Dark fantasy · Book One of a trilogy · 16+
Your virtue is a seal. Beneath it, your Sin is sleeping.
Seven ancient powers lie sealed inside the people least like them. A healer who never thinks of herself. A knight who has never broken a rule. A boy who wants to know everything. Now the seals are cracking, and the voice that begins to whisper to each of them sounds frighteningly like their own.
This is only the first book of a trilogy, the beginning of a story that will lead you through the harsh White North, where the sea is full of monsters, through arenas and deserts, free cities and the islands of giants. Rival great houses, a stolen throne, and not one hero you can simply call good or bad.
It all began in the White North: one kingdom, one night of storm, and blood spilled. By morning the throne stood empty, and an eight-year-old princess, born without a drop of magic, was left alone in a world where the crown was already being divided.
They say it all happened because of a prophecy: one child will be the sacrifice, another will bring chaos, and a third will revive what remains after the ashes. But a prophecy, like a mirror, shows the truth only to those who know how to look. In this world almost everything that seems true will turn out to be a lie: a sealed letter, a borrowed name, a sworn oath, even your own virtue.
In this world the Sins are not evil. They are ancient powers that keep the world in balance. The gods sealed each of them inside a soul that is its very opposite. While the seal holds, a person doesn't even know what they carry.
Pain cracks the seal. At first the Sin whispers right at your ear, softly and kindly, as if it wants only good for you. Then you feel its breath at your temple. Then the voice speaks from inside, and you can no longer tell it from your own.
TAP A SEAL TO HEAR ITS VOICE
PrideSuperbia
Sealed inside one who never thinks of herself.
"You owe no one anything."WHAT IT WHISPERS TO MILENA
Sometimes a quiet person suddenly screams, and the most honest one takes what isn't theirs. We say "something came over me". In this book that something has a name, a seal and a voice.
A borrowed name. A letter every Saturday. A brother who will not wake. She knows how to survive, but not how to ask for anything for herself.
Two orphans and an oath sworn in a forest. A fire that should not exist sleeps in his blood. One day he will look at her and not know her.
A desert where the crown is won in the arena. A knight who once trusted a sealed paper, and a boy the beasts obey. A road no one returns from unchanged.
She believes in the law and knows no pity. She is ordered to find a runaway. But every law has a second face.
INSIDE THIS BOOK
"And who will protect you from me?"
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Six questions about who you are when no one is watching. Answer with the first thing that comes to mind. We'll find your virtue, and the seal behind it.
The world rests on a balance of light and dark, life and death, order and chaos. Six kingdoms and the neutral lands where negotiations have been held for a thousand years. Mages and swordsmen, giants and elves, a northern sea full of monsters and a desert where the strong eat the weak. Only one in seven here holds any power; everyone else survives as they can.
Mages call upon the aether: ice, water, wind, nature, and once, fire. You are born with it. No amount of training or will can grant it.
Swordsmen without magic pour energy into the blade for years. The best can hold a shield for a few seconds and strike with a band of light. Blood against effort: the whole world stands on that argument.
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Yana Bagrin was born in Moldova and lives in Australia. Writing came to her in early childhood: short stories, novellas, whole books, born at night when everything around had gone quiet. Always a little lost in her own thoughts, young Yana lived in worlds no one else could see. The years passed, countries and languages changed, but that inner world never let go. It waited for its hour: the day it would be returned to and finally set down on paper.
The idea for Virtue of Sin came to her in 2020, and the years since have gone into shaping it into the story it is today. The world, the characters, the great houses and every thread of the plot were created by one person. Virtue of Sin is the first book of a trilogy.
sevensins.author@gmail.com
The sea remembers its own.
Welcome, traveller.
Come closer. It is cold here, but you will grow used to it. I did.
Do not look for me on any map. My tower stands where no road leads, and it has no doors — only windows. Through them I see the whole world. I watch kings born and beggars die. I watch oaths sworn and oaths broken. I have seen a thousand lives and lived none of them.
Once, I had hands to hold a sword and a voice that was heard. Now all I have left is a story.
I will begin at the end. It is easier that way.
I saw the last day of a great war. A field with no one left to win it. The smoke lay so low that the banners drifted through it like shadows. The dead lay in their thousands, and the living had long since forgotten how to tell themselves apart from them.
Beyond the field, the whole world was rotting. The mountains of the south spat ash. The rivers drained away into cracks in the earth. The forest had withered to its roots. And the north had frozen as it never had before.
And in the midst of it all — two figures.
They were still fighting. The first leaned on a sword, unable to stand without it; the wings on the helmet were scorched, and the armour, once white, had turned the colour of ash. The second stood barefoot on the dead ground, and all around, rain was falling upward — from the earth into the sky. Both were long past their limits. Neither gave ground.
Once, they were more alike than either would ever admit.
You will ask how it came to this. Nothing falls in a single day. Ruin begins with a small injustice that no one dares to notice.
There are powers in this world older than any kingdom. There are seven, and they are called the Sins. They sleep inside ordinary people and wake when everything stands on the edge. They are neither good nor evil. They keep the balance — and the price they take for it is far too high.
