Clara Bennet was her name.

She was the youngest daughter of Viscount Bennet in the kingdom of Solenia, located in the northern part of Lorian. Born and pampered as the apple of her Father's eyes, Clara lived a bountiful life. Everything she wanted, everything she wished for, she would get them.

Clara loved her family dearly, and they loved her.

On a fateful day, at the tender age of twelve, Clara went through a turning point in her life.

The death of her Father, Viscount Bennet, who enlisted himself in a skirmish against the neighbouring kingdom.

Clara, a young girl who knew nothing of blood and war, suddenly found her own Father lying cold in a wooden coffin, missing half of his jaw and his whole left arm. Not only that, her family was torn apart both from the outside and inside soon before long. The fief under Bennet's rule and protection had turned into an empty husk in a matter of a mere month following the death of their viscount.

Wolf-like nobles who once treated and honored them warmly had adorned the twisted mask of greed and tore the helpless house asunder.

She cried like it was the first time she learned how to cry.

After months of toiling harshly within her own sadness, Clara finally found a place where she could be free of torment. A little church in a mundane district that no one paid any attention to. They offered her solace from the merciless hell, which she desperately sought.

They called themselves The White Church.

They told her how they understood Clara's plight. How the whole world was unfair and how it needed to be corrected.

Clara believed in them. She deemed it necessary if she wanted to survive. She feared she might go crazy, and the White Church's ideology served as the perfect distraction for her broken self.

Hence, she joined them and left her family, or what was left of them...

Valuing Clara's blossoming talent, the Church spared little to no effort to groom her. Gritting her teeth for years, enduring the ruthless training they imposed on her, Clara grew splendidly.

With her help from the dark, the House of Bennet grew and escaped after wallowing in years of despair.

That was also the last time Clara had involved herself with her family, completely cutting her ties. From then on, Clara Bennet was no more...

Instead, she put all her mind and focus to the matters of the Church.

Dwelling for years on the affairs of right and wrong, Clara was not naive and foolish like she was once.

She knew no matter how sweet the promises the Church may give at first, the members always have their own agenda. And like any other organization she had encountered along her twisted path, corruption was festering ugly upon the many fronts.

Still, for as long as the vision remained true, Clara believed in the cause and did her job faithfully. She believed that to correct the world, one couldn't help but dirty themselves.

To correct the world. Yes...She wanted that.

When the Church told her to go to the Hero's home kingdom to incite a riot that would result in a civil war, Clara buried her wavering belief deep inside her heart and went to do her job.

The White Church order was for her to cause a riot, and the bigger the scale, the better it would be. They were aiming to weaken the kingdom by pitting them against each other.

And the best target to spearhead the plan was none other than the glorious Lion of Dawson.

Rygor Von Dawson...

All they needed was for him to join in on the fray. Either the beast exhausted himself by reducing the opposing force, or better yet, die in a battle somewhere, the current Duke of Dawson wouldn't be able to hold a firm hand against the entire neutral party of the kingdom.

The power balance would shift yet again, and the kingdom would be split in pieces. The Church would then spread its control to Boreas's northern border.

If the Church could swallow the north, it would be much easier to swallow the rest. And once they were able to do that, only then could they hope to begin their conquest to swallow the neighboring kingdom.

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And later...the entire Fysi.

It was a difficult and near-impossible plan.

And it was indeed impossible. Not because of the existence of Boreas's Saint, which the White Church strangely believed they could handle later on.

No, she couldn't even move past the plan's initial stage, which was to cause a riot in Dawson without getting caught.

They called themselves the House of Light and Darkness...

They were filled with extremely elusive and disciplined groups of assassins, nothing like she had ever seen. A group filled with elites...

But that was not Clara's biggest concern. She herself could confront dozens of them if she put her mind to it.

The day she got caught, Clara met two people in bizarre masks. Supposedly the leaders of the group.

One was a woman with a mask as dark as the night itself. She was sharp like a pointing dagger, ready to kill at any given point, and cold as the chilling evening breeze. She could do something if they fought in the open while she was ready. The problem was the woman was clearly someone who fought in the shadows.

She would strike when Clara least expected it and only strike once, which would be more than enough.

The other person, on the other hand, was a bizarre individual in Clara's eyes. He wore a big oversized armor covered in a dark robe, with a mask of black and white sides.

And from him, Clara knew the real meaning of powerless for the first time. He was like an existence completely out of her realm. Mana obeyed his words like the law that structured the world.

She tried to buy time yet managed to get his ire. A domain that rejected the whole world and accepted only its master. That was Clara's best word regarding the man's domain spell.

She knew her time was nigh. She was up against a saint, and death was coming...She had to make the best of it. She had to tell the Church about this dangerous hidden group. Above all, they must know the existence of this man.

Fortunately, she was successful. Clara had done her part using the strange spell imprinted on her left eye. She tried to work her luck further, hoping to dig more information out of them before her time was up, yet she failed nonetheless...

Out of the blue, the man had caught on the wind of the spell and cut off the connection.

He said the one thing that made Clara tremble with pure rage. To betray her cause...

To what extent did she live, what kind of sacrifice she made, and what kind of feeling she had when she dirtied her hand...Clara felt like the man was spitting upon her. And she couldn't take that.

She would prefer death rather than undoing everything she believed in her whole life. The Church might be questionable, but her hope was the one thing that kept her going all this time. And if she lost even that...What meaning would there be to the wretched life she had chosen to lead...

Of course, the torture came in. Staying true to his words, the man really taught Clara the real pain.

Not to her flesh but to her very existence.

The pain was vivid both to her mind and flesh at the same time and even beyond. A layer of depth that Clara never knew she had before. It was the same thing she went through when Clara had touched the man's nerve while talking about the Dawson.

It was horrifying. The pain itself had waned her rock-solid determination so much she had wished to die instead. She would choose death without batting an eye rather than going through that torture for the third time.

Fortunately enough, it lasted only for a brief.

He said he wanted to see her memories, and maybe he was able to...Regardless, the man had done nothing afterward but stared at her ragged self in silence.

It felt like eternity to her mind that had been bordering insanity...She was waiting for the end...She wanted her long-due respite and welcomed them with open arms.

But betraying her wish to let everything go, the man had spoken out something that nobody had expected. Surely not her, not even his own people.

Join him...He asked her to enter his rank and help him...

Clara felt like she had been laid bare before him. Nothing was hidden anymore. She could feel a foreign connection forming between them in his attempt to convince her.

A strong obsession with something more genuine than anything. She knew what it was. She could feel it in her bones. The man's goal...His vision...

At that point, she was standing in an intersection with two choices in front of her. Death or submission.

And she chose the latter...

Why?

Because she felt something from the connection between her and the man. Something that sparked and burned the dimmed embers that had been burning in her soul for her whole life.

To correct the world. She wanted that.

And to save the world. He dreamed of that...

She genuinely felt like she had met her kindred spirit and detested her own luck at how late she had found him.

He made her take the vow that would bind her to the man hailed as the Sheperd.

A vow not to betray him or the house and to save the world from the incoming doom. She would prowl in the dark to serve the light.

She would do whatever it took to vanquish the enemies and serve the house to her dying breath.

Clara made a gamble...A gamble to put her trust one last time in the house that treaded both the righteous and sinful path.

She wanted to correct the world, but the house went even further than that. They wanted to save it.

Will they be able to stay true to their goal and do it, or will they keel in front of the cancerous ambition and greed? Only time will tell.

But for now, that was enough. She made her choice...

From then on, Clara would be known as the Spy, sitting in the seat of Dusk on the Council of Light and Darkness.