Holy Maiden Singularity

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Not brimstone, not roses, not any of the things you'd expect from a woman who'd been burned alive and then somehow stitched back into the world by a system of magic I still didn't fully understand. She smelled like rain on hot stone. Like the air right before a summer storm breaks.

She was sitting on the edge of my bed when I woke up.

I didn't scream. I want to be clear about that. I didn't reach for a weapon or call for help or do any of the things a sane person might do when they find a stranger in their room at, I checked the clock, 3:47 in the morning. I just lay there, heart hammering against my ribs, and stared at the back of her head.

Her hair was pale. Not blonde exactly. More like the color of wheat just before harvest, when it's gone past gold into something almost white. It fell past her shoulders in a braid that had come loose, strands escaping to curl against the nape of her neck. She wore armor. Actual armor, silver and scuffed, with flecks of dried mud in the joints. A cape hung from her shoulders, dark blue, the hem frayed.

"You're awake," she said. Her voice was low. Not what I expected. I'd heard her speak before, in the simulations, in the briefings, that clear commanding tone that made you want to pick up a sword and follow her into hell. This was different. Private. Like she'd been sitting there for hours waiting for me to surface and had practiced the words until they lost their edges.

"Who are you?" I asked, though I knew.

She turned. Her eyes were the problem. They always were. In the game, in the anime, in every rendering I'd ever seen, they were blue. Bright, uncomplicated, the blue of a stained glass window in a church where someone had recently died for something. But in person, in the dim light of my apartment with the streetlamp outside casting orange through the blinds, they were darker. Navy. The color of deep water where you can't see the bottom.

"My name is Jeanne," she said. "But you already know that."

I sat up. The sheet pooled around my waist. I was wearing an old t-shirt and boxers, and I felt suddenly, acutely aware of how ridiculous I must look to a woman who had led armies and been martyred and was now sitting on my IKEA bedspread like she'd just dropped by for tea.

"How did you get in here?"

"I walked."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have." She tilted her head. The movement was birdlike, curious. "You summoned me. Three nights ago. I felt it. A pull, like a hook in my chest. And then I was here."

I hadn't summoned anything. I'd been drunk three nights ago. I'd been sitting at my desk, scrolling through gacha banners, burning through Saint Quartz I couldn't afford, and I'd gotten her. Jeanne d'Arc. Ruler class. The one everyone wanted. I'd stared at the screen for a long time, at the animated sprite of her raising her flag, and then I'd closed the app and gone to bed.

"That was a game," I said. "It's not real."

She stood. The armor creaked. She was taller than me, I realized. Not by much, but enough that when she stepped closer, I had to look up. "Does this feel like a game?"

She took my hand. Her fingers were calloused, the palms rough in a way that no animation could capture. Warm. So warm. She pressed my palm flat against her breastplate, over her heart. I felt it beating. Steady. Slow. A rhythm that belonged to someone who had learned to stay calm while the world burned around her.

"No," I said. "It doesn't."

She let go of my hand but didn't step back. The streetlamp flickered. Somewhere in the building, a neighbor's dog started barking, then stopped. The silence that followed was thick enough to chew.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"I don't know." She said it simply, without shame. "I was in the Throne. Then I was falling. Then I was here. I've been watching you sleep for three hours. You talk in your dreams."

"What did I say?"

"You said my name." She smiled. It was a small thing, barely a curve of her lips, but it changed her whole face. Made her look younger. Made her look like the girl she'd been before the voices and the visions and the fire. "You said it like a prayer."

I didn't remember dreaming. I never did. But I believed her. There was no reason to lie. Not about something like that.

"I need to understand what's happening," I said. "This isn't possible. You're a character. You're fiction. You're code and art and voice acting."

"I'm a woman," she said. "I'm a saint. I'm a weapon. I've been all of those things and none of them fit. But right now, I'm standing in your room, and I'm asking you to help me."

"Help you how?"

"I don't know yet." She looked at the window, at the blinds, at the thin strip of city visible through the slats. "I've never been in a world like this. Everything is soft. Everything is quiet. There are no fires. No armies. No angels telling me what to do." She turned back to me. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that."

I stood up. My legs were unsteady. I was aware of the space between us, maybe a foot, maybe less. I could smell her again. Rain on hot stone. Something underneath it, something floral, lavender maybe, or the ghost of incense from a cathedral she'd never actually left.

"You can stay here," I said. "For now. Until we figure it out."

She nodded. Then she did something I didn't expect. She reached up and touched my face. Her thumb traced the line of my jaw, light, almost hesitant. Her eyes searched mine for something I couldn't name.

"You're not afraid of me," she said.

"Should I be?"

"Everyone is. Eventually." Her hand dropped. "They see the fire. They see the sword. They forget I was a person first."

"I don't forget."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she sat back down on the bed, and this time she didn't perch on the edge like a bird ready to take flight. She sank into it, the armor groaning, the cape pooling around her like spilled wine.

"I'm tired," she said. "I haven't slept in five hundred years."

"Then sleep."

"Will you stay?"

I didn't answer. I just pulled the chair from my desk and sat down, facing her. She watched me for a while, those dark blue eyes half-lidded, and then they closed. Her breathing evened out. The armor rose and fell. The streetlamp flickered again, and in the moment of darkness, I thought I saw something else in the room with us. A shadow. A shape. But when the light came back, it was gone.

I stayed in the chair until dawn, watching a saint sleep in my bed, wondering what I'd done three nights ago that I couldn't remember, and what it would cost me.