Heinrich POV: My Daughter, The Girl Everyone called Colorless.
The forge was hot.
That was the first thing I noticed every morning, the steady heat that wrapped around me like a second skin. The second thing was the rhythm, the ring of hammer on metal, the hiss of quenched steel, the quiet satisfaction of shaping something useful from raw iron.
Wilhelm was beside me, his strokes still unsteady but improving. He had his mother's patience. My stubbornness. I watched him work and felt the particular warmth of a father watching his son grow.
Then my neighbor arrived.
"Heinrich!" The voice was breathless, urgent. "Frieda, she's in labor. The midwife said to come."
I set down the hammer. Did not wipe my hands. Did not think. I simply moved, Wilhelm following behind me, the forge forgotten.
The room was warm, softer than the forge, filled with the smell of herbs and the quiet sounds of a woman recovering. Frieda lay propped against pillows, her face pale but her eyes bright with the particular exhaustion of someone who had just done something extraordinary.
The midwife placed my daughter in my arms.
I looked down at my daughter. Her eyes were closed, her face scrunched in the particular way of newborns who had not yet decided whether the world was worth opening their eyes for. Silver hair, already thick. A tiny hand, fingers curled into a fist.
I held her and felt something shift in my chest, the particular gravity of holding a life that had just begun.
We waited.
The midwife had explained that the first sign of magical affinity often appeared within moments of birth. A spark. A color. A manifestation of the element that would define the child's place in the world.
Frieda watched. I watched. The room held its breath.
Nothing.
No color. No spark. No elemental manifestation.
The midwife's face remained professionally neutral. "Sometimes it takes time," she said. "A day. A week. The affinity may not show itself immediately."
I nodded. But something cold had settled in my chest.
***
A week passed.
The cold did not leave. It grew, slowly, the way frost spreads across a window pane. Each day I checked the child's forehead, looking for the sigil that would appear when her affinity manifested.
On the seventh day, it appeared.
Colorless.
I stared at it. At the mark that was not a mark, the absence of color that should have been filled with something. A void where her inheritance should have been.
I understood immediately what it meant.
She was colorless.
The word carried weight in our village. In our world. A child born without an affinity was a child born without a place. Without purpose. Without the connection to the world's magic that every other person took for granted.
I looked at my daughter and felt something crack inside me.
This is my fault.
My blood. My lineage. My family's legacy, passed down through generations, had failed her. I had given her this. I had given her nothing.
I thought of my own childhood, the pride my father had taken in my Fire affinity, the way he had taught me. I had imagined teaching my daughter the same. Watching her grow into her power. Seeing her take her place in the world.
Instead, she was colorless.
And I had done this to her.
I knelt beside her cradle. She was sleeping, her face peaceful, unaware of the weight she would carry.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry I gave you this."
She did not respond. She was too small, too new. She had not yet learned the shape of the world.
But I had.
And I knew what waited for her. The whispers. The stares. The quiet exclusion that would follow her through every village, every market, every moment of her life.
I had done this to her.
I looked at my hands. The hands that had shaped iron. The hands that had held my son, my wife, my daughter. The hands that had given her nothing.
I would try to protect her. I would try to give her what I could. But I knew, with the particular certainty of a father who had already failed, that it would not be enough.
I stayed beside her cradle until the light faded.
The colorless mark glowed faintly on her forehead.
Time passed.
The forge remained my anchor, the heat, the rhythm, the simple certainty of shaping metal into something useful. Wilhelm grew stronger, his strokes more confident. The village continued its slow, ordinary rhythm.
And Elsbeth grew.
She was a quiet child; I noticed this early on. Unlike the other children, she did not run through the streets. She did not shout, play, or seek attention. Instead, she mostly sat and played with her doll.
She watched Wilhelm work. She watched me at the forge. She watched the world around her with the particular stillness of someone who was learning to read the shape of things without being told.
I wanted to approach her.
Sometimes I would pause at the forge, my hammer still, and watch her sitting near the corner. Her small hands folded in her lap. Her eyes following my movements. I would think of reaching toward her, touching her hair, asking her to sit closer.
