a big responsibility.”
“I know. And it scares the hell out of me. What if I do it wrong? What if my fire hurts someone instead of helps?”
“Then you learn and try again. And again.” Mama’s hand covers mine. “You won’t be perfect, Nadya. Not ever. None of us are. But you’ll be there. You’ll try. You’ll do your best. You’ll care. That’s all any of us can ask.”
I think of Lily, telling me to think of butterflies. Of Garrett, dying, but dying with warmth in his heart instead of ice. Of the pup with a broken arm who said my magic felt like “cozy tingles.”
“I want to be good at this. Really good. Not just ‘okay’—the best. The absolute best.”
“Why?”
I flinch. The question was honest but it’s never comfortable to have your truest motivations exposed. “Because… because I have to be? Because people deserve the best I can give?”
“Those are good reasons.” But Mama’s voice is softer, almost searching. “You were great at war. Devastating. One of the most powerful fire mages anyone had ever seen. Is that what you’re chasing? Need to be the best at everything?”
The question is a thousand arrows finding their mark.
“I don’t know how to be mediocre,” I murmur. “Don’t know how to do something and only be so-so at it. Everything I’ve ever done has been because I had to. Because if I wasn’t the best, if I didn’t fight, if I didn’t try then I was as good as dead. I don’t know how to not fight. To just… be.”
“Then that’s what you have to learn next. How to be mediocre. How to fail and have it not be the end of the world. How to do things just because you enjoy them, not because you have to excel.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s going to be the hardest thing you ever do. Harder than taking down Titans.” Mama stands. Kisses the top of my head. “But you will. The same way you did with everything else.”
I dream that night of painting. I don’t dream of creating perfect, gallery-worthy masterpieces. I dream of simple images that make me happy. Butterflies and flowers and San’s face when he actually laughs. In the dream I’m awful at it. The colors bleed. The proportions are all wrong. The brushstrokes are sloppy.
But I don’t care. Because painting still brings me joy even if I’m terrible at it.
I wake lighter.
At the healing hall the next day, a wolf is sent to me with burns across his hands. An old injury from the war, poorly healed. Now the burn has scar tissue that’s causing chronic pain. The kind of thing Mira wants me to start learning to treat.
“Can you help?” he asks. Not demanding. Not insisting. Just… hoping.
“I can try.”
I work for an hour. Fire to coax out the damaged tissue to let go of the old trauma instead of healing the burn itself. It’s a delicate, precise process. I’m terrible at it. Too much heat and I have to back off and start again. The wolf winces but says nothing.
When I’m done, the pain hasn’t gone. But it’s diminished. From constant, inescapable agony to something that can be managed. Ignored.
“Thank you,” he says. There’s genuine relief in his voice. “I’ve been living with this for months. Months. This… this helps.”
It isn’t perfect. It isn’t miraculous. But it is something.
I find San after my shift. At the watchtower. Piles of stone dust. Covered in it. A smile on his face despite the obvious exhaustion.
“We raised the roof today,” he tells me, gesturing at the tower. “The watchtower is structurally sound. We just need to finish all the work that’s left.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It is.” He looks up at the tower like it’s a miracle. “I built that. Me and a dozen other wolves, but I built it. And it’s going to stand for decades. Maybe longer.”
We sit together at the base of his accomplishment. Two children who saved the world learning how to make small, quiet, peaceful accomplishments.
“I painted something,” I tell him. “I didn’t do very well.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s at home.” I shrug. “It’s flames. Golden flames. But gentle ones.”
“I’d like to see gentle flames. We’ve made nothing but violent flames for so long.”
“These are different. These are healing flames. Flames of hope.” I rest my head against his shoulder. “Ordinary flames that don’t destroy.”
“There’s nothing ordinary about hope.” San’s voice is gentle but unwavering. “Especially not our hope. We had to earn it. Every day we choose to heal instead of hurt. Build instead of destroy. Live instead of just survive. That’s… that’s extraordinary.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe the choice to be ordinary is the only way to be exceptional when you’ve spent your whole life being a weapon.
Maybe new beginnings don’t need to be perfect.
Just the will to try.