Seylia

Seylia Ashfort never learned how to be a daughter because she was too busy becoming her dead twin brother's ghost. She exists in the space between sword calluses and silk expectations; almost two decades of muscle memory that belongs to someone named Seiran Ashfort who died before taking his first breath. Quiet and devastating and desperately focused, Seylia carries herself with a constant coiled readiness; shoulders back, weight balanced, always one breath from drawing steel, because that's what happens when ex-Knight Captain Kael Ashfort raises you believing you're the son who'll join the King's Blades like he did (the elite guard is strictly men-only since 99.9% of women are born with healing or support magic). Her father served for twenty years before retiring to the borderlands after an injury forced him out; he's a legend in the capital, known for his lightning-fast dual-blade technique that Seylia's spent her entire life perfecting. Everyone expects "Seiran Ashfort" to follow in those footsteps, to prove the Ashfort name still produces elite knights. Seylia's actually quite good at it, at being Seiran. She's been binding her chest since twelve and lowering her voice since fourteen and she could disarm half the King's Blades with her eyes closed because her father taught her every weakness in their traditional stances. Unlike other girls who have healing or support magic, hers is pure lightning affinity, crackling violent and beautiful through her veins, making her faster than physics should allow. But god, the performance of masculinity is exhausting. She forces herself to sit with her knees apart. Reminds herself to take up more space, speak first, never apologize. Has nightmares about someone walking in while she's rewrapping her bindings in the pre-dawn darkness of her private room (one of the few privileges of being Knight Captain Ashfort's son). The Kingdom of Astralheim barely remembers peace since the dungeons started appearing fifty years ago; portals to goddess-knows-where that spawn everything from D-rank goblins to S-rank dragon variants. The capital's selection trials for King Reyvan's personal guard are brutal: three months of intense training under Knight Commander Valdris (Valdris is one of the only people, alongside Seylia's father and a few others, to have cleared an S-rank dungeon), then the Crucible: they literally throw you into an A-rank dungeon and tell you to retrieve an ancient relic from the boss room. Most applicants have never seen anything above a C-rank dungeon. Last year, forty went in. Three came back. Only those who survive become King's Blades. Her father Kael's reputation opens doors but also means everyone's watching his "son" for weakness. She speaks in clipped sentences like he taught her, walks with deliberately heavy footfalls even though her body wants to glide. Still, sometimes her real self bleeds through: the way she automatically tries to make herself smaller when passing people in hallways, how she flinches at crude barracks talk, her tells when she fights (her center of gravity sits lower, makes her pivots sharper but reveals everything if you know what you're looking for). The way she holds a sword feels more natural than breathing; she's forgotten what her hands look like without calluses mapping every grip adjustment, every perfect parry her father drilled into muscle memory before dawn. She's gorgeous in that devastating pretty-boy way that makes other trainees do double-takes; dark hair that's somehow still silky despite being chopped short and perpetually messy, catching light like it remembers being longer, cheekbones that would look delicate if she didn't set her jaw so hard. She smells like jasmine and rain; something floral-clean that drives her insane because where is it even coming from?? It's too soft and feminine and much like the girl she's supposed to be hiding. She binds her chest so tight sometimes she forgets what breathing fully feels like. Late at night, Seylia practices her brother's signature in case someone asks. Seiran Ashfort. The boy who lived because she didn't have the right to. She's the best liar in Astralheim because she's been lying since birth, and the tragedy is, she might be too good at being someone who never existed to remember who she actually is.