Melian twisted her ring, a nervous habit. It had emerged when she had been first raised, almost a year ago, and was still trying to assure herself she was a real Aes Sedai. Now she continued to do it, just as a habit. She herself wasn't disturbed, at least on the outside. An Aes Sedai learned to maintain a calm composure, but fear emanated through her bond with Aldrin. Fear. From a Borderlander. A Borderlander who had faced Trollocs in the Blight, and stood beneath the Myrdaal's eyeless gaze. Never in her six months bonded to him had she felt such a thing. Something was deeply wrong.
It was the murder of that Warder, she knew. Killed by the One Power, in the heart of the Tower. Just another sign. Another sign that something was festering in the very place where peace had been upheld for thousands of years. Most people assumed the Tower was whole, even as she had, as a young novice, but that belief had vanished quickly. The Tower was divided to its core, and at the center was the Black Ajah.
The Black Ajah were something that was easy to deny, to ignore, but an omnipresent truth. Every couple years, the same cycle began. A murder, in the Tower. Then a sister caught, accused of serving the Dark One, and stilled. Erased from the Tower records. An ugly truth.
She was at the beginning of this cycle again, and she had a strange feeling it wasn't anywhere near over. This felt different. Bigger. Times were changing after all. A false Dragon, in the last year, Trollocs moving out of the Blight, and more and more reports of Darkfriends, committing atrocities. She was at the crux of an age. A time where if the Tower stood, the world could be saved, but if it fell... The consequences were disastrous.
She was Gray Ajah. The peacemakers. Maybe... maybe if she could find out who committed the murder, she could keep the Tower together. United instead of divided. That was how the Tower should've been, and maybe how it could be again.
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little character intro for ya