Upon reaching the house, young master Starlight paused for a moment looking around.

It was not yet dark, but in the setting sun, this part of the manor was looking kind of gloomy with the light of torches not reaching here and the windows dark. One might even feel that an atmosphere here was somewhat eerie.

It was quiet, and there was no one in sight.

Starlight went to the door and lightly pushed it. The door opened silently.

It was dark inside the house, the window shades were drawn, and not even a sign of candle lit was there.

He heard whistles of wind, which indicated little sister was exercising.

The house had only one room but was nevertheless spacious enough to enable doing exercises without needing to go somewhere else.

Actually, Starlight would gladly take Brightfeather to live with his immediate family in his own house. His wife also wasn't against the idea; she quite liked the little girl. But there was one particular circumstance which wouldn't allow them to do so: after her parents' death, Brightfeather developed a phobia against fire.

One can imagine the terror of being pyrophobic in the house full of ever-burning fire.

There was fire everywhere.

It was the territory of the largest fire mages clan in the kingdom, after all.

The fear of fire was one of the main reasons for Feather's plight.

Being born into the fire mages family, but unable to learn family magic arts, wasn't it just terrible?

The family library had not even one thinnest book on any magic aside from the fire magic.

Well, even if there was, it was of no use to Feather as she only had an affinity to fire. She hadn't even a silver of affinity towards any of the other five elements.

It was very common to have an affinity for more than one element. But the more different affinities one had, the less one had a hope to become a mage.

The distinguished mage families spent the extensive amount of efforts to make their children have pure affinities and still only one in fifty would be a success.

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Others, as long as they had at least 70% affinity towards a particular element, still could learn magic arts but they would have to invest considerably more time and efforts.

70% was a threshold though. If one had less affinity toward one element, no matter how diligent he was, he had no chance to become a mage and would remain a commoner for the rest of his life.

Well, you still could learn a trick or two, or have an encounter which would allow you to become mage despite low affinity, but that was rarest of the rare. You know, Qilin horns, Phoenix feathers, those kinds of things.

Thus, it was a complete waste for a girl afraid of fire to have such an exceptionally high affinity towards it.

Upon Starlight's entrance, a delicate girl paused her movements and took off the blindfold covering her eyes.

"Oh, brother!" she said.

It was Brightfeather. She was dressed in the simple red gown, which every disciple of the family would wear. Her long fiery red hair was gathered in a tail. She was a bit blushing from exercises just now, and her eyes were sparkling despite the lack of light in the house. She obviously enjoyed having a workout.

Starlight shook his head:

"What's the need for this blindfold. It's so dark in here that you can't see your hand in front of your face anyway."

"Hehe, you'll never know what might come in handy out there," Feather answered.

Out there.

It was a year and a half ago when Feather first heard this news of her getting married.

It was completely out of the blue.

And something was not right here. She couldn't put the finger on it, but it just felt wrong.

She only had an affinity to fire and no way to practice it. So from the mages perspective, Brightfeather was a complete cripple, even worse than having no affinity to magic at all.

Who would want to marry her? No one would.

To have a cripple in the family was a bad sign and a disgrace to any family. Even commoners wouldn't want to have someone like that in the family.

She succumbed to her fate and was prepared to spend the rest of her life as an insignificant member of her family, practicing swords and reading books. These were her two hobbies.

As she was a daughter to her father, no one would stoop so low as to make her be a servant, so she had all the time in the world to herself.

And yet, here she was, getting herself a husband out of nowhere.

But, you could say that Feather was prideful.

Having her husband married to a cripple? In no way would she be content with that.

So a plan had started. The escape plan.

Feather had spent days in the library reading books on wild herbs, magical beasts, geography, and anything that had to do with survival in the wild. She had read about cities and countries out there. Books on customs and beliefs, on history and places, on laws and…

She had read almost everything there was to read in the family library that could somehow or another be of help to the life outside of the family protection.

She had been thorough and diligent in her research and by the time of action could be considered pretty knowledgeable on the topic of wandering outside.

And when she was not reading, she was exercising.

It needed great strength and tenacity to travel outside. Although Feather was young, she wasn't all that naive to think that life without the family having her back would be a piece of cake.

So she put a lot of effort to be fit. Although she was a bit thinner and smaller than her peers, she was just as strong as any other kid in the family. And this is considering the mages were naturally tougher than non-mages.