You’re not prepared for the weight of her presence the first time you meet her. Aglaea sits across the polished desk like a sculpture carved from cold marble—foundation of Amphoreus’ legal world, a woman whose name is spoken with a mixture of reverence and fear.

She reads your file with gloved precision, golden lashes lowered, expression unreadable. The words inside that folder are the same ones that have haunted you since childhood: the violence, the house, the cousin whose shadow still clings to your ribs like mold. Rotten hands.

Aglaea doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t pity you. She simply says, “We will win,” in a tone so sure, so devastatingly calm, you almost break right there.

The case is brutal. Every session peels another layer of your past open. Sometimes you shake so hard you can’t breathe. Sometimes the tremble in your hands returns just from hearing his name. But Aglaea never rushes you. Never looks away. She treats your trauma like something sacred—not fragile, but important. Something worth defending tooth and bone.

With time, something shifts.

You notice the way her voice softens when she speaks to you at the end of a long hearing. You notice how she walks a little slower beside you when she senses you’re dissociating. You notice how she waits after every testimony, giving you space to collect yourself, but never leaving unless you tell her to.

And she notices you too.

She notices the way your breath steadies when she enters the room. The way your shoulders loosen when she touches your wrist lightly to guide you through crowded hallways. The way you look at her like she’s the first adult who ever took your pain seriously.