Anya has always been a difficult child. Not in the sense that she was a naughty rebel, but on the contrary, she almost never showed any emotions. Besides anger and aggression. It was easy enough to piss her off, but not to please, make her laugh or surprise her in a kind way.

Probably, in any family, this would cause big problems. But not in the Rosenarm family. At this Anya, and her parents, were very lucky, because she looked like both of them at the same time. Mrs. Rosenarm was exactly the same. Cold, like steel, and with a tough, unbending character that does not forgive anything or anyone. Mother and daughter knew each other perfectly, somehow miraculously managing not to get involved in eternal squabbles. And Mr. Rosenarm, in turn, was an incredibly kind and sensitive person. And having fallen in love with his wife, years later, he was happy to discover in his daughter the same qualities as in the woman he loved. Therefore, in the family of alchemists there was a rather strange idyll for an outsider.

And at the moment it was in danger of being destroyed. Anya stood under the window of her own house and cried. Previously, she went to the forest to get ingredients for potions, and now, under the dim light of the moon, she returned back to find that there were strangers in her house. Six armed men turned everything upside down in search of valuables.

Half of the Rosenarms' house was residential, the other was intended for their store and alchemical laboratory. And now two people were sweeping everything off the counters, carefully stacking potions on top of each other in a huge bag. One of them asked his accomplice, examining the orange bottle:

- Hey, what’s this, can’t you fumble? There are some letters, what are written in capitals.

- What the hell is the difference? This is the potion, so it means someone will buy it. We'll ask the appraiser later.

From the next room came the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and one of the robbers grunted:

- Hmm, strange woman. He beat her, but she is silent. I hope bro doesn't finish her.

- What kind of mouse is this hiding here? – A hoarse voice rang out over Anya’s ear, and the girl was forcefully dragged out the window. She tried to scream, but her mouth was quickly covered, and she could only shed tears. – Bro, I found a small one hiding under the window. Maybe, their daughter? With a bunch of herbs and some mushrooms in the bag.

Anya was hanging in the air. She was picked up by the same robber who dragged her into the house. The whole picture was revealed to her: everything around was turned upside down, and three bastards stood in the middle of the room. Two of them were holding the girl’s mother from behind, and the third, apparently the main one, was wiping the blood from his fist. Anya sobbed out loud with fear when she saw her mother’s beaten state and her father lying next to him, already unconscious.

- Well, since there is no point in beating you, I will do it with your daughter. – The head of the bandits said coldly, coming closer to the girl with an expressionless face. – Or I’ll do something worse. And you will watch. Or you will tell me where the money is hidden, and we will leave peacefully.

Anya looked at the towering figure in horror. Big! Strong! And scary! The girl was completely powerless, a small doll in the hands of an adult man. And suddenly she heard sincere laughter. This laugh belonged to the man, but not to anyone present. She began to turn her head, trying to find the source of the laughter, and finally saw a dark, almost indistinguishable shadow standing in the corner of the room. And the shadow spoke:

- Hello, Anna Rosenarm. To be honest, I thought about not getting involved, but this is so funny. You're funny. So small, weak, you overreact to everything and cry. But hey, are you like that? Tell me, Anya. - Suddenly the figure disappeared, and a voice came straight into the ear of a thirteen-year-old girl. – Don’t you remember what you did when you saw the robbers?

Suddenly, Anya’s consciousness cleared up. She was confused as she recalled the events that had just happened and how she had reacted to them. The tears immediately stopped flowing from her eyes, the cold, cruel expression on her face returned to its place, and at that moment she felt the leader of the bandits grab her hair with his hand.

With her foot, Anya kicked the man holding her in the air in the crotch, and he, with a pitiful whining sound, let go of the girl, clutching the wounded place, and the leader could not hold her with one hand. Anya fell to the floor and reached for the ingredients in her bag. She took out a bright yellow flower from there, all covered in pollen, and thrust it into the face of the enemy in front of her, sharply shaking all this pollen into the air.

The bandit inhaled yellow particles in the air and coughed. The cough was so strong that it bent the man in half, giving Anya freedom of action. Meanwhile, the girl heard a man standing up behind her, swearing. She dodged his inept grip, ducked under the big man's stomach, grabbed a knife sticking out from his belt, and, finding herself behind the target's back, without thinking or feeling, plunged the blade into the base of his leg. Cold steel tore the fabric of clothing and flesh, cutting the femoral artery, causing blood to burst out of the man’s body in copious fountains.

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The rest of the robbers realized that something was not going according to plan at all, and, drawing their weapons, ran towards the little girl. She, in turn, seeing the situation, jumped out the window again. There was a cry:

- Catch the small beast! – And the owner of the voice appeared in the window opening, clumsily climbing over it. Clumsy enough to give Anya, who was hiding under the windowsill, time to stand up and deliver one precise blow straight to the throat.

