<u>A village on the outskirts of the Fokchik estate:</u>


    A blond lad sat at a table inside a tavern, his curls hidden beneath a hood.


    A lonely candle flickered beside a half-filled beaker, casting a weary glow over his pale skin. The dark circles beneath his eyes told of many sleepless nights. Every breath he took seemed to bear the weight of his soul. He lifted the beaker to his chapped lips, his green eyes unfocused, lost in a past that never was.


    He thought of her. Of his dream.


    Of pulling her into his arms in fervent longing. Burying his face in her hair, letting her scent fill his senses. And she slowly turned to face him.


    Her hollow eyes pierced his soul, devoid of the warmth and life he remembered. Only tears stained her face.


    “You killed me,” She said, turning to dust in his embrace.


    Trevor clenched his fist around the cup’s handle, scratching his forehead as he mumbled to himself, “I need to save her…”


    Two silhouettes entered the tavern, looking as shabby and worn-out as he did. They were his loyal aids, who followed in his trail ever since he left home in the pursuit of the prisoner’s caravan.


    Their expressions were grim. Grimmer than he remembered.


    “Fuck, you tell him!” One of the servants yelled, waking the one drunk man present in the hall with them. “I can’t do this anymore!” The servant stormed out.


    The remaining aid clenched both fists as he approached Trevor.


    “Young master… I…” The cloaked servant fidgeted with his fingers.


    Trevor looked up at him, eyes darkening with all the possibilities. “Spit it out already. Are we too late? Did those Sutton bastards take her already?”


    It would be troublesome to get her out of Suttone, since it was under the Korpian Worshippers’ control. Trevor would hate getting involved with the Edvins of all families…


    “We were walking through the village… and w-we heard something…”


    Trevor’s grip on the beaker tightened. His servant’s words spilled out in a frantic rush, and with every syllable, dread clawed up his spine. The drink slipped from his fingers, hitting the table with a thud.


    Thud.


    Thud.


    Thud.


    The horse’s gallops echoed within Trevor’s skull. His hands trembled, the reins cutting into his fingers as he lashed them forward.


    “Faster!” The brown horse pounded up the hill’s winding path, the wind lashing at Trevor’s face. His green eyes were set on the road, unblinking.


    The sun had just set, leaving smudges of violet and red on the sky behind him. The chill was unforgiving, but the heat emanating out of Trevor’s body as he rode to the location made it a trivial matter.


    Fokchik’s infamous grey hill stared deathly at him from a distance. The servant, whom Trevor knocked unconscious in a fit of shaken rage, must have been a liar.


    A lie. Yes. It had to be.


    “Hurry up, you useless thing!” He cracked the whip against the horse’s flank, putting all the force of his arm behind it.


    The hooves hammered against the earth, but all Trevor could see was a dim, damp cell—the memory creeped up on him like a phantom.


    The silhouette of his fiancée sitting on a rundown bench, behind bars. It was minutes before the trial began.


    He could not forget it. The way the cold, flickering torchlight barely touched her, like even the flame had abandoned her. The large, hauntingly colorful butterfly drawing itched on the wall she leaned against.


    He had forgotten why he came to see her. His bruises were still fresh, his dignity completely crushed and his rage barely restrained.


    And he reminded himself.


    It’s all because of her.


    Since the first day he accepted her pleas to get engaged, shame was all he ever reaped.


    So why… Why had something within his chest twisted at the sight of her idle state?


    She eyed him. Didn’t jump to meet him. Didn’t smile. Didn’t talk.


    Trevor stood there, feeling estranged.


    When the seconds became minutes, Trevor had decided to leave.


    It was when he reached for the exit’s handle that his fiancée finally spoke.


    “I was terrible to many… but all I ever did to you was love you.” Her blue eyes—once alight at the mere sight of him—were devoid of soul.


    “So of all people…” A quiet breath. “How could you be the end of me?”


    Trevor’s horse halted, and his mind flashed back to the now. Instead of sharp, cold air, what he took in was a stench that sent a paralyzing disgust throughout his body.


    Everything he’d eaten traveled up his throat and out his mouth, as he stumbled down off of his horse.


    Trevor lifted himself back up, loosening the tie he wore under his cloak.


    Wooden barriers stood everywhere, keeping potential onlookers at bay. Knights moved in and out, their boots tracking blood and mud across the burnt ground. The air was thick with the stink of iron and something fouler—rotting flesh, the acrid scent of burned wood.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Shaken clergymen, dressed fully in blue, muttered prayers nearby, fingers trembling over their rosaries.


    Broken, burnt carriages. Large piles of monster corpses. And even larger piles of human remains.


    Trevor stumbled in, coming face to face with a knight.


    “Sir, you cannot enter this area.” A bearded knight, clad in armor, spoke in an authoritarian voice.


    “I will fucking murder you,” Trevor leaned in, coming eye to eye with the knight. “Where is she?” He asked, green eyes unblinking.


    The bearded knight didn’t respond.


    “I AM HER FIANCE. I ASKED YOU A FUCKING QUESTION!” Trevor’s shout tore through his vocal chords, echoing across the hill.


