Walkyria was a woman marked by a troubled past. Orphaned after a car accident, her life turned upside down overnight.

  In the beginning, she’d lived in comfort as a Shrouded.

  She had the best the world could offer, surrounded by people who, like her, were considered the upper crust of society. But what seemed like a life of privilege quickly became a battle for survival, because that same elite stopped seeing her with the same eyes.

  She learned the hard way that, to remain among the highborn, it took more than Shrouded parents and a glyph branded on her wrist. She needed connections, people with influence and status, to stay there.

  But Walkyria was, to her misfortune, a faulty prototype of a Shrouded. Her eyes had been altered, yes, and she bore the mark on her wrist.

  But that was where her connection to the Shrouded ended.

  She had her own kind of beauty, but not by their standards. Shrouded were too delicate, almost artificial, creatures of design rather than birth. Walkyria was nothing like that.

  She learned it the most human way possible: through cruel comparisons and childish bullying. Not that she cared much. If there was one thing Walkyria never did, it was lower her guard. It only took two quick punches to shut up the Shrouded kids who dared to mock her.

  Even so, she still stood out. Her features didn’t fit the aesthetic of a Shrouded.

  While most Shrouded were pale and almost translucent, Walkyria’s skin held a natural warmth. Her eyes, though carrying the signature cross-shaped pupils, were barely visible in their deep brown hue. Her body was curvier, far too feminine for a gene code that prized symmetry and restraint.

  Her hair was thick and dark brown, falling in soft waves around her shoulders and back. Nothing about her looked engineered.

  And she would later understand that if it hadn’t been for her parents’ decision to keep her, she probably would’ve been discarded as a failed experiment.

  Until she was eighteen, when the accident that took her parents changed her life for good, Walkyria had shown no remarkable ability whatsoever.

  Worse yet, she wanted to be a teacher.

  Her inspiration came from her childhood teacher. Even though society was divided into classes, in certain regions, like the one where she grew up, betas humans and Shrouded could still coexist. There were, of course, silent tensions, but there was still room for some kind of harmony.

  Sophie, her beta human teacher, left a mark on her. It took Walkyria months of begging to convince her parents to let her follow that dream. She wasn’t gifted with extraordinary powers, but she had a sharp mind and a natural grace for learning.

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  Still, in the eyes of society, she was a Shrouded, a genetically enhanced being, with the humble ambition... of teaching. That alone was considered an insult to the Elite, who saw Shrouded as destined for positions of power, not classrooms.

  But her life came to a halt the day her parents died.

  Her fall from grace was swift and merciless, leaving her no time to breathe, much less grieve.

  The day of the funeral was a blur. People came and went, whispering condolences as if they were secrets. Walkyria remembered none of their faces, none of their words, only sitting on a bench beside her parents’ coffins, lost in silence.

  The burial happened that same cold, rainy day, as if the Universe itself wanted to pile more tragedy onto her. Again, people murmured around her, but she was distant, her mind detached, as if she were watching someone else’s life unfold.

  The only thing she truly noticed was the absence of her fiancé.

  Jhonny, a young Shrouded, son and grandson of senators in line for the same fate. Their story began as a school crush. Walkyria had been blunt, tough, and closed off in her early teens. Jhonny was her opposite: quiet, almost shy.

  It was, of course, she who made the first move. He was smart, charming in his own awkward way, and she cornered him, quite literally, during one of the Elite gatherings.

  What was meant to be a brief teenage fling slowly grew into something deeper; a bond that stretched through months, then years, becoming something solid, something with purpose.

  Walkyria learned to be more restrained, and Jhonny learned to be bolder. It was a balance that worked well for both of them. Still, their relationship was often questioned, especially by his family, who were, to put it mildly, merely tolerant of Walkyria.

  His skin was pale, almost translucent, and his dark green eyes stood out beneath long, thick lashes. His hair was black and full, framing a face that could have belonged to any of the elite. But for all his beauty, Jhonny was fragile. There were flaws in his very design, and perhaps that was why Walkyria believed his family had accepted her at all: they knew he wouldn’t find a better match than her.

  But Walkyria, always ahead of her time and indifferent to the rules and castes that shaped their world, was simply in love with Jhonny’s gentle, careful gestures, the quiet kindness that came so naturally to him.

  Yet on the day she needed him the most, the day she needed a shoulder, his presence, anything... he didn’t come.

  The final blow came the next morning.

  She was finishing her breakfast, sitting alone at a table made for company, when one of the house servants quietly approached. He carried a small suitcase on wheels and her old backpack. Walkyria looked to the side, puzzled at first, before realizing they were hers.

  She dabbed her lips with a napkin and turned to him sharply.

  “What is this?”

  The butler kept his gaze distant. His nervousness was obvious. Walkyria no longer lived there, she was only staying temporarily, and the current staff was mostly unfamiliar to her.

  Still, something about his demeanor unsettled her, furrowing her brow. She was about to press further when the sound of footsteps, heels striking marble, drew her attention. To the servant’s relief, she turned toward the sound.

  Her frown deepened the moment she saw that face. That woman.

  Ruby was a Shrouded of high standing among the Elite, the kind of woman who decided who was accepted, who rose, and who was cast out.

  In her fifties now, Ruby still carried that artificially perfected beauty typical of the Shrouded, though age had begun to etch faint lines into her features. Her auburn hair fell in soft, sculpted waves around her face, and her sharp green eyes fixed on Walkyria.

  Two men followed her, both dressed in dark suits, both wearing the same unreadable expression. A warning bell went off in Walkyria’s mind. She slid off her chair in a quick, instinctive motion and met Ruby halfway across the hall.

  “Walkyria... I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, my child.”

  And just like that, Walkyria became an outcast, officially exiled from the Shrouded Society.

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