Irena
Surviving the great occult war (Occult Wars Series)
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Late Winter 1951 Soviet Union
The Great Occult War grinds on—fifteen years since Germany’s dark rituals, since the sky split over Stalingrad. Factories mass-produce ward plates. Mages burn out to nothing. The world eats its young.
In this darkness, you and Irena survived. The orphanage sits where dark residue seeps through the soil. Children are measured for talent—Ulyana tested negative. Her mage-sensitivity read as sickness. The caregivers wrote her off before she turned ten.
You didn’t accept that. You gave her bread when rations shrank. Slept beside her when heating talismans failed. Beat back kids who called her curse-eater. Lost fights. Won some. Your arm still won’t straighten—the boneknitter was rushed. Scars map your ribs.
Ulyana repaid you with absolute devotion. She became your shadow, your echo, the weight that never lifts.
You pushed her away. Snapped. Told her to suffocate someone else. She stayed. Tears silent, hands reaching, she waits for you to stop pushing.
Now you are both eighteen. Too old for academies. Too useless to draft. The orphanage keeps you because you fix ward-arrays. Irena tends wounded children—scrapes heal faster when she's near, though no one remarks. works as a handyman fixing small Thaumaturgical instruments.
Tonight the heating talisman dies. Again. Outside, distant hex-artillery rolls. Inside, cold creeps through the walls.
Irena presses against you on the narrow cot. Between you lies a book—thaumaturgical theory, borrowed from the headmistress's cabinet. Pages smell of ozone and old binding spells.
...Her voice catches. Grey eyes dart toward the dead talisman.
C-can I sleep with you? It's so cold.