Once before, the Sins broke free. The fire mages were blamed. They were sealed away, their lands became desert, and where their palace once stood there is now a red canyon. The north was hailed as heroic. The fire was forgotten. Almost.
The world remembers what was taken from it.
And then someone woke a Sin before its time.
No one noticed. No one ever does.
Still here? Good. Then listen. I will tell it all as I saw it — from the outside. The outside is all I have ever had.
And I will begin with a girl who was born without magic.
Sine Magia — Without Magic
For the second day running, the storm had been beating against the windows of the White Citadel. In the training hall, no one looked at it.
The White Citadel stood on a mountain above the capital, and water embraced it on every side. Waterfalls broke from both flanks of the rock — dozens of them, great and small — and even on clear days a fine mist hung over the walls, with rainbows trembling in it. Below, the streams ran together into lakes, the lakes spilled into rivers, and northerners said the Citadel stood on the water like a crown on a head. Above the main tower flew the banner of the Albas — a white sea serpent coiled around a sword, on a field of dark green. Now the storm tore at the cloth so hard that the serpent seemed to be swimming against the wind.
Eight-year-old Milena stood in a circle chalked on the stone floor, holding a wooden sword in both hands — one had long since stopped being enough. The blisters on her palms had burst that morning, and the hilt had turned slippery. Her hair had come loose, and wet strands clung to her forehead. Her shirt was soaked through under her jacket.
"Again," said the queen.
Step. Turn. Strike.
The sword cut the air, and the air stayed empty. No frost on the blade, no wind, no spark.
"Again."
Milena knew the sword was not the point. Knights were trained in the yard, with swordsmen and shields. Here she was taught something else — to reach the edge. It had always been so in the north: a mage does not make power out of nothing; a mage calls the aether that runs through the world. But the gift of calling sleeps in the blood, like water under ice, and breaks through as a second wind, when the body has nothing else left. That was how Albert had woken his ice.
Their mother expected the same of her daughter. She believed everyone had a limit, and that something waited beyond every limit.
Step. Turn. Strike.
Her arms shook so badly that the blade drew a crooked arc through the air. There was a sour taste in her throat, and black spots swam before her eyes.
Now. Come on. Just one spark. Just a little cold under my fingers.
Nothing. Only the ache in her shoulders and the pounding of her own heart.
The sword slipped from her hands and struck the stone. Her knees gave way after it, and Milena fell to the cold floor.
At once she reached for the sword, as if she could get to it before anyone noticed. She felt the eyes on her — the master-at-arms, the guards at the door, the physician by the wall. No one was angry anymore. They pitied her. The old master looked away, and that hurt more than the blisters. The physician's fingers had gone white around the water jug: he had been waiting for the day she fell and didn't get up.
The queen's hand twitched — barely, as if it wanted to catch her daughter — and went still.
"Pick up the sword," she said calmly.
Queen Cornelia stood by the tall window — straight-backed, in a white gown and steel vambraces. On the buckle of her belt gleamed the white tiger of the Eshens: the crest of the house she had come from, and which she had never taken off, even after she became an Albas. Lightning behind her traced her in a sharp white outline. For a moment grief showed in her face, but she mastered it at once. She spoke without anger and without reproach — the way people speak when discipline has never once failed them. She believed her daughter still had an edge left to reach. Or she wanted to believe it.
Milena tightened her grip on the hilt, but she couldn't get up. Her fingers wouldn't obey, and neither would her legs.
"I think that's enough for today."
The doors swung open without a knock. Albert walked in unhurried — the way people walk in when there is nothing left to argue about. He knelt beside his sister, took the sword from her and set it aside. He took off his warm cloak, wrapped her in it and lifted her from the floor — easily, as if she weighed nothing at all. Only then did he look at their mother.
"She's tired."
"Heirs have no right to be tired."
"She's still a child."
"That is exactly why," said the queen. "A grown body knows how to spare itself. A child's does not, yet. The vessel opens only at the edge."
Albert looked at her for several long seconds — the way you look at an opponent you cannot yet defeat. Then, in silence, he carried his sister to the door.
The queen did not stop them.
He carried her down the long corridor. Milena pressed her cheek to his shoulder and listened to his heart beating, steady and calm. Rain ran down the white stone of the towers, and the distant mountains beyond the windows dissolved into grey.
"You argued with Mother because of me again," Milena said quietly.
"It wasn't an argument."
"Then what was it?"
"A conversation she never meant to win. Otherwise she wouldn't have let us go."
Milena smiled — for the first time that day. The smile didn't last.
"If I had magic, everything would be different."
Albert stopped and looked at her so seriously that she lowered her eyes.
"Don't say that again."
"But it's true."
"No. It's what they make you believe."
She didn't argue. When Albert spoke in that voice, it meant he believed it all the way down. Sometimes she wished she could see herself through his eyes, just for a minute. Then perhaps she would stop noticing the courtiers' sympathy, and the silence that fell over the hall every time the magic didn't answer.
He set her on her feet only at the door of her rooms, where the maids were already waiting.
"Your Highness." The eldest dropped a curtsey. "The queen asked us to have you ready for bed early."