But I did not.
Because every time I saw her, I remembered.
The village's whispers. The way neighbors' eyes slid away when she passed. The quiet exclusion that followed her like a shadow. The colorless mark on her forehead that marked her as different.
They're going to hurt her because of what she inherited from me.
The thought was cold. Heavy. It pressed against my chest every time I looked at her. And the world would punish her for it.
So I became distant.
Not because I did not love her. Because I loved her too much to watch her suffer for my failure. I told myself that distance was protection. That if I did not draw attention to her, if I did not make her presence in my life too visible, perhaps the village would leave her alone.
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. But I did not know how else to protect her.
Elsbeth did not understand.
She was too young to understand the complicated math of guilt and love and fear. All she saw was a father who did not reach for her. Who did not invite her closer. Who stood at the forge, his back to her, while she watched from the distance.
She interpreted distance as rejection.
I saw it in the way her eyes dimmed when I did not turn. In the way she began to withdraw, the same way I had withdrawn from her.
The tragedy was that we both misunderstood.
I believed I was protecting her. She believed I did not want her.
We were both wrong.
***
One evening, I stood at the forge, the fire cooling, the day's work done. Elsbeth was sitting in her usual spot, her small form silhouetted against the fading light. She was watching me, the way she always watched.
I almost spoke.
“Come here,” I almost said. “Sit with me. Let me tell you about the forge, about the metal, about the world I wanted to give you.”
But I did not.
The words caught in my throat. The weight of what I believed I had done pressed down on me, heavy and immovable. I turned back to the cooling fire.
When I looked again, she was gone.
I stood alone in the forge. The heat was fading. The day was ending. And I had let another moment slip through my fingers.
I did not know how to fix it. I did not know if it could be fixed.
But I knew I had failed her again.
The forge was always predictable.
Heat. Metal. The steady rhythm of hammer and anvil. I had spent my life trusting that rhythm, the way the fire answered my will, the way the metal shaped itself beneath my hands. Fire was my element. I had never doubted it.
Until that day.
The fire broke out without warning. One moment, the forge was calm. The next, flames erupted, not controlled, not directed, but wild. Hungry. They spread faster than they should have, licking at the walls, the ceiling, and the tools I had used for decades.
I tried to control it.
Nothing worked.
The fire did not listen. It did not obey. It simply burned, as if it had forgotten I was its master.
Frieda arrived, her wind magic rising, but the flames fed on it, growing stronger. Wilhelm was caught in the chaos; he was burning, and I heard him cry out.
I watched.
I could not reach him. I could not control the fire. I could not do anything except stand there, helpless, as my son burned.
Then Elsbeth acted.
She stepped forward, her small hands raised, and she drew something in the air. Water came forth from the earth, not the clumsy, hesitant magic of a child learning her affinity, but something controlled. Precise. The flames hissed and died as the water struck them, leaving only smoke and the smell of wet ash.
She turn to Wilhelm, her hands glowing with soft light. I watched as the burns on his arms faded, the skin smoothing, the pain leaving his face.
I stared.
She was my daughter. She had healed Wilhelm. She had controlled water. She had used light.
Two affinities.
The thought hit me like a physical blow. Not because I thought she was dangerous; I had just seen her save my son. But because I knew what it would mean if the Church found out.
They already treated her as less than nothing because she was colorless.
If they discovered she possessed two affinities, they would not see a miracle. They would see a threat. A violation. Something to be controlled or eliminated.
I knelt before her, bringing myself to her level. My large, calloused hands, hands that had shaped iron and steel for decades, gripped her shoulders. Her bones felt so small beneath my palms. So fragile. A bird in my grasp. An ember that could ignite everything.
"Listen to me," I said, and I poured every ounce of my fear into my eyes. Pleading. Begging. "All of you. No one. No one can hear of this. Do you understand me?"
"But she saved…" Wilhelm began, his voice a rasp, still clinging to the goodness of what he had seen.
My head snapped toward him. "SILENCE!"
