Long before she was Ciudiu, she was mortal. Her original name has long since been lost, so much so that she rarely even speaks it herself. What survives of her life comes from fragments of old prayer, contradictory temple records, and stories written centuries ago about people who were already centuries dead. A mere footnote in the history of the world, and yet a piece of something greater.
She lived in the age before dragons arose, in a city-state that has since been left to ruin. She was not born into importance, into nobility, into wealth. But she learned. She became a physician in her own right, not a priest, a prophet, or a hero, not the adventuring kind anyways. She spent most of her early life traveling between local villages treating injuries, assisting births, setting bones, and sitting beside people she was unable to save.
The last task was always the worst. So much so that she became obsessed with a question that medicine can't answer. Why save someone?
If a starving child could be given food to stave off starvation, had she saved them when inevitably they would starve in a few days again?
If a soldier had been healed of a battle wound, had she saved them when inevitably they would go back to battle again?
If an old woman begged for one extra day of life, had she saved her if the last day is simply one day longer?
She sought the answer relentlessly, to every temple of the Gods did she travel, and each gave her the same answer just couched in different language
Life is sacred, death is natural, suffering builds character, change is inevitable, the gods have a plan.
She hated them all, not the gods, no, she hated the answers. They sounded like the answers of those who knew that in an hour they'd be done with their shift and would head home to live their life out how they see fit.
So she looked elsewhere.
She looked to the god that had no temple, to the eternity that needed no worship. Not a god who promises rewards after death, but something that supposedly understood the entire course of a life at once. A being for whom tomorrow was no more distant than yesterday or the end of time itself.
The Devouring Light.
There were few who even acknowledged the god not having seen it in centuries, but she did not care. She sought it anyways. And for years...nothing answered.
Then plague came to her city, she worked giving up her quest until she could not remember the last time she had slept. Thousands died. Every house of healing filled, Every graveyard overflowed. Eventually, tragedy struck her family. Her younger brother became sick. She tried everything she knew, but nothing worked. And in the end, he too begged her not to let him die. So she prayed. Not to the gods, but to fate itself, and in her prayer she asked but one question: "What is his ending?" And that was the right question, for something answered. In but an instance she saw every ending her brother could possibly have.
She saw him die, she saw him survive and be a father, she saw his children die before him, she saw him become wealthy, she saw him become cruel, she saw him live to old age, she saw him murdered next week, she saw him save thousands, she saw him kill millions. Branches upon branches of endings until the person lying before her was no longer one man, but an impossible collection of everything. Then the Light showed her something else.
Her brother looking at her saying "I just want to stay."
The vision ended. She saved him. Not because his future was good, not because it could be important, but because it was his future to choose. Her brother lived another fifteen years and then died during a storm.
And when she stood at his graveside some fifteen years later, she understood. There was never only one ending, only the one his choices would bring him to. Fate was a constantly changing thing. That became the foundation of her worship. The Devouring Light did not demand sacrifice from her. It merely asked questions. "What should a life become?" "Who has the right to decide?" "If you can see every possible ending, would you choose for another?" "If suffering could be removed at the cost of changing the person who suffered, had you helped them? Or were they not the same person as before?" She answered these questions for years and eventually The Light chose her.
She could look at a dying man and see his possible lives. She could walk into a starving village and know which intervention would save the most. She could speak to someone and see all the futures vanish with each word they uttered. People began following her. Some called her a prophet, others a witch. The oldest surviving texts call her the Lantern Saint. She had begun to carry lanterns everywhere she went. It helped to blur out the possibilities.
When people came to her asking for miracles, she refused to tell them what to do. Instead she showed them what might follow, and asked them to choose.
Years passed without her aging, she had become timeless, and then, the dragons came. The seals were prepared and the Devouring Light understood what was happening before its enemies had the time to mature. It could not prevent its imprisonment, but it could leave its influence. It split itself into Nine. Eight fragments for its champions, and one for itself to trick the dragons. And when it splits, a piece of it entered Ciudiu. Good. Not goodness as mortals understood it. The impulse towards a better ending. Mercy, hope, salvation. The belief that suffering should cease and that existence should become what it is capable of becoming.