Olivia knelt down in front of the statute of the Holy Mother, with her eyes closed and hands clasped together, a ritual that she has performed since her childhood. She thought deeply to herself, hoping that her prayers would reach the deity that she has been praying to her entire life. “Why have you cursed me with such a power?” She asked as a tear dripped down the side of her cheek.

Olivia was known in the capital as the “Divine Priestess”, the one closest to the Holy Mother, the deity that everyone in her war torn country worshipped. At a young age she was groomed and indoctrinated by the temple to become the next priestess, the one who was meant to bring light and hope to the people. When she reached her 16th birthday, a holy light embodied her during the ceremony that the temple held, and it was then that the head of the temple declared her to be the Divine Priestess of this generation. Olivia and everyone in the temple were overjoyed, a festival was thrown in her honor and thanking the Holy Mother, as the appearance of the Divine Priestess meant that their little nation had some hope. The Divine Priestess has been historically known to have been imbued with the power to heal the wounds and ailments of the people, and was something that the little nation desperately needed after being in the middle of the two much larger nations that surrounded their borders.

Olivia’s first task as the new Divine Priestess was to travel to the battlefield and heal the wounds of the soldiers that were risking their lives at the frontline of the battlefield, and she felt great honor in being tasked with this duty, as she could finally do something aside from just praying in the temple. When she arrived at the scene, Olivia almost vomited, the sight of hundreds of soldiers with gashes on their body and limbs that were missing made her realize the gravity of the situation. She was just 16 at the time, but she mustered her courage and ran towards the tent with all of the injured soldiers and quickly got to work, as she knew that if she fell here or was not able to perform her duty, more lives would be lost and the faith and joy that everyone had just acquired would have gone to waste. Olivia placed her hands on one of the soldiers, and in a flash, a warm healing light embodied the soldier’s wounds and miraculously, his missing limb grew back, and the scars and wounds all over his body began to disappear one at a time. Everyone in the tent that witnessed the scene quickly fell to their knees and began praying, hope has finally returned to their nation.

After spending months at the battlefield and the war finally coming to a truce, Olivia finally returned to the capital with all of the soldiers and they were greeted with a festival and smiles. The wife of the soldier that she saved at the battlefield, Tsarra, came running to her carriage, and tearfully said to her, “thank you so much for bringing him back home, without you, our children would have grown up without a father.” Olivia finally felt like she found her calling in life and what her greatest duty was, and decided at that moment to dedicate her entire life to healing not just the people of the nation, but the nation itself.

Around five years later the truce between the two nations ended, resulting in full-blown war, and Olivia prepared herself to once again don on her cloak with the temple’s symbol on it and ride out to the battlefield to once again perform her miracles, but first, she had to go and attend the funeral of all the soldiers that had passed since the war erupted again. At the ceremony to send the soldiers off to the afterlife, Olivia and the other members of the temple walked around the area, offering prayers to all of the families that had lost someone. As Olivia and everyone at the scene closed their eyes to chant a prayer, Olivia noticed that the sheet covering one of the soldier’s face was falling off, and she quickly rushed over to catch the sheet, so as to allow the soldier to rest in peace, but as she adjusted the sheet, she saw the face of the corpse. It was Tsarra, the soldier that she had saved five years ago, and she quickly fell to her knees. A woman holding hands with a little girl with pigtails came over to Olivia and said, “he passed away a couple days ago… his heart just gave out and he collapsed, one day he was here and the next he was gone…” Olivia quickly recognized her as the wife of the soldier and realized that the little girl must have been the child that she was talking about in the past. The wife, and now mother, grabbed Olivia and asked why he had to die and her anger quickly turned into sorrow as she started crying like a child in Olivia’s embrace, while her daughter was holding onto her mother’s dress.

At the cremation ceremony, Olivia stood at the top of the platform, singing songs and hymns of peace and salvation, while everyone standing at the bottom were praying while holding back their tears. During that solemn scene, Olivia looked towards the fire and as the sheet covering the faces of the soldiers burned away, she noticed the faces of the corpses there. There was Henry, Speed, Bryce, Marcus, Ben, and all the other soldiers that she had healed during the war, and a horrible thought settled in her mind at that moment.

Olivia ran to the room of the Bishop in the temple and for the first time in her life, she raised her voice, and exclaimed, “why were all of the soldiers that I had performed a miracle on dead?” The Bishop slowly raised his head and looked at her, and then looked back at the documents on his table and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Olivia had known the Bishop her entire life and knew that he was lying, so she knocked everything off of his table and demanded an answer. The Bishop responded with, “there are things that you shouldn’t know because you wouldn’t be able to handle the consequences of knowing.” After the heated argument between the two, Olivia walked out the door of the Bishop’s room and sunk to the ground, vomiting and bursting into tears all at the same time. The Bishop told Olivia that all the higher ups of the temple all knew that the miraculous powers bestowed upon Olivia was one that could definitely heal the wounds and grievous injuries of people, but at the same time, the existence of holy power in the bodies of those who were healed would be rejected by the host’s body, as they were not the ones bestowed with the holy light, and they would all inevitably die in five years, when the holy power within them disperses, taking the flames of life away from them as well.

Back to the present:

Olivia finally got up from the kneeling position that she was in, with the blood on her knees soaking through her white priest gown, and as she approached the front doors of the temple, she resolved herself and put on a smile, and opened the door, greeting the thousands of citizens that had gathered for her and her miracles. As she walked down the steps of the church towards the shelter with the ill and diseased as well as the tents with injured soldiers, she held onto her smile, despite the nauseating feeling that she had within. Olivia entered the shelter and performed a wide-range heal, quickly followed by all of the people in that shelter standing up and cheering for her. A little child ran up to Olivia and said, "thank you for making the pain go away big sister!" Olivia smiled for them, because she needed to, and as she turned away, her hands trembled, but she kept walking towards the tent with the soldiers, ready to perform her "miracle" once again. As every miracle was a lie, and every lie resulted in a death, and every death was just the result of another day, but she had to keep pushing forward, because if she were to stop now, the entire nation would collapse and fall into despair.