You said you wanted to know everything from the beginning, right? I might''ve not had this trouble if I were to be very vague about it, but I guess that''s not what you want.


    However, if that''s not what you want then you leave me in quite a tight situation, as even I don''t know where to start.


    You said you wanted to hear my story from the beginning, but what does a ''beginning'' define? Did it all start when I was born? Or when I found Requiem? Or when I was left alone in a pile of dead bodies with my clothes dyed red? Was the beginning in the smell of burning flesh and hair? Or was it in the rage I felt at that moment?


    It truly is a hard choice, but I guess if I had to choose one true beginning, then it would be on that day of winter. Yeah, I think that''s where it all started. Before that point, I was living the life of a normal vige girl, but what happened that day trampled over my peaceful little life as you would to a bug under your feet.


    *


    It was just another day of winter, it was around afternoon and the sun was shining bright in the sky. I still remember it clearly. It was a good day, the skies were clear, and the warm sunlight was falling gracefully on our little vige on the outskirts of the Ustrington kingdom.


    As for me, well, as I''ve said before, at that point in my life I was nothing but an ordinary fourteen-year-old vige girl who was, on that day, ordered by her mother to go fetch a bucket full of water from the only well in the vige.


    The Ustrington kingdom was located just beside the Devil''s Mountains—which was a very dry area due to the volcanos present up there and the dragons who, during their mating period, came down and burned as muchnd as they could around the mountains as one of the disys of their strength.


    Thus, the part of the Ustrington kingdom that faced the mountains dried up too andcked its natural supply of underground water.


    If anything, we were fortunate enough to have a well near the vige and didn''t have to walk miles to get water from the river like a few other settlements that were around us.


    "Off to the well, Kei? I''m guessing you did something again to anger your mother?" an old man asked as I walked past him. He seemed to be in his mid-fifties and wore a gray uniform and held a long spear.


    He was Rick, the only official guard of our vige. We had a total poption of around 50, so there wasn''t much need for a guard anyway. But someone had to fill in the role, and Rick just happened to be interested in it.


    "Well, if beating up Bentley''s child counts as something that would anger her, then I sure did," I replied without stopping. There was nothing I could''ve done. I was never the shy and quiet type of girl. A punch is what you will get if you try to sneak a peek inside my skirt.


    He passed an amusedugh as he waved his hand in the air.


    "Be careful over there, it''s about the time when the dragons start toe down," he warned and then walked off in his direction.


    Our vige was the first after the mountains, so it wasn''t unusual for a dragon to show up near the outskirts, but it hadn''t happened for hundreds of years, so I guess he was just doing his job as the guard with that warning.


    I watched him leave and then met up with a young man with short brown hair, carrying a rusty iron sword on his back.


    He was Eugan; if you were an outsider then you might mistake him for Rick''s son, and so was their rtionship, but in reality, he was his disciple. Or, at least, that''s what he''d decided to call himself.


    Other than Rick he was the only person in the vige to carry a weapon and even that he''d received from Rick himself after days and months of pleading and crying.


    Being a swordsman was his goal, and with the little sword training, Rick got when he went training for his job he was the single person Eugan could rely on.


    That sword was also something he''d received as an ornament for his job, but we didn''t have bandits or monsters running in our vige, so he never used it.


    When Eugan learned about this, he made it his life''s goal to get Rick to train him; and by the way, this was when he was ten. It took him two years to convince Rick, and then another year to prove himself worthy. He''s twenty-five now, but his ambitions are as young as they were when he was ten.


    Watching them leave, I turned and continued in my direction. I soon crossed the wooden wall that surrounded the vige and worked as a line of defense, and then in a minute or so I was in an area crowded with dried-up trees.


    After a couple more minutes of walking, I reached the well. It was a pit in the ground with a line of stones around it and a wooden frame above it with a pulley attached to it.


    I reached close, grabbed hold of the rope, and tied the bucket I''d brought to it. Then I lowered the bucket into the depths of the well, and after a while, I felt the weight increase then I pulled the bucket back up; it came filled with water.


    I repeated the process with the second bucket and was done in a handful of minutes. It''s surprising how much in detail I remember the process, and you might think I was doing this very carefully, that''s how everything is clear in my mind, but I wasn''t.


    I was doing this whileining and murmuring to myself about how my mother shouldn''t have scolded me when I punched Sim and how it was not my mistake at all.


    … Little did I know that soon it was not even going to be the least of my troubles considering what was waiting for me.


    I returned to the vige when the sun was still up, but I didn''t go back directly. In the middle, I stopped in a field where some of the flowers had bloomed on the ground. It was a rare thing in this deadnd, and I was one of the few who admired that fact.


    When I finally came back, there was nothing unusual happening. By this time the people who''d gone to the fields to nt or check their crops were returning, the kids were ying tag and running all over the ce.


    In the corner near the wooden wall, beside the small box of wood that was the vige''s guard post, Rick was giving lessons to Eugen. I watched all this as I headed toward my house, the gentle warm wind that climbed down the mountains was making my hair dance.


    Opening the door, I entered the house, my mother was standing there as if waiting for me. She was beautiful, I''d like to say. But in those times ''beautiful'' wasn''t amonly used word as the world was rushed into war…you didn''t get the time to sit and admire the beauty of things.


    "You''rete," she said, her tone hard and slightly angry.


    "I went to see the flowers," I admitted, knowing there was no use in lying.


    She eyed me seriously for a while before letting out a sigh and taking steps toward me.


    "Honestly, you could''ve gone after fetching me the water," she said under her breath as she took the water buckets from me and headed over to the kitchen. "It''s because of you I''ll bete to make dinner, so don''tinter on," she added.


    It was fine, I wasn''t particrly hungry. But thinking back on it now, I should''ve hurried her for dinner and eaten it. s, thinking is all I could do now, and there''s no way I would''ve known what was about toe.


    "Isn''t dad home yet," I asked as I made my way toward the chairs that were kept in the room.


    "He should being anytime now, there wasn''t much work today," she replied from within the kitchen.


    My father was a farmer, just like most of the men in the vige. They went outside the vige walls and to the fields that were on the back side of the vige—that weren''t facing the mountains—since thend there was a little bit better.


    It was also closer to the roads that went to the cities, so loading the crops off the cart and sending them over to the cities to sell was easier that way, saving a lot of time. It was useful in one more way too, though we didn''t know it at that time…


    The door bashed open, and a man with short brown hair rushed in. He was my dad, and I hadn''t seen him like that in ages. He was sweating badly, and his face was a mess. His eyes widened, and he was running out of breath.


    Seeing themotion my mom came out from the kitchen, seeing him in this state left her in confusion just like me.


    "We need to go!" he said even before my mom could ask what happened.