Three months. That was all it took for my siblings to become radiant, towering beasts, half the size of an average human. They were lean as warhorses, divine as moonlight.

  And me?

  I looked like someone cast a growth spell and sneezed halfway through. Imagine an overripe potato with legs. That was me.

  In spite of my looks, quite very unlike my siblings, I still lived in the church. Not a chapel. Not a cute countryside shrine. No, no—the Church. Capital C.

  We were at the headquarters of the Sunmire, and quite possibly one of the few buildings visible from orbit that wasn’t a mountain or a steamship. The Great Basilica of the Sunmire spanned more land than my human’s entire hometown back on Earth.

  And I know that sounds impressive, but try waddling across it on paws the size of cinnamon rolls. Then it just feels personal.

  White spires rose like spears, each engraved with golden runes that shimmered at sunrise and practically shouted divine authority. Pilgrims needed to travel for weeks just to pray at the minor churches. The inner sanctum was off-limits to most mortals, reserved for high clerics… and us.

  Because we were not just pups.

  We were heirs.

  My siblings were born glowing. Literally. They walked within days, roared by week two, and by the first moon’s turn they were sparring with acolyte knights and winning. And me? I still struggled with stairs. Especially spiral ones. Which, for some reason, the architects of the basilica were very fond of. Because nothing says holy like making your smallest resident rethink gravity every morning.

  There were six of us. A full litter, which by Sunmire standards was a miracle. Their kind—our kind, I guess—had been teetering on the edge of extinction for centuries. War, divine attrition, breeding decline. Whatever the cause, births had become sacred.

  And so when Lady Aurelith bore six pups in one go, the church erupted in hymns. Trumpets. Actual celestial fanfare. Choirs wept. Steamblood nobles wept. Even the archcleric reportedly cried into his sapphire chalice.

  Five saviors.

  One runt.

  I overheard a priestess whisper once, “It’s as if the Matron’s womb tried to reject the last one… and fate refused to let it go.” Dramatic much? You’d think I was cursed with the soul of a cockroach.

  But let me tell you something about being the smallest in a sacred bloodline born into divine expectation: it comes with perks.

  For example: no one expects you to lead a mass.

  I once fell asleep in the pews during dawn chorus. Another time, I chased a squirrel through a sanctified herb garden. The squirrel got away. The clerics had a collective aneurysm. I was forgiven.

  Why? Because, as they say with those strained church smiles, “The runt is still a child of Aurelith.”

  That’s the trick. You mess up enough, and people stop expecting greatness. That’s when you can really start getting away with stuff.

  But even with my low-key rebellion, I couldn't ignore the feeling that hung over me like the stale incense that never seemed to fade from the basilica’s halls.

  Everyone was waiting for something.

  Lady Aurelith, my mother, had not spoken aloud since our birth. She watched us with those gleaming, volcanic eyes, silent and immense, like light made of her flesh and fur. My siblings basked in her approval like they were solar panels. Me? I mostly avoided direct eye contact. She never looked disappointed. Just… observant. Like she was watching a puzzle piece trying to realize it wasn’t cut right.

  And maybe I wasn’t.

  Because the truth was, for all the divine blood in my veins, all the sacred teachings I absorbed in hushed lectures and whispered sermons, I still remembered Earth. My human. Streaming cartoons while curled on a warm blanket. That one time I stole an entire rotisserie chicken. The life of a lazy, beloved house-pug.

  Here? I was expected to grow into a herald of fate.

  And yet, every morning, I woke up drooling on the floor of a church that probably predated gravity, wondering how exactly I was supposed to “bend destiny.”

  Still, I was learning.

  I knew how to sit through sermons without barking. I knew which vents led to the kitchen. I knew that the silver-haired Sister Elara would sneak me dried lamb when no one was looking. And I knew my siblings didn’t hate me… just… tolerated me like an old scratch on an otherwise perfect painting.

  While my siblings howled and lunged and tackled sandbags like they’d personally offended the sun, I had two great loves in life: books and naps. Preferably together.

