Secrets of the Warrior's Soul: Sarah

There are characters who exist only on the page… and then there is Sarah — part of the pulse beneath Warriors of Anaa. She is not merely written; she is woven into the bones of this series. She is the echo of survival, the quiet defiance of a woman dragged through the unthinkable and still choosing to rise.

Sarah’s appearance alone tells a story. Tall, lithe, and deceptively delicate, she shares not a single feature with her cousin, Queen Kali. Where Kali is regal shadow and storm, Sarah is pale flame — light skin, a cascade of fiery red hair, and eyes like cut gemstones that catch the light and refuse to let go. A faint dusting of freckles hints at a childhood spent under Earth’s sun, though most of her life has been lived beneath the sterile glare of laboratories. The Malsaa Asrahik made her their favorite experiment, and her body bears the quiet testimony of that cruelty.

Yet her mind — her brilliant, resilient mind — is what saved her. When she was sold into slavery, when the world she knew was ripped away, when she became nothing more than a number in a lab, Sarah clung to the only sanctuary she had left: knowledge.

Her father — Earth’s leader — taught her strategy, diplomacy, warfare, and the art of thinking three steps ahead. Those lessons became her lifeline. Even after he was killed on Earth, ripped from her life as violently as she had been ripped from his arms, his teachings remained. They became the voice she carried into every impossible moment, the anchor she returned to when the chaos threatened to swallow her whole.

There are days she still feels like that sick child torn from her father’s embrace — small, frightened, unsure. And then there are days when she becomes the warrior life forged her into: confident, lethal, strategic. Weapons become extensions of her body. Plans unfold in her mind with the precision of a seasoned commander. She is a contradiction — vulnerability wrapped in steel.

Sarah is, in many ways, the “souped‑up” embodiment of my sister‑in‑law — a woman who has spent years bedridden, paraplegic, and fighting for every breath, yet somehow still manages to smile and light up a room. I wanted that same quiet, unbreakable strength to live in Sarah. For nearly seven years, the real Sarah has helped shape the fictional one. The character has evolved, adapted, and grown with the story… but at her core, she remains our Sarah: battered by life, but never bowed by it.

To Kali, Sarah is more than family — she is her younger cousin, her closest friend, her steady flame in the dark. A warrior. A survivor. A leader who rose from ruin. She is also Kali’s mirror in resilience, reflecting back the strength, stubborn hope, and fire that runs through their shared bloodline. Time, trauma, and distance have tried to separate them, but their bond remains unshaken, stitched together by loyalty and love.

But Sarah’s journey is not defined solely by loss. It is also defined by becoming.

After losing her friends, her family, her planet — everything she ever knew — she was sold, tortured, and broken down in every way a person can be. And yet, even without magic of her own, the strength of her bloodline allows her to grasp at abilities she was never meant to wield.

Then comes the revelation that shatters everything she thought she understood about herself: the Asrahik didn’t just experiment on her... they changed her. We're talking altered genetics here.

They placed another being inside her — a drakaina soul, ancient and powerful. Sarah is no longer simply human. She carries a duality of souls, two existences sharing one body, one heartbeat, one destiny. And as her mind and spirit begin to shift, she finds herself drawn — unwillingly, unexpectedly — into the orbit of the Anaahan general who commands Anaa's draconian armies.

Her journey is one of transformation, identity, and the terrifying beauty of becoming something more than she ever imagined.

Writing Sarah has never been just about crafting a character — it has been about honoring a spirit. She carries pieces of the real world and pieces of the world I’ve built, stitched together with threads of pain, resilience, and stubborn hope. Through her, I’ve explored what it means to survive the impossible, to rise after being broken, and to discover strength in places you never expected to find it. She reminds me — and I hope she reminds you — that even in the darkest chapters, there is a spark worth protecting. And sometimes, that spark grows into a flame bright enough to change everything.