[BlackLynx3]

This girl was and still is spiritually a very important person in my pitifully short life. A refugee from a Gold suffering from the aftermath of the War, hailing from a sand-buried villa called Lotus, Aria Kurita was an Onigan who had emigrated to Sigrogana with her family. As it turned out, her family lived in a small house right next to our estate, much to the annoyance of my mother, though of course these things I only found out later. She approached me and asked why I was sitting in such cold, windy, miserable weather. I told her I was lost and couldn't go home until I had picked up the goods I was supposed to get.

My memory is fairly hazy on what exactly we said to each other for what must have been ten minutes, but I remember her helping me up and us struggling through the heavy rain and wind to the market before going home. We ended up becoming fast friends, and over time, we got to know each other much better. As soon as her family had settled in amid protests from good old Mom and Pop, she began to teach me things about life from her eyes each day. Eventually, I came to want to know more, and after awhile, began to forget my misery shell that was my overbearing expectations. I began to smile much more, and not dread waking up each morning. I still had difficulty making friends at school, but did end up making a small circle of friends and ventured more and more outside of my perceived comfort zone.

Aria also taught me how to defend myself, a skill that came in handy multiple times as some of the populace not only still hated anyone from Gold, but also thought I was an easy target to rob. However, an exchange goes two ways, and for all her skill and street-wise mind, she was not always able to completely blend in with the local denizens, as an outsider by nature. So, I began to teach her how to blend in, the intricacies of the social dynamism that makes up how the average Imperial thinks, and of course we both grew up speaking Onigan and Common not long after we became fast friends. We got in all sorts of trouble as we sometimes let our mischievous sides run rampant. Among my favorites were ruining some of my family's attempts at monopolizing the smaller shipping companies in increasingly complex ways (My parents were trying to strangle the local economy and trying to enthrall the city that way as an endgoal). Aria's favorite things were coming up with clever, well-thought out pranks and generally causing large messes. That said, we tried to not let our shenanigans hurt anyone, even as young kids.

Often before going home at the end of the day and before putting up with the stifling environment of my home life, we would sit on top of the clock tower and watch the sunsets together, and just talk about serious life things or just philosophy. At first she wasn't entirely comfortable with it, but after teaching her how to read and write in books, she became much more into it and we shared life stories as well. Life was good, at least for awhile. Four years went by.

On my sixteenth, my mother summoned me one evening to her chamber, and told me she had something to show me now that I had 'come of age'. She had mentioned this thing once or twice before, so I was somewhat prepared, but did not expect to learn about the family tradition. Interestingly enough, though my house derided the original aim of the ancestor these days, they did not ever deny it's significance, or who she as a person was. She was revered, in a strange sense yet only barely respected as what you may call an OG. In addition to telling me about the 'Gift', she told me she would be going on a vacation with my father to a summerhouse in Alstalsia. There, she would receive the Gift and was to test me as the oldest daughter by giving me control of the house while she was gone. The staff around our place when she left looked very relieved. We had a good couple dozen around the estate and they all hated Hera so much, yet couldn't leave the property or resign, likely due to various blackmailing or manipulation. Vislan didn't care much about her leaving, it meant he could go out with his million and a half girlfriends and go full hog, playboy that he was. My younger sisters didn't really get out of the house much, being they were fine learning socialite skills and whatnot.

I learned two things when Hera came back two weeks later. One, she looked hungrier, beautiful but in a way that could paralyze you with fear, colder in tone and she was constantly watching everyone around her that wasn't her husband, son or triplets with complete contempt. Because of this, I decided that then and there, I could not at any cost receive the Gift. Two, she became much more impatient and power hungry and became much more vocal or blatant about it...probably because of her constant need of blood to keep her ass from misting. I didn't like what this so-called "Gift" had turned my mother into.

All was not well with Aria's world either. On top of increased taxes, Aria's family started getting death threats from what appeared to be powerful people. I couldn't see her as often because my mother started tightening her grip around my life even more, but when I did eventually see her, we exchanged our worries and found out very quickly that someone was trying to scare her family into moving somewhere else. To their credit, they chose not to in spite of the letters and one of my other friends, who was a rookie training to be an Inquisitor, began to privately investigate the letters.