  There was a sun-drenched alcove in the southern wing of the basilica’s library—warm stone, soft cushions, and the smell of aged parchment—that I considered more sacred than any altar.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t fight. I just… didn’t want to. Combat training happened outdoors, at dawn, and involved too much shouting. The kind of shouting that reverberated through your skull and made your ears twitch long after it was over.

  No thank you.

  I’d rather pore over dusty tomes and pass out halfway through a chapter on continental trade networks.

  Which, apparently, was a punishable offense.

  I’d sneak out of training, tail low, paws soft on polished marble, only to get dragged back by a scowling cleric or a smug sibling who thought they were doing me a favor. They never were.

  The scoldings were brutal. And loud. One priest, Brother Maevin, once shouted so hard at me his monocle flew off and shattered. I like to think I won that round.

  But through it all, I learned.

  I knew the full history of Sunmire, our country and our faith. Both named the same because, as the theologians say, “There is no distinction between land and light.” Which is poetic. And also bureaucratically confusing.

  Sunmire worshipped the sun, obviously. Kind of in the name.

  Our holy rites were timed to the rising dawn. Our monthly mass began in twilight and always crescendoed just as the first rays breached the horizon. The light would filter through the stained glass behind the altar, catching gold-leaf etchings of Lady Aurelith’s form.

  Then I’d sneeze too loud, and half the pew would glare at me.

  Still worth it.

  We lived on the continent of Elantris, one of nine known continents across the world. Elantris was not what you'd call peaceful. In fact, it was the kind of place that made war into a lifestyle. Generals were celebrities. Borders shifted like sand in a storm. Every nation claimed divine right and every crown glinted with holy justifications and conveniently edited histories.

  Sunmire was no different. Pious? Yes. Aggressive? Also yes.

  Fifty years ago, we had ambitions. Expansion plans. Border claims drawn in ink and fire. But Lady Aurelith was the only living godbeast of her generation; her mother gone, died to one of the battles, no siblings, no mate.

  A singular miracle. And miracles do not get sent to the front lines.

  Which is why, despite our holy might, Sunmire had been stuck in a fifty-year holding pattern—defensive lines fortified, airships patrolling the skies, but not an inch gained. We couldn’t risk her. Couldn’t afford to.

  And then she had us.

  Six pups. Six potential heirs. Six possible champions.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I sometimes wondered if that was why she chose to give birth at all. A divine gambit. A celestial “finally, let me breathe.”

  But how she managed it was anyone’s guess.

  There was no mate. No rumors. No courting rituals. One day she entered the inner sanctum alone. A month later, she emerged with a litter of six yipping, radiant godspawn. Clerics called it immaculate. Scholars called it anomalous. I called it suspicious, but what do I know? I’m the runt.

  While my siblings were too busy learning how to bite through armor plating, I dove into everything I could find. Military histories, economic treaties, the structural weaknesses of floating citadels. But the topic that fascinated me most?

  Theocracies.

  I learned about the Ashen Rule of Zorthar, where kings were burned alive to "sanctify" their thrones. About the Twin Harmonies of Ma'Quel, where two popes ruled at once and assassinated each other with poetic letters. And of course, about Sunmire’s own Sacred Chain of Command, where the clergy and nobility played polite chess games with real armies.

  There was a pattern in all of them.

  Worship wasn’t just belief. It was leverage.

  I started to see it in the way clerics spoke of my siblings, always with measured awe. In how nobles arrived bearing gifts, angling for favor, bowing just a bit deeper with each passing month. They weren’t just hoping for a savior.

  They were investing in one.

  And somewhere in the middle of it all, I sat curled in a library nook, tail twitching as I flipped another page.

  Sunmire had waited fifty years to move.

  The world around us burned in border wars and holy crusades, and for the first time in decades, the fire was starting to flicker beneath our boots.

  Nothing really happened though. Life settled into a pattern.

  A divine routine of early morning chants, mid-morning scoldings, afternoon naps, and the occasional squirrel chase. And before I knew it, we were approaching our eleventh month.