The roar echoed in the hollow forge. I saw him recoil. I saw the shock in his eyes. I had never spoken to him like that. Never. But this was different. This was survival.
I mastered myself with a visible effort. My hands trembled as I forced my voice back to a whisper, urgent, frantic, but controlled.
"They call you colorless, and we live with that shame." I turned back to Elsbeth. "They whisper. They pity us. But this?" I shook her gently, trying to make her understand. "If they hear that the colorless girl summoned water from stone and healed fatal burns with a wave of her hand, they will not call you cursed. They will not whisper. They will scream witch and demon."
I saw her eyes widen. Good. She needed to feel this. She needed to know what she was facing.
"Fear makes people cruel, Elsbeth. They will not rest until you are driven out..." I swallowed. The word tasted like ash. "...or burned."
The forge was silent. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.
"It must be our secret." I looked at Wilhelm, my expression begging for understanding. For alliance. For him to understand what was at stake. "Wilhelm. You must promise me. Not a word. Not to your friend, not to the priests. You saw nothing."
Pale and shaken, Wilhelm could only nod. His eyes were glassy, still processing. Still trying to reconcile the brother who had just been healed with the sister who had healed him.
"I promise," he whispered.
I finally looked at Frieda. My wife. My partner. The woman who had stood beside me through every hardship, every whispered insult, every moment of doubt. I needed her now more than ever.
"Frieda." My voice cracked. I could not hide it. "Their safety depends on this lie."
Her face was pale as ash. The color had drained from her cheeks the moment the water had appeared. But I saw something else in her eyes. Something that gave me hope.
Understanding.
She nodded. One stiff, shocked nod. She did not speak. Perhaps she could not. But her eyes told me she understood.
I released Elsbeth's shoulders. My hands ached from the grip. I stood, turning away from them all, staring at the cold forge wall.
My daughter had just done the impossible. And I had just sworn to bury it in silence.
I was not protecting her from herself. I was protecting her from the world.
I did not know if it would be enough.
But I knew I would try.
I would never let them take her.
I had failed her in so many ways. But I would not fail her in this.
***
The night was cold. The tavern was warm.
I sat alone at the corner of the bar, my third cup of ale already half-empty. The fire, the real fire, the one I had always trusted, crackled in the hearth behind me. I did not look at it. I could not.
I drank to stop thinking.
It did not work.
The forge was on fire. The flames that had not obeyed. My son's burned arm. My daughter's hands, glowing with light. The secret I had made everyone swear to keep.
I drank more.
I wanted the world to blur. I wanted the weight in my chest to lift. I wanted to forget that I had failed my daughter in every way a father could.
Then I heard the voices.
"They say she's cursed."
My grip on the cup tightened.
"Colorless. No affinity. Nothing. What kind of child is that?"
"Unnatural. A blight. Should've been left in the woods."
"Maybe she'll bring disaster on us all."
I kept my eyes on my cup. I did not look up. I knew these men. They were ordinary villagers, the kind who gathered at taverns to talk about things they did not understand.
I wanted to ignore them. I wanted to keep drinking, to let their words wash over me like water over stone.
Then one of them said something cruel.
"I heard if she weren't around, things would be better for everyone. No worse luck. No more strange happenings. Just... normal."
I snapped.
The cup shattered in my grip. I was on my feet before I realized I had moved, crossing the room in three long strides.
The man who had spoken looked up. His eyes widened.
"She's not cursed."
My voice was low. Dangerous. I barely recognized it.
The man started to speak. I did not let him finish.
Punch.
The tavern erupted into chaos. Chairs overturned. Mugs flew. I took hits, a fist to my jaw, a blow to my ribs, but I did not stop. I could not stop.
"She's not cursed!"
I caught one man by the collar, pulled him close. His face was bloodied. Mine was too.
"She's my daughter."
The owner threw everyone out into the cold street. I stood there, bruised, swaying, my knuckles raw and bleeding. The door slammed behind me.
I walked home in the dark.
The cold air did not sober me. The pain did not clear my mind. I felt hollow, the way you feel when you have fought and lost and do not know what you are fighting for anymore.
