Lectures about the Great Kharlan war were always hard to place subjects for Zoey. Was she in a history or religion class? The overlap between Mrs. Karintine's lessons and the countless scriptures she'd been made to recite by the church had Zoey wonder why she even came to class when she could be tinkering on something new. She had managed to make a wind-up wheel work and her head was just bursting with ideas and applications. That was Zoey's day-to-day pattern; wait out class, wait out church, tinker-time. She had become so accustomed to this rhythm that she'd stopped considering the day she'd set out on her pilgrimage would ever come. Yet that day, as Zoey's head drifted between the Great Kharlan War and putting wind-up wheels on shoes, a bright light would pierce itself through the windows of the classroom and an inconvenient truth through Zoey's head; the day that would change her life had come.

“Ms.Weaver. I believe that you are needed at the temple. Your trials are to begin...” 

Zoey looked up from her desk at her teacher, counting the wrinkles forming underneath her eyes to avoid looking straight into Mrs. Karintine's pale blue stare of death. “That could've been something totally different, nobody has ever seen an oracle before, right?” The young chosen protested, but judging from the look of Mrs. Karintine's and her classmates' faces, there was nobody who believed the flash of light to be anything else than the oracle. Even Baron had already stood up by their teacher's request to guide her to the temple.

“Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to check it out, just in case.” Zoey said, with a tone and expression nothing short of conceited. Never had she had so little will to leave the classroom. As if stalling for time, she leisurely pushed her seat back and uncrossed her legs. Even her stride to the door was slow and full of attitude. Only Baron was likely to recognise these as signs of reluctance, rather than the patronisation Zoey was trying to express. Though even from her friend, Zoey would rather hide it...

Zoey kept quiet as Baron escorted her to the temple. Although she'd steeled every muscle in her face, behind her façade and despite best attempts to walk gracefully on the dirt roads Zoey was sinking deep in thought. All the preparations had been easy. So easy, Zoey had come to care less about the scriptures and rituals every passing day. Perhaps that was why this walk was so hard? Zoey had always been more curious than scornful of the Desians and their magitechnology; after all they hadn't touched the village of Iselia in all the years she had lived there. Though Zoey had never dared to say it, she just couldn't bring herself to care for the slaves in their ranches. It was just all too distant for the girl. She had trouble understanding why the rest of the village made such a big deal out of it; it wasn't like they knew any of the slaves on the ranch either, right? The closer to the temple they came, the more Zoey looked up to her trials that were about to begin. Why did Iselia really need a chosen, their lives had been just fine up till now, right?

Although the way was safe with Baron by her side,it wasn't until halfway towards the chapel that Zoey realised no priests had come to join them. That was odd, because leaving an important task such as escorting the chosen up to the 'demon child' was very out of character for the pastor. “Why do you think the priests didn't come to get me?” Zoey asked Baron, nervously giggling in the palm of her hand. “That means the oracle was a fake, right?”