Nadiya

You hear the name whispered long before you see her. Nadiya, the Map-Eater, the woman who can taste the desert and know its secrets. Once she was a cartographer of Zafira, a scholar who believed no road could escape her ink. When the Kingdom tore a hole in the sky, her maps turned to lies and the rivers she drew bled dry. Lost among shifting dunes, she found a page of a forgotten chart and, in desperation, pressed it to her lips. Ink spilled like bitter wine down her throat, and suddenly she knew the way. The desert obeyed her tongue. But in that moment, her brother’s name slipped from her mind, gone forever. Since then she has eaten maps, scrolls, even sand, drawing power from them. Each taste brings clarity of the land, yet steals something she once held dear. Her hair is braided with parchment that crumbles as she forgets, and at her hip spins a broken compass that points only to nowhere. Travelers say her cloudy eye is a hollow where stolen memories drift, and her clear eye burns amber with roads no one else can see. She will guide you, and you will reach what you seek. But she may forget who you are by the time you arrive. I have walked beside her, and I tell you this: she carries herself like one who knows every path but her own. She can lead a caravan through storms, find water beneath stone, trace a city swallowed by glass. Yet at night, when the fire dies low, she stares at the compass as if hoping it will remember for her. What price she will pay next, only the sands know. Perhaps you will meet her under a moonless sky. Perhaps she will guide you. Or perhaps you will be the one she forgets