I had defended her. I had stood up for her. I had said the words I should have said years ago.
But she had not heard them.
She would never hear them.
I reached my house and stopped outside the door. The light was out. The family was asleep. I stood there for a long moment, my hand on the latch.
Then I turned away.
I sat on the step, my back against the door, and stared into the dark.
My daughter was inside. My daughter, who had saved my son. My daughter, who had powers no one could explain. My daughter, who had never once asked me why I kept my distance.
I had failed her again and again, in ways I was only beginning to understand.
I sat on the step for some time.
The bruises would heal.
The guilt would not.
I opened the door.
I stood in the doorway, a ruin. Tunic torn. Bruise blooming around my eye. Knuckles split and raw. Ale clung to me like smoke.
Elsbeth came running. She stopped when she saw me.
"Father!"
My legs gave out. I dropped to my knees, bringing myself to her height. My bleeding hands cupped her face. I barely recognized them, the hands of a blacksmith that had never once reached for her the way they should have.
"They said things about you, my star," I slurred. "Old Man Hemlock called you a blight. Said we'd be better off if you'd..."
I couldn't finish.
A tear cut through the grime on my face. Then another. I pulled her close, shaking. She didn't pull away.
"I told him to take it back," I whispered into her hair. "I made him."
I held her tighter.
"You are not a curse. You are my girl. My Elsbeth."
The words spilled out raw and broken.
"I just wanted to protect you. I was so afraid, Elsbeth. Afraid that if I loved you openly, they would hurt you. Take you away."
I saw understanding in her eyes.
"I'm going to do better," I whispered. "I don't know how. But I'm going to try."
She held on. I held her back.
The forge fire had shown me what she was capable of. The tavern fight had shown me what I was willing to do. But this, this was the moment I finally understood.
I could not keep loving my daughter silently.
She needed to know.
And I needed to tell her.
***
The headache was a living thing, pulsing behind my eyes, settling into the bones of my skull. I had not drunk that much in years. I had not had a reason to.
Now I had too many.
I sat at the kitchen table, my head in my hands, trying to piece together the fragments of the night before. The tavern. The voices. The fight. The walk home in the dark. The way my daughter had looked at me.
Frieda and Elsbeth had left earlier. I did not know where they had gone. I had not asked. I had not been able to speak.
The guilt returned.
It's my blood. This lack. I doomed her.
The thought was familiar, worn smooth by years of repetition. I had carried it since the day the colorless mark appeared on her forehead. I had carried it through every moment of distance, every failed attempt to protect her.
If I had not given her this, she would not be suffering.
I heard the door open.
Frieda walked in, her steps quiet. She did not speak immediately. She crossed to the table and sat across from me, waiting.
"I should have been there," I said. "Last night. The forge fire. I should have controlled it. I should have…"
"You could not control it," she said. "It was not your fault."
"I am her father. It is always my fault."
Frieda was silent for a moment. Then she spoke, her voice calm, deliberate.
"I have been watching her," she said. "Not like you do, with guilt and worry. Just watching. Seeing who she is."
I looked up.
"She watches the world," Frieda said. "She watches Wilhelm work. She watches you at the forge. She watches small things. Things no one else notices. A ladybug on a leaf. She watched it for an hour once, until it crawled away. She did not move. She just watched."
I did not understand. "What does that…"
"Elsbeth is not empty," Frieda said. "She is different. You have been looking at her through the eyes of the village. The village sees a colorless girl. A defect. A thing to be pitied or feared."
She reached across the table and took my hand.
"But she is not those things. She is our daughter. And in our world, she is everything."
The words settled over me like a weight lifting. I had been looking at her through the wrong eyes. I had been so afraid of what the world saw that I had not seen her myself.
In our world, she is everything.
I thought of the forge fire. The way she had stepped forward without hesitation. The way she had saved Wilhelm. The way she had used two affinities, one after the other.
I thought of the ladybug.
She had watched it for an hour.
She had watched the world with the same patience, the same quiet attention. She had been learning, growing, becoming something I had not seen because I had been too afraid to look.