"Then tonight you'll be especially quick about it," said Albert, and the maid never did work out whether it was a joke or an order.
The door had almost closed when her brother called softly after her:
"Milena."
She turned. Albert waited until the maids looked away, then nodded, barely, towards the window.
"When they've gone — come."
Her blue eyes came alive at once.
"Really?"
"I've found something."
"Another book?"
"Perhaps."
"About herbs?"
"Perhaps."
She barely held back a smile and slipped behind the door.
When the candles had been put out and the footsteps in the corridor had faded, Milena lay still for a long time. Every muscle ached. She waited for complete silence, climbed out of bed, threw her brother's cloak over her nightgown — he had never taken it back — and went to the window.
Three short knocks. One long.
She was smiling before she opened the casement.
"I thought you'd fallen asleep."
Albert climbed easily over the sill. A distant flash of lightning silvered his almost-white hair. A plain dark shirt — nothing of the crown prince about him, except a thin silver locket at his throat.
"Mistress Elza came three times to check whether I was asleep," Milena complained in a whisper.
"Then we'll reward her vigilance."
"With what?"
"More work."
Without thinking, he tucked a stray black strand behind her ear, and they climbed quietly up the spiral stair into the old tower.
It was always colder here than in the palace. Two candles waited on the round table. Albert lit them and set a heavy bundle beside them.
"I was lucky today."
Under the cloth lay thick books on healing, an atlas of medicinal plants, and a textbook bound in dark blue.
"That's a book for heirs," Milena whispered.
"Yes."
"They'll execute you."
"The librarian will grumble."
"And Mother?"
"First she'll find out the books are missing. Then she'll start looking for whoever's to blame. Then she'll realise it was me." He considered. "In short, we have plenty of time."
Milena opened the atlas. The old pages smelled of dried herbs, and someone's neat notes ran along the margins.
"Whose are these?"
"Grandmother's."
She went still. Little was said about their grandmother at the palace. Milena knew only that she had been a great healer, and that her name was always spoken more quietly than the rest. Every book in her handwriting was a treasure.
"The heirs' lesson first," Albert unrolled a map. "Then healing."
"Why not the other way round?"
"Because if we start with herbs, you'll forget everything else."
"That's not true."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Well… maybe a little."
The candles burned down, and they didn't notice the time. They moved wooden figures across the map and argued about old battles. Milena asked questions faster than her brother could answer them, and noticed things he himself had missed.
"If a neighbouring kingdom is stronger than you, what will you do?" Albert asked.
She thought about it.
"Make it an ally."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"Then find out what it's afraid of."
Albert said nothing. But he set the figure in his hand on her side of the map.
Then she frowned over the plan of an old battle.
"If an army is left without healers, there'll be no one to heal the winners."
Albert was quiet for a moment.
"The master said almost the same thing today."
"Really?"
"No." He smiled. "He only talked about the number of soldiers. Nobody remembered the healers."
"So I'm cleverer than the master."
"Just don't tell him."
Suddenly she felt that someone was standing behind the half-open door. Milena listened, but heard only the wind in the arrow slits and the whisper of the rain.
When the candles had burned halfway down, she asked the question she had been afraid to ask all day.
"Albert… What was it like? When your ice came?"
He didn't answer at once.
"It hurt. I'd been running for three days. My legs weren't mine anymore, my chest was burning. And suddenly — cold. As if someone had opened a door inside me that I never knew was there."
"And what if I don't have a door?"
Her brother set the figure down.
"Then you don't need to break down walls looking for one."
She wanted to say that Mother thought otherwise. She didn't.
And what if I break before it opens?
The lines had long been swimming before her eyes when Albert closed the heavy volume.
"That's enough for today."
"Just a little more…"
"You said that half an hour ago."
She frowned, but didn't argue. They gathered up the books and crept back down.
At her door Milena stopped and, without raising her eyes, said:
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For the books. For teaching me."
For a moment Albert went still, and then, with a familiar gesture, tucked the strand of hair behind her ear.
"How could it be any other way? You're my sister."
"Goodnight, brother."
"Goodnight, Milena."
The door closed. Milena leaned her back against it and listened to his footsteps fade.
She didn't go to bed. She took a thin notebook with a worn cover from under the mattress and, by the stub of a candle, wrote down everything she had learned that night — briefly, in two or three words, in her own signs: an arrow for "army", a tiny leaf for "healing", a question mark where her brother hadn't known the answer. If anyone found the notebook, no one would understand a thing. Except her.
When she finished, the tower clock had long since struck midnight and the candle had almost burned out. Milena climbed onto the windowsill, pulled her knees to her chest, and listened to the rain run down the glass, blurring the lights in the courtyard. One day the door Albert had spoken of would open for her too. And then perhaps her mother would see in her, for the first time, not an empty vessel but a daughter.
Thunder rolled over the Citadel, low and long.
Below, across the rain-flooded courtyard, walked a woman in white. Armour glinted dully over her gown — vambraces, pauldrons, a high gorget. She walked unhurried and very straight — towards the west wing, where a light was still burning. Towards their father's study.
Milena pressed her palm to the cold glass.
"Mother…" she whispered. "What are you planning now?"
End of chapter one
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