Only Nuns Ember in Step Abyssinian Colonial Phalanx Regulars Model of the month
Every month, the post sacks arrive heavier.
Some letters smell of incense. Others of tobacco, seawater, cheap perfume, trench mud, or dried blood. Some are folded with care, sealed with ribbon and wax. Others arrive stained, crumpled, torn open and stitched back together. We read all of them.
Some of you write to tell us which model kept you awake at night. Some write to accuse us of sacrilege, vanity, indecency, or corruption. Some of you simply want to confess what happened to your pulse when you turned the page.
We welcome all of it.
Praise, outrage, longing, disgust, devotion — every reaction means someone, somewhere, was looking closely.
Below are some of our favorite letters from this month.
Letter 1
From: Sister Agnes, Field Hospital of Saint Job
I wasn’t supposed to read your magazine. I knew that before I even opened it. But one of the younger sisters left an issue beneath a cot, and late that night, when everyone else was asleep, I saw Bleeding Grace.
I looked at her hands longer than I should have. The bandages. The way the cloth rested over her shoulders. The way she spoke about carrying the body forward, even when it was already beginning to disappear.
We have many like that in the hospital now — slow-moving, coughing, smelling of incense and rot. After your issue, I started looking at them differently. Not only as sufferers, but as people who still have something beautiful left inside them.
Thank you for that.
With prayers for your next issue,
— Sister Agnes
Letter 2
From: Seaman Ethan V., Coastal Artillery
I saw Velvet Undertow once. Or I think I did. There were only five of us left, the water was already above our knees, and the man beside me had stopped speaking and was just staring into the dark.
When I saw her in your magazine, my mouth went dry all over again.
You don’t understand how perfectly you captured her. The cigarette. The wet hair. The feeling that she already knows what you sound like when you start to panic.
I hate her. And if she appears again, I’ll read every word.
I hope none of you ever find yourselves standing at the edge of the water at night.
— Ethan
Letter 3
From: Senior Drummer Tekle Maru, Colonial Corps
I bought the issue with Ember in Step in a town that smelled of dust and machine oil. I don’t usually read magazines like this. But the way she walked reminded me of home.
We had women like that too — women who knew how to move slowly even when everyone else was in a hurry. Women who didn’t shout, wave their hands, or ask for attention, and still no one could stop looking at them.
The way you wrote about her spear, the drums, the copper charms — it was beautiful. And true.
May your next issue have even more women who know how to move slowly.
— Tekle Maru
Letter 4
From: Corporal Julian Richter, Engineering Corps
Your magazine makes its way around our company on a regular basis. Some read the interviews, some only look at the pictures, and some argue over which model is the most dangerous.
Personally, I don’t understand the fuss around the Daughters of the Veil. Yes, they’re beautiful. Yes, they’re unsettling. But honestly, I couldn’t tell where the woman ended and the performance began.
That said, I have to admit: after the interview, I slept badly. I kept feeling like someone was standing outside my tent.
So maybe you got it exactly right.
Good luck with future issues.
— Corporal Richter
Letter 5
From: Clerk Émile Devereaux, Funeral Service
I bought your magazine out of curiosity. Iron Whisper was on the cover, and I wanted to see how you could make a woman beautiful when she barely speaks.
I have to admit: you managed it.
But I think you romanticize the front too much. War smells worse. People look worse. And if most of your models showed up in my sector, they’d be covered in mud up to their knees within a day.
Then again, maybe that’s exactly why people buy your magazine.
I hope you don’t forget what the real front looks like.
— Émile Devereaux
Letter 6
From: Father Bernard, Church of Saint Repentance
I demand that publication of this magazine cease immediately.
You call this art, but it is lust wrapped in prayer. You show lepers, cultists, killers, and witches as though they deserve admiration. You teach young soldiers to look at suffering as if it were beautiful.
Your issue with Velvet Undertow was especially disgusting. That woman does not belong on the cover of a magazine. She belongs hanging from the shore so others learn to fear the sea.
I pray for the souls of everyone involved in this publication.
May God have mercy on you.
— Father Bernard
Letter 7
From: Madame Héloïse Vernier, Owner of a Tea Salon
My husband used to read only newspapers. Now he hides your issues beneath the bed and pretends I don’t notice.
I found the Bleeding Grace issue open to her interview. He was sitting there looking at it the way he hasn’t looked at me in years.
If your goal is to destroy marriages, then congratulations — you’re doing an excellent job.
Though I must admit, Ember in Step does have beautiful shoulders.
I hope your next issue is at least a little less dangerous to family life.
— Héloïse Vernier
Letter 8
From: Junior Recovery Agent Sabine Voss, Auric Collectors
I bought your issue with the Daughters of the Veil during a recovery assignment in the eastern districts. Strictly speaking, it was a poor financial decision. I was supposed to be auditing collateral, not sitting in a carriage rereading an interview three times because I couldn’t tell whether I understood it.
I still can’t.
That’s what unsettled me.
Most people are simple once you know what they owe. You can see it in the way they stand, the way they sign, the way they panic. But the Daughters of the Veil felt like a debt without numbers. Three women, one shadow, and somehow less human every time I looked back at the page.
I’m not ashamed to admit I kept the issue on my desk longer than I should have. More than once I caught myself glancing at the cover after dark.
I’m still not sure if I was looking at them.
Or if they were looking back.
May your accounts remain balanced,
— Sabine Voss
Letter 9
From: Lieutenant Marta König, Saint Sebastian Artillery Battery
I rarely read your interviews. Usually I’m only interested in articles about tactics, weapons, and uniforms. But in your last issue, I opened “She Doesn’t Speak — She Resonates” about Glass Pulse and couldn’t put the magazine down.
There are people you can feel before you see them. I’ve known officers like that. Artillerymen like that. People with voices that are too quiet and eyes that are too precise. You captured that feeling perfectly in the article.
What stayed with me most was the line: “Every Bone in Her Body Knows What Comes Next.” That’s exactly what a good battery feels like before it fires — as if everyone already knows what is about to happen, but no one has said it yet.
I hope there will be more women in your magazine who are frightening not because of their bodies, but because of how much they know.
— Lieutenant König
Letter 10
From: Brother Matthias, Order of Saint Burial
I do not understand how you can publish articles like “Too Beautiful for the Trenches” or “War, But Make It Elegant.”
There is nothing elegant about the front. There is nothing beautiful there. There is only mud, rot, lice, and death. I spent three years pulling bodies out of shell craters, and I can assure you: no one looks like your models.
Worse still, you make people forget what war truly is. They read things like “The Most Elegant Kill on the Battlefield” and start believing death can be beautiful.
It is not beautiful. It is heavy, cold, and smells worse than you can imagine.
Though… I have to admit, “The Last Beautiful Thing in No Man’s Land” was very well written.
May God forgive me for reading it all the way through.
— Brother Matthias
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