A couple more years passed without too much in the way of incidents, but my mother eventually got it into her head that I needed to marry and must have summoned literally over two hundred potential suitors, all of which I refused. Some were arrogant, abusive toads. Some were kind, caring young men who wanted to help me go to somewhere other than the oppressive home I was living in. Some were simply scared witless by my mother and were so relieved that I was an exception to the rule that they were just happy I wasn't some sort of power-mad maniac and didn't mind that I didn't want their hand in marriage anyway. All in all, it was an exhaustive experience, and because Aria by now had really opened my eyes, I started to really want less and less of anything opulent....a trait I still tend to have to this day, as is reflected by my own home in Lispool.

Things really began to go bad as my 18th approached. Enraged and frustrated by my constant, low-key defiance and unwillingness to be married off, my mother began to scheme something and what she eventually did was something that still sickens me just thinking about it. See, I mentioned Vislan was a playboy and had a lot of girlfriends. What I didn't add was that he was entirely wrapped around Hera's finger, and therefore, she asked him to become my suitor, and force my hand by deflowering me in my sleep. If he was successful in this, she would have something to blackmail me with, and have some measure of solid control in my life. Scumbag that he was, he had no qualms about this and snuck into my room that night, the night before I turned 18.

Unfortunately for them both however, I was a light sleeper, and had been for the past two years thanks to my paranoia of her feeding on me. As soon as his hand reached my undergarments, I hooked his chin with my foot and began to grapple with him. He was caught completely unprepared, and I came very close to ending his life that night. Perhaps things would have been better if I did, but I decided that blackmailing him for this attempted theft of my virginity would be enough to dissuade any future attempts and would, if leaked, be enough to utterly /obliterate/ his reputation in Cellsvich and most of the local nobility. After threatening him, I kicked him into the wall outside of my room, slammed the door shut, and there he stayed for the rest of the night while I barred the door with a stool under the handle.

A side effect of course, was that he complained in the morning, and was quite steamed that his younger sister bested him in what he saw was a show of dominance...and so the day went on in much the same manner as most of my birthdays, quiet, barely noticed and exactly how I liked to spend them: Away from the house.. The next night, I had a terrible nightmare that left me shaking, which was unusual considering most dreams rarely ever scared me. I eventually woke very early in the morning, and couldn't go back to sleep, So, I resigned myself to staring out of the window until the sun came up. A couple hours later, I see someone in the yard coming out of the tool shed. As he leaves, his hood gets stuck on a tree branch, and falls.

His features weren't clear and I couldn't see his face, but the orange mop of hair meant It was definitely Vislan, and he was now walking to the edge of the property for Gods-know-what reason. I could have followed him, but by the time I could have made my way to the door, he'd already have been gone, so I sat and watched until he disappeared out of sight at the far end of the gates. He had no tools, so I hoped to god that he wasn't up to anything at this time of the morning.

Fifteen minutes later, I hear Aria screaming. Then silence.

Two minutes later, her house was on fire and Vislan is walking back towards the house. He was absolutely covered in blood, holding an axe, and the horrible, sadistic expression and glance at my window said it all...he was coming for me next, and I felt that I wouldn't be able to stop him this time. I needed to leave.

And this time i needed to disappear for good.

I began by timing my opening the window, and when he entered the house, I jumped out of my window even though it was some twenty feet below into the yard. Remarkably, I didn't feel a thing thanks to the adrenaline rush, and managed to leave the estate behind without so much as a sound or any indication to Vislan that he was too late by the time he reached my room. I remember running past the burning house, and though it grieved my heart, I needed to keep running. One of the last things I did as my previous status was anonymously tip off the Guard that my brother had killed three people. Eventually they did arrest him, found him guilty and stuck him in prison for a good couple decades....he's very lucky that they didn't execute him.

The moment I departed the estate without looking back, I left behind everything I knew or possessed beforehand, including any Murai and just had a sword, bread, the plainest clothes I could find, and forced myself willingly to start off with a new slate. Sadly, the brutal murder of Aria was the impetus needed to start my life over. If I were to console myself, I can safely say that this is not the last time I would see her.