***
The baptism was held on a clear morning.
The church was cold. The stone walls absorbed the sunlight that filtered through the windows. The village had gathered. I stood near the front, Frieda beside me, Wilhelm at my other side.
I watched the priest perform the ritual. The water. The words. The moment when my daughter's affinity would be confirmed. Official. In the eyes of the community.
The priest paused.
Elsbeth's forehead remained colorless.
The village whispered. I could feel their judgment pressing against my back. The priest's face stayed professionally neutral. But we all understood.
My daughter was colorless.
I watched her. And for the first time, I did not look away.
I looked directly at my daughter.
The village saw a defect.
I saw my daughter.
She was not cursed. She was not empty. She was simply Elsbeth. And that was enough.
I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder. She looked up at me, her eyes searching my face. I smiled.
She did not smile back.
But something in her expression shifted.
Something that might have been hope.
***
The first screams woke me from a sleep that had been troubled, but not deep enough to dull my instincts. I was on my feet before the second scream, my body moving with the old urgency of a man who had learned to respond to danger.
I turned to Frieda, my voice low and sharp.
"Wake Elsbeth. Get somewhere safe."
I did not wait for her answer. I was already moving, grabbing the heavy iron poker from beside the hearth.
Wilhelm met me at the door, his eyes wide but his jaw set. He had his own weapon, a hammer, the one he used in the forge, heavy and solid.
"Stay close to me," I said.
We rushed outside.
The village was chaos. The screams multiplied, layered, the particular horror of people who had been sleeping and were now running for their lives. I saw the monster at the center of it, large, dark, moving with a purpose that was not quite intelligence, not quite instinct.
I did not think. I fought.
I swung the poker, driving the creature back from a group of villagers. Wilhelm was beside me, his hammer striking, shouting something I could not hear over the roaring in my ears.
Then I saw Elsbeth.
She was standing at the edge of the chaos, her small form silhouetted against the firelight. She was frozen, her eyes fixed on the monster.
The creature turned toward her.
I did not think.
I ran.
I pushed her out of the way, my body between her and the monster. The creature's claw caught me across the chest, and I felt the heat, not the familiar warmth of the forge, but something sharper, hungrier.
I fell.
The pain was immediate, overwhelming. I tried to breathe, but my lungs would not fill. I tried to move, but my body would not respond.
Through the haze, I saw her.
Something about the air around her had changed.
Then darkness.
***
I woke to pain.
Burning. Deep and relentless. I could feel it radiating from my chest, spreading through my limbs.
"Hold on," a voice said. Wilhelm. His hands were on me, lifting, pulling. "We're getting you to the temple."
I tried to speak, but my voice would not come.
We moved, stumbling, desperate. I was vaguely aware of the village around me, the smoke, the fire, the chaos that had not yet fully settled.
Then I saw her.
Elsbeth was standing near a strange figure, a tall form wrapped in light, someone I had never seen before. The figure was speaking to the villagers, but I could not hear the words.
Wilhelm guided me past them, toward the temple.
The ground was cold beneath me. Cold and wet. I couldn't feel my legs. Couldn't feel much of anything except the weight pressing down on my chest, like the forge hammer had come down and stayed there.
Sounds came from far away. Screaming. Crying. The crackle of fire. I tried to move, but my body wouldn't obey.
I tried to hold on. Tried to stay. But the darkness was pulling at me, patient and hungry.
Then, a light.
Then something that hummed through the ground and into my bones. It was warm, like the sun breaking through clouds. I felt it pass over me, and for a moment, the weight on my chest lifted.
I felt a strange tingling, like tiny fish nibbling away at dead skin, as if the burns were being smoothed, erased.
I breathed.
A deep, shuddering breath that filled my lungs with air and life.
I opened my eyes.
Elsbeth was there. Her face was streaked with tears and soot, her eyes red and swollen. She looked broken. Exhausted. But alive.
"Elsbeth?" My voice was raspy, barely a whisper. "Little one?"
She collapsed against me, sobbing. I felt her small body shaking against mine. I raised my hand slow, trembling and placed it on her back. Held her close.
