Author's note

By Kal-Enmar, Chronicler of the Waning Flame
Sanctuary of Broken Time, Year 972 after the Great Migration.

To the future, whose sun I shall never see:

I write this record not in hope, but in duty. Perhaps these scrolls will crumble to dust beneath the weight of centuries. Perhaps none will ever read what I now etch into clay and vellum. But if they survive—if your hands touch these words in some far-off era where men once again dare to ask how it all began—then know this: there was a time before the rise of the Goddess.

I was born in the final days of the old order, when men still ruled the libraries and courts, but already bowed their heads in the streets. I watched the temples grow taller as the women grew taller still. I saw our measurements change, our architecture bend, and our pride shrink as if in answer to something vast and unseen.

What you will read here is no mere fable, though it may sound like one. It is the story of an alchemist—young, bright, and doomed—who was sent south to investigate the transformation overtaking our world. His name was Kralios. His fate was not unique, but he was among the first to document the truth, and the last to do so while still standing as a man.

He ventured into the heart of the Sanctum, into the shadow of Lady Breness—once a scholar like him, now something much more. What followed was not a war, but a yielding. Not conquest, but surrender. This tale is a record of that surrender, woven with longing and humiliation, divinity and flesh.

The Goddess does not need scriptures. Her limbs write doctrine in the architecture of power, her milk sculpts nations. But some of us remember what came before. Some of us must.

If you are reading this, then perhaps your world has shifted again. Perhaps men walk tall once more, or perhaps they no longer walk at all. Either way, remember: the roots of this age were watered by silence, by desire, and by milk.

Read, then. But read slowly. Some knowledge cannot be unlearned.

Chapter 1 – The Mandate

The sun hung like molten copper above the domes of Ankarra, its late-afternoon heat bleeding across sandstone walls and golden roofs. Shadows stretched over the marbled courtyards of the Alchemical Collegium. The scent of crushed herbs and chalk dust mingled with the dry air, and scrolls bound in serpent leather slept in rows upon rows of brass shelves.

Something had changed. There was a restlessness beneath the vaults, threading through the cloisters like smoke. The city no longer belonged to men.

Kralios stood in the cool hush of the Inner Hall, before the withered figure of his Master. Anselm’s robe hung loose about his elderly frame, and his gaze was cold—not out of cruelty, but calculation, as though he were measuring his pupil's weight against a set of scales only he could read.

"You will go to the southern provinces," Anselm said, voice dry as old parchment. "To Khet Ma. As you know, the Cult of the Goddess blooms there, unnaturally strong. There’s something wrong with this devotion."

Kralios nodded, though unease grew in his belly. He had heard the rumors of the tall women of the south, towering and unashamed, of temples where men were made to kneel in the shadow of impossible curves and hushed chants. A society that was tilting on its axis, sliding toward something ancient and primal. And at the heart of it all, a name spoken in cautious tones.

Lady Breness.

A woman he had once called peer. Once.

"Do you think she might be behind the Growth?" Kralios asked, quietly.

Anselm’s eyes narrowed. "Perhaps. She vanished a decade ago. Just before the first signs appeared. Before women began… changing."

"Growing," Kralios whispered. "You think she found something?"

"I think," Anselm said, "she stopped looking. And started becoming."

The words made Kralios’s mouth go dry.

He bowed. "Ok Master. I’ll observe. Question. Report."

"And do not challenge them," Anselm snapped. "These women… they have slipped beyond the laws of alchemy. And of men."

Kralios left the Collegium beneath a sky turning violet with dusk. Ankarra was vibrating with its strange new rhythm. The city had not yet fully remade itself, but the change was unmistakable.

He passed a courtyard where a gathering of women, each over a head taller than any man present, reclined on silk cushions while musicians played stringed lutes in soft, adoring tones. One of the women was half-nude, bronze skin gleaming, breasts so full they strained the half-knot of her robe. A young man—her servant?—stood beside her, pouring wine into her open mouth as she grinned lazily and stroked his hair like a favored pet.

Further along, in the bazaar, a merchant stall jutted out into the street. The stallmistress loomed behind it—at least ten feet tall, thick-hipped, with bracelets the size of Kralios’s head stacked up her arms. Her husband, much smaller, sat cross-legged at her feet, scribbling in a ledger. Kralios watched him tilt his head upward, lips parted slightly, just to meet her gaze. Something in that gaze made Kralios’s breath catch. She didn’t smile—only looked down at him with indulgent amusement, as though the power difference between them was both ancient and absolute.

But it hadn’t always been this way.

A decade ago, the first whispers had seemed absurd. A handful of women growing taller than their brothers, then their fathers. Then their teachers. Then their kings. By the time it became undeniable, the structures of the old order had begun to groan and fragment. The Growth eventually became a fact.

And for Kralios the Growth was not happening just by chance. He had always believed that someone, or something, had to be behind the strage phenomenon.

And now, his Master was suggesting it could be Breness.

Breness… Could it be?

He began to think of her. She had always been quiet, but never shy. There had been a confidence in her that defied her age. A calm, unsettling way of looking at people—as though she saw not just their surface, but the soft, hidden hungers beneath. He remembered how she’d once spoken a single word to still an argument among apprentices, and how the room had obeyed.

She had touched his hand, once, years ago in the herbarium. Only briefly. His body had reacted before his mind had even registered the gesture. And when he’d looked up into her eyes, she’d only ambiguously smiled—slightly, knowingly.

Then, one day, she disappeared.

After a few months, the world had mysteriously started changing.

The reports from the south were clear: the closer one drew to Khet Ma, the more extreme the transformation became. The women were taller—some said impossibly so. Stronger. Louder in their laughter. Slower in their steps, as though the world moved around them. Some men claimed the scent of a woman in heat could make them weak in the knees, that one brush of a thigh could leave them sleepless for nights.

And the Cult of the Goddess thrived there. But no one seemed to agree on what, exactly, it worshipped.

That night, in his quarters, Kralios bent over his desk in the flickering glow of candlelight, the air thick with myrrh and hesitation. He dipped his quill and began to write.

***

Letter to Master Anselm

Master,

I depart at first light, as instructed. I have secured the sealed codices, and reviewed the glyphs you recommended. I will keep to discretion. But I confess… I am intrigued. These women—what they are becoming—it stirs something in me I struggle to name. It is not only fear, though fear is there. It is also wonder. And…

I remember Lady Breness more vividly than expected. She was always beyond us, somehow. I wonder now if she was already changing. Already becoming.

I will find her.

—Kralios

***

He set the letter aside and glanced at his journal. Tucked within, nearly forgotten, was a worn etching. A sketch of Breness—half-profile, head tilted slightly, the ghost of a smile on her lips. She had not yet grown then. But even in miniature, the drawing seemed to dominate the space.

His gaze lingered too long on her mouth. He had always been fascinated by her.

But this was not the moment to fantasize, a long journey would begin the next day. He closed the journal, almost reverently.

Tomorrow, he would begin his journey south—into the domain of the Goddess.

Into Her hands.