  My siblings, bless their overachieving hides, were now twice the size of a human. Great, gleaming creatures with rippling muscles, flowing manes, and paws like battering rams. Watching them train was like watching five very devout avalanches punch their way through prophecy.

  Me? I had finally grown enough to intimidate a well-fed sheep.

  Three-quarters the height of a human, broad-chested but still a little… squishy. I had what one cleric politely referred to as “a spiritual sturdiness.” Translation: you still jiggle when you walk, runt.

  Then the emergency happened.

  It was sudden. No warning, no omen. The booming crash of a divine body hitting marble. Lady Aurelith collapsed in the central sanctum. The Mother Matron of Sunmire. The godbeast of light and fate, now unmoving and wheezing on the floor.

  I remember the silence that followed. The way even the wind seemed to pause.

  She was carried back to her chamber, twelve armored stewards struggling to lift her radiant, weakened form. The moment her door closed behind them, the church erupted. Not in prayer but in panic.

  She told us herself, with a low voice crackling like a dying hearth, “I have perhaps a month left. Do not mourn. It is simply my time.”

  A month.

  It was a surprise. I read that our race lived for two centuries; and yet, she was reaching her end in just a fourth of it? I figured it had something to do with how we were born.

  The clerics tried to lock the news down faster than a divine vault. But secrets in the basilica were like incense, they leaked through every crack. Whispers filled the corridors. Some said she was cursed. Others, that she’d exhausted her lifeforce protecting Sunmire.

  But the most persistent rumor? Poison. That some foreign agent had infiltrated the basilica and laid low the heart of the faith.

  My siblings didn’t know how to process it.

  They’d never known death. Never faced loss. Their entire lives had been a golden promise, leading toward greatness, toward purpose. Now that promise was unraveling. They trained harder. Fought longer. They howled louder during mass. One even declared, dramatically, that they would become the new Aurelith and light the world clean.

  Not the most comforting vow, but points for enthusiasm.

  Me?

  I just started spending more time in her room.

  At first, I came out of guilt. I figured, if she only had a month, the least I could do was keep her company. Bring her water. Maybe read near the hearth while she rested.

  Except, she didn’t sleep.

  She watched me.

  She lay curled on her stone dais, golden eyes dimmer than usual, just… watching me. Like always. Not judging. Not scolding. Just tracking my every movement like I was a puzzle she never quite figured out.

  On the second day, halfway through a particularly dense tome on intercontinental trade sanctions, she spoke.

  “Please read aloud.”

  Her tail thumped once.

  Now, understand: Lady Aurelith didn’t ask for things. She commanded. But now, lying there with breath shallow and fur dulled, she made a request… to me.

  So I read.

  Day after day, I brought books based on histories, philosophies, and the occasional romantic epic Sister Elara slipped me under the table, and read them aloud while she listened. Sometimes her eyes closed. Sometimes she rumbled softly, not quite a growl, not quite a purr. Mostly, she just listened.

  And in that quiet, I saw a different side of her.

  The world outside her chamber twisted itself in anxiety. Nobles arrived by the dozen. Priests convened in secret rooms. Rumors flared and died like candle flames.

  But in here?

  It was peaceful.

  We spent the entire month like that. Quiet. Still. Together.

  And then the twelfth month came. One year since our birth.

  It was time.

  Time for the anointing. For the sacred rite that would mark us not just as children of Aurelith, but as individuals. As godbeasts in our own right. With names.

  No more “runt.” No more “child.”

  We were to step into the world not just as heirs, but as heirs with names.

  My siblings prided themselves on strength, on the clean arc of a claw strike, the echoing thud of a magic-infused leap, the theatrical roar that could knock a priest’s hat clean off. They trained their bodies. Honed their elemental alignments. Wrestled, sparred, blasted each other with glowing auras that hummed like hymns.

  Me? I read.

  Maybe it was my past life’s influence. My human was a librarian—an actual one, not the quiet type who only cared about dust jackets. She taught me the value of reading, even if all I could do back then was curl in her lap while she recited audiobooks on medieval warfare.