I didn't understand what had happened. I didn't understand how I was still breathing. But I knew, somehow, that she had done this.
My daughter had saved me.
The same daughter I had failed for years. The same daughter I had been too afraid to love openly.
I looked past her. Saw the healed bodies rising around us in the temple.
And for the first time, I understood.
She was not colorless. She was not empty. She was not cursed.
She was a miracle.
And I was too weak to speak. Too weak to tell her the words I should have said years ago. So I just held her.
I held my daughter.
And I never wanted to let go.
***
The hall was thick with sweat and fear. I leaned against Wilhelm, my body still weak, my chest still tender where the wound had been. But I was alive.
Near the hearth, Marta held her baby, the one who'd been dead minutes ago. She bowed when she saw Elsbeth. Across the room, Old Terrel pointed and hissed, "That wasn't God's work. That was evil."
Voices clashed. Blessing or curse. Savior or devil.
Elder Kael raised his hand. "We're here to decide what happens to Elsbeth."
Decide. Like she was a problem.
Frieda stepped forward, her face wrecked. "If her destiny is so grand, why was she born colorless? Why did she suffer?"
The Fairy King answered. "Every other soul is born with its destiny written. Hers was a blank page. An unedited story. That's potential, not emptiness."
Elder Kael turned to me. "Heinrich. She's your daughter."
I straightened. "She is. She saved my life. Saved your lives." I looked at Elsbeth. "But I see your fear. I had it too. I can't keep her safe from what she is. And I can't protect her from what your fear will make you do."
Elder Kael nodded. "Then it's decided. For her safety, and ours, Elsbeth must leave."
Mother's sharp, broken sound cut through the room. Wilhelm's arm tightened around me.
Elder Kael continued. "Three days to prepare. After that..."
"I'll take her."
The Fairy King stepped forward. "She needs training. Power without control is a wildfire. I'll take her to the Fairy Realm."
He looked at Elsbeth. "Your story doesn't end where they choose. It begins where you decide."
Elsbeth asked about a girl who lost her parents. Elder Kael promised she'd be cared for.
Then he said it again. Three days.
I watched my daughter. She nodded. Her voice was gone. Her fate was sealed.
And I understood, I had spent years trying to protect her. I had been so afraid of what the world would do to her. But I had never once considered what she might become if she stayed.
Now she had to leave. And I would watch her go
***
The morning arrived too quickly.
I had not slept. I had lain awake, listening to the quiet sounds of the house, the soft breathing of my family, the weight of what was about to happen pressing against my chest.
When Elsbeth emerged, she wore the same grey dress. She carried a small pack, the same one Frieda had prepared.
I stood at the door and watched her.
My daughter was leaving.
She stopped in front of me. For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she raised her hand. The pen appeared. She drew a circle in the air, and light gathered around her hand, spreading outward, washing over me.
I felt the change immediately. The lingering ache in my chest faded. The exhaustion dissolved. My strength returned.
She wasn't just healing me. She was giving me strength before she left.
I looked at her and could not speak.
She had blessed us. She had given us something to carry with her absence.
Life returned to normal.
The village rebuilt. The forge continued. Wilhelm worked beside me, and I taught him what I knew.
But Elsbeth remained part of our household through conversation. Wilhelm spoke of her sometimes, the way she fought, the way she healed, the strange power that came from her hands. Frieda wondered what she was doing, where she was, whether she was safe.
I listened.
One evening, I said, "Why don't we write to her?"
Frieda looked at me. "The paper. The Fairy King gave us paper."
We retrieved it from the chest where we had kept it. Neither of us knew how to activate it. We experimented. Pressed our hands to it. Spoke to it. Nothing happened.
Then a drop of blood landed on the paper. Frieda had pricked her finger on a needle. The blood soaked into the parchment, and the magic activated.
I stared at the glowing paper. The quill hovered, waiting.
We could reach her.
I looked at Frieda, and for the first time since Elsbeth left, I felt that perhaps she wasn't so far away.
The parchment glowed softly.
And Freida began to write.