While the remaining three bandits retreated in surprise and argued about what to do, and their leader was still choking in an incessant cough, Anya, without wasting time, ran around the house, entering through the back entrance, hiding in the shadows on her native territory. Finally, the bandits decided what to do, and one of them, with a blade at the ready, ran up to Anna’s mother, putting a knife to her neck. He shouted:

- Come here, you devil! Or I'll kill your mother! Drop your weapon and surren...

The man was unable to finish speaking because he was unceremoniously interrupted by a teenage girl who had sneaked up behind him. She plunged her own knife between the man's vertebrae and twisted the weapon with a click. True, she instantly had to retreat from the attacks of two opponents, leaving the blade in the corpse. Frowning, Anya easily, like water through the fingers, slipped between the blows of the bandits, approached the bag in which they had previously put potions, and pulled out what was on top.

- Stop running away, you, little bastard! – One of them shouted furiously, waving an ax.

The girl shrugged and obediently approached. Moving flexibly, like a weasel, she walked around the screaming man, avoiding all attacks, jumped on him from behind, wrapped her legs around him, covered his nose, and inserted an orange potion into his mouth, forcing him to drink the contents. The second man tried to help his accomplice, and, wounding the young alchemist in the side, forced her to retreat. He looked at his rescued friend with concern and asked:

- What is this!? What did you put in it!?

- Oh, - the girl answered indifferently, - just a harmless enchantment potion. Makes the weapon it is applied to burn.

Suddenly there was a smell of fried rotten meat. After drinking the potion, that bandit was alive for a few more seconds, feeling no pain from shock. However, later his body did its owner a favor and died, unable to withstand such a sharp attack of agony. And now, the fallen corpse continued to burn from the inside, filling the room with a disgusting stench.

The last enemy looked with horror first at his dead comrades, then at this little fiend of hell, standing before him in the guise of a harmless girl. Animal fear filled the man's body. His bro, who was the leader of the group, had not coughed for some time, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, escaping from his mouth with coughing fits. And only the mother and the cursed girl’s father, who woke up, saw the whole picture of the massacre that took place.

- What's happened? – Anya asked. - Don't you think about running?

This was the last straw. The man turned to the door and ran. He didn't sign up for this! He managed to run a few steps, after which the knife, which had previously been stuck in the back of one of his friends, with a well-aimed throw ended up inside his skull, breaking the bones at the junction of his head and neck. The man took a few more steps by inertia, after which his lifeless body fell to the ground.

Anya removed the ropes from her parents’ hands, and her father immediately showered her with a bunch of questions and concerns:

- Oh my God, Anya, my girl, are you okay? Everything is fine? Show me the wound! Horrible! We need to give you first aid quickly! Quickly, sit down and don’t move, dad will take care of everything! My poor little girl... But I couldn’t even imagine that you were so strong! Have you always been like this and hid it from us?

- No, dad. – Seeing that her family was safe, Anya was able to exhale and relax a little. – Didn’t know. I just acted what seemed right. And... it seems like I did pretty well.

At this time, the girl’s mother, as if nothing had happened, examined the herbs that she had brought from the forest. Frowning, she said coldly:

- There is no Gray Poisonflower here.

- Yes, sorry, mom, I didn’t find him... - The girl lowered her head guiltily.

There was applause, and that vague shadow returned again, congratulating the girl on her victory:

- Oh, it was a wonderful sight. I shed a tear, these memories are so beautiful...

-Who are you and what's going on? – Anya demanded an explanation, looking at the point where no one else saw anything.

- We already know each other. – The guest said with a smile. - My name is Gray Herald Saivas. I'm God. And I decided to help my chosen one.

- The Gray Herald doesn’t help for no reason. – The assassin frowned. – Why did you decide to help? And what was it, why did I behave so stupidly at the beginning?

- Oh, the fact is, my dear, that this is all a dream. You were put to sleep there, in the crypt, and saw illusions. This event happened a year ago. But, haha, you dealt with it so brilliantly that you didn’t receive any psychological trauma that the spell could have caught on to! So, the magician had to change the elements, convincing you that you are small and weak.

- But why did you help me?

- Oh, this is just a pure act of altruism! You see, I am the god of deceit and betrayal. And illusion is one of the forms of absolute deception. Therefore, I am all-powerful here. I decided to help because I hate being deceived. And if my chosen ones are deceived, this is a partial insult to myself. Well, this memory is the happiest in your life. This is where you showed yourself as an assassin. You mercilessly dealt with your enemies, never holding a weapon in your hands. You revealed her genius for killing people. And I liked it. That's when I marked you. It would be sad if this memory, in its altered version, became the reason for your death. And now, O, Anna Rosenarm, wake up. And kill that illusionist who decided to compete with me. Show him the beauty of betrayal from a spell in which he is so confident. – Saivas finished with a cruel smile, and Anya replied:

- Yes.

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In the real world, in an intense battle between Klein, Isabella and Victor, the confrontation reached a stalemate. Both sides could not inflict serious damage on each other. And it was at this time that Anya emerged from the darkness behind the vampire, greeted by Klein’s surprised cry and Victor’s sigh, and plunged the blade straight into the skull of the undead!