Yes, but by that time I’ll be truly immortal. I’ll run farther, faster.

“He shall merely do this again. Unless… you fight him.”

“I want to fight him.” She never wanted to see his hideous visage again.

“Every five hundred years, he would become your bane and you his jailer.”

“Let me live to face him.” Lying to a goddess? But Lucia was desperate.

Skathi’s face took on a thoughtful mien. “Yes, I have decided to heal you and make you an Archer—so long as you remain chaste. Yet any time that you miss a target, you shall experience the pain you are about to suffer. You shall always remember what brought you this low and never repeat this fall from grace. That will make you a Skathian.”

Dizziness overwhelmed Lucia. She was so confused. “About to suffer?” This torment could not be worse?

“Yes, pain to hone your mind. Agony to sharpen your resolve like a blade stone.” As she placed her milk-white hands over Lucia’s torso, Skathi murmured, “Ah, young Lucia, in the end, I believe you shall wish I’d let you perish.” The goddess’s palms began to glow with blue light.

Brighter, brighter…

Suddenly Lucia convulsed, shrieking as her infected wounds pulled taut, purging blood and pus, her fractured bones grinding as they knit together. Her fingers clenched tight, her back arching—like a bow.

“You’ll be my weapon,” Skathi cried, her face becoming a frenzied mask. “You’ll be my instrument!”

On and on, the light burned, until abruptly there was none. Lucia was healed—but changed. A bowstring coiled around her body like a serpent. And in her trembling hands, a black ash bow and a single golden arrow had appeared.

“Welcome back to life—to your new life. You are now an Archer.” Skathi met her eyes, and Lucia felt the weight of overweening dread, just as a thousand other souls had before her. “And, Lucia, you shall forever be nothing more.”