    Someone in the back, a superior of the knight, gestured to the bearded man to let Trevor in.


    The bearded knight turned to an area near the woods on the hill, and pointed to a patch surrounded in red thread. A body—or what was left of one—covered with a rough woolen sheet. “I assume that’s her.”


    Trevor chuckled.


    “No,” he turned back to the knight. “Where is she? She must be… be sitting around somewhere. Waiting.” He said, but the world was spinning around him. “She must be waiting for me. For her brother. Where is Penelope?”


    Trevor looked around, his eyes shivering as he searched for the golden hair, the loud presence that she was.


    The bearded knight rested a hand on Trevor’s shoulder. “Prisoner Penelope Ashdown… or what’s left of her.” He pointed to the same patch. The corpse. “You have ten minutes.”


    Trevor stared at the place the knight pointed to.


    The image of her hollow eyes came to mind.


    “Are you telling me…” Trevor’s eyebrows came together, his voice broken. “She died?”


    The knight patted his shoulder, “May Korpa forgive her crimes.” The knight walked away.


    Trevor approached the patch, tears already streaming down his face. The words she said in his dream rang in a loop inside his head.


    “I…” Trevor tried, passing a hand over the right half of his face.


    You killed me.


    You killed me.


    You killed me.


    “I…!” He gritted his teeth, his cries turning to sobs.


    His father’s words came to interrupt. “A real man knows when his woman is a burden. And a burden must be thrown out, Son. Even more so if the reward is someone of Estelle Pureheart’s standing…”


    And then his mother’s cry, “My boy! What happened to your face?! Who did this to you!? That… That ungrateful wench! I will make sure she regrets it!!”


    “I will sue her,” Estelle had told him. “I need your help. Let us get Justice.”


    “Stand with Estelle, Son.”


    “Yes, marvelous idea! Let us drag her through court!”


    “She must be punished!”


    “Son, you make me proud.”


    “My boy, you are finally free!”


    The voices in his head were silenced. A deafening quiet, unreal and comforting surrounded him as he fell to his knees, shakily grasping the unrecognizable corpse.


    His heart bled. He could not bear the pain of the realization.


    The only person whose voice he wanted to hear had fallen eternally mute.


    Trevor’s hand shook as it took a hold of the golden hairs left of her. He put them close to his face, wetting them in his tears, taking in the faint scent of lavender.


    There was no need to inspect whether this was her or not.


    Trevor knew in his soul.


    This was her.


    Penelope Ashdown was dead.


    Trevor cried fervently, hugging her corpse, looking up at the heavens in complete helplessness.


    It was too late to love her now.


    The bearded knight watched him from a distance, the pity in his eyes growing with each shriek of Trevor’s.


    “Wasn’t he the one to sue her in the first place…?” The bearded knight muttered.


    “Hm?” His partner asked. Another knight, who was distracted by a different corpse positioned near a rundown carriage.


    “Ah, nothing.”


    “I suppose we shall never uncover the truth of this one, will we…” The knight’s partner crossed his arms over his chest plate, gazing down at the corpse with a thoughtful frown.


    “You mean the stab wounds?” The bearded knight asked.


    “Yeah… Vamlins are no dagger wielders… And to strike a man in the back eleven times... ''tis uncharacteristic.”


    “Someone must have seized the moment amidst the chaos.” He surmised. “A personal vendetta, I say.”


    “Hm… Pity we cannot trace the culprit.”


    “Perhaps we could seek the aid of a mage?” The bearded knight suggested.


    His partner snorted. “Nay. No one gives that much of a shit about this case… compared to that one,” he pointed to Ashdown’s corpse.


    “Fars…” The knight mumbled. “Was that his name?”


    “Yeah,” The partner kneeled, covering the face of the toothless victim. “Sounds like a piece of shit.”


    The inquiry initiated by the Royal Bureau of Forensics regarding the assault on the caravan entrusted with the custody of the criminal Penelope Ashdown, under the auspices of the Fokchik estate, was concluded with the decree to administer a Holy Cleansing to the criminal’s remains, thereby permitting her family the rites of burial and funeral.


    As for Trevor Vielle, he returned home with sour news to share, his perception of those closest to him forever altered.


    ~


    Somewhere farther and much colder than the chilly hills of the Fokchik estate, south the land, little off the road to Jeozdam village and a day’s travel away from Sail…


    Two figures trudged across the snow, fighting the winds of a descending snowstorm.


    A bulky black soldier, looking sick to his stomach but powering through, with a female knight on his back. And a measly little woman, with disheveled blonde hair, a halfway frozen face and franticly searching eyes, carrying her lifetime servant upon her shoulders.


    Many thoughts bubbled in her head.


    Alice was heavy.


    The snowstorm was about to hit.


    The cold was murderous.


    Cheeks and nose red, her eyes continued looking through the white, between the trees, despite the wind.


    Suddenly, Penelope’s lips quirked up. A glint of mischief stirred in her blues as they landed upon it.


    There it was—that damn cave.


    “Truman!” She yelled at the knight. “Let’s take refuge in there!”


    That’s right, Penelope was in no place to complain.


    After all, all of this was her own doing.