  Honestly, it might’ve been the only reason I learned the language here so fast. Syntax is a breeze when your first life involved Netflix subtitles and endless Scrabble games.

  It also meant I understood people more quickly than my siblings. They were still interpreting tone and posture like confused toddlers. I, on the other paw, could tell when a cleric’s smile was genuine or hiding a political migraine.

  Morning came and the basilica was a flurry of barely controlled chaos. Young nuns and nervous acolytes rushed around us, fluttering like panicked pigeons in stiff robes. We were to be anointed today, named and blessed in the eyes of the Church.

  Which meant, for some unfathomable reason, we needed clothes.

  Ceremonial robes, to be precise. Woven from sun-kissed silk, embroidered with the sigils of the Sunmire, and designed by someone who clearly had no idea what a divine quadruped looked like.

  My siblings were... less than pleased.

  One of them tried to chew his sleeve off. Another growled like the hem was insulting their lineage. I, having long ago accepted that sacred ceremony often came at the cost of dignity, simply allowed myself to be trussed up like a holy dumpling.

  “They itch,” grumbled one of the sextuplets.

  “They’re restrictive,” said another, flexing as dramatically as possible.

  “This is clearly a plot to assassinate us through fashion,” concluded the largest, somehow serious.

  An elder priest, with the weary patience of someone who’d dealt with toddlers and warlords alike, explained that the robes symbolized humility before the light of the sun. That they were worn by generations of champions, and that shedding them mid-ceremony was considered a blasphemous act punishable by exile, or worse—lecture.

  They quieted down. Grumbling, but dressed.

  We were led to the grand nave, the main church hall. The pews were full, brimming with nobles and clergy, the air heavy with incense and anticipation. Trumpets blew. Choirs hummed. The stained glass caught the morning light just so, and there she was.

  Lady Aurelith, the Mother Matron, sat upon the altar-throne.

  Even weakened, she looked impossibly regal. Her fur had regained some of its sheen, her presence filled the chamber like gravity. A thousand candles flickered behind her like a corona. Her eyes found each of us in turn.

  And then, her gaze settled on me. She didn’t smile.

  But her eyes softened.

  We walked forward in unison, paws silent against the gold-trimmed rug. We stopped, as instructed, ten paces from the altar.

  The Head Priest—Grand Solar Vicar Talem, a man who looked like his bones were carved from sunstone and his eyebrows independently declared a theocracy of their own, stepped forward.

  He began to give a speech.

  It was long. It was loud. It was mostly about the sun.

  “The light of the sun that banishes all shadows, the breath of fire that awakens the world, the golden tide that cleanses sin and blesses birth, we give thanks to She Who Howls at First Light, Mother Matron Aurelith…”

  You get the idea.

  I mentally checked out somewhere around the third “grace-infused benediction of radiant mercy.” My tail started twitching. One of my siblings nearly yawned loud enough to echo.

  Finally, he reached the part we were actually here for.

  “And now, by the will of the Sunmire and the breath of the burning heavens, Lady Aurelith shall bestow upon her divine children their True Names and sacred titles, that they may walk the world as godbeasts anointed in flame and purpose.”

  Not bad. Bit long. Could use punch-up, but solid delivery.

  One by one, we were called forward.

  The first to step up—tall, sleek, glowing faintly with solar aura—received their name in a voice that cracked the stained glass behind the altar just slightly.

  “Vaelric, the Sunbound Shield.”

  A name fit for a statue.

  Next came the two sisters, always in sync, always looking like they were about to launch into a dance or kill someone dramatically.

  “Saphiel, the Kindling Beneath Ash.”

  “Rinvara, the Light that Never Flickers.”

  Then the big one. The mountain of fur and fury.

  “Gorran, the Mountain that Never Remembers.”

  Last of the siblings, always smiling, always just a bit too curious about explosions.

  “Eline, the Spark that Dances toward Ruin.”

  Then it was my turn.