“Your name was… Lucía!”

Never could she forget that name. Not when that mesmerizing face of sharp golden eyes was irrevocably linked with her moment of arrival into this world.

“Indeed… you are correct.” The woman of angelic blond hair closed her eyes, crossed her arms, and began tapping her left foot. “I can’t recall telling you my name, however”

“But you did. In fact, you kinda blurted it out back then…”

As she said that, Elena inspected her surroundings. A tall ceiling stood above her, carved with the figure of a blonde woman wearing a long, white dress. Pillars connected the ceiling with the floor; some were painted yellow like gold, others gray like silver. Behind Lucía’s head, a staircase led to an altar. There were two lit candles on top of the table, one on each side. On the wall behind it hung a sword, much like a cross would on a Christian church, one with a hilt made of gold and adorned with small jewels of many colors.

“Where are we? Is this some kind of chapel?” The building lacked pews for people to sit, but otherwise it fit the look to a tee.

“You tell me.” Lucía shrugged her shoulders. “I only found you here.”

“Are you serious?”

“I indeed am. It was quite amusing, actually. You were writhing violently on the ground, shouting incoherently about some girl, while hanging desperately to life.”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about that…”

“It’s just that your image betrayed my expectations,” Lucía said, placing her hand on her chest. “Usually when I spot my target, I expect to find someone who’s given up on their life. Instead, I found an unprecedented strength. An unrelenting will to cling to this world of mortals.” She pointed to Elena’s dress, which was the same one Elena chose back in the palace, albeit tarnished due to the sudden flood. “All while looking absolutely glamorous, if I may add.”

Lucía spoke grandiosely, accompanying her words with exaggerated hand motions. Yet her tone overall was too casual for the weight her words carried. Elena could not help but be taken aback. What did she mean by “spot my target”?

“Were you… looking for me?”

Lucía wasted no time in answering. “In a sense. But it would be more accurate to say it is your aura what called for my attention.”

Elena’s answered question had only led her to more questions. “My… aura?”

“Indeed!” Lucía clapped her fingers. “The Aura of Death you wear is the natural enemy of the likes of me, a humble follower of the Light of Justice!”

The Aura of Death…

What it referred to, she couldn’t say for sure, but were she to hazard a guess, Elena would bet she was referring to her ability to return from the death.

A shiver began to wrap Elena’s body. A memory crashed into her back in the form of wind, drenching her mind with fear.

She remembered the numbing touch of the void. The endless pit of darkness that death was. Just thinking about it was enough for her neck to feel as if it was being strangled. Her skin turned pale and her eyes lost their luster.

She had so far not tried to think about it, much like we don’t think about what happens when we sleep. But nothing could change the fact that she knew death. She’d seen what secrets it held, what lay on its shores.

Yet, it was impossible for her simple human mind to truly grasp the overwhelming depths of the valley was death. The brain was designed for life; it held no ability to conceptualize what it meant to not live. All she could paint was a fuzzy picture, for death still held mysteries even to her, a unique existence unlike all others, blessed with the privilege of having met death and lived to tell the tale.

“But you don’t have to worry!” Lucía waved her arms, noticing Elena’s discomfort. “I mean you no harm. My intention is to rid the likes of you of that Aura. The Light of Justice points me toward the direction of poor souls like yourself, who reek of the cursed smell of death.”

Elena tilted her head. “So, you want to get rid of my power?”

“I don’t know what you mean by power, but indeed! I intend to fight back against the

grip the Dark King holds over your soul!” Lucía pointed at Elena. “To release you from the cold hand of death.”

Elena tilted her head. “Hand? I’m guessing you’re being figurative, here?” Her question was accompanied by a nervous laugh. She shuddered at the thought of having to face some sort of hand-monster. Playing The Legend of Zelda had given her enough trauma in that regard.

Lucía waved her finger. “Indeed… NOT! Just because it is only my valiant self who can see it, doesn’t mean that the hand of death isn’t real. When lost souls like yourself fall into despair, they fall powerless before the cold fingers of the Dark King.”

“So, I’m a ‘lost soul’, then? Whatever that means…”

“Indeed! Although…” Lucía began scratching her chin. “You really do seem oddly upbeat for one with a soul as tainted as yours. I wonder if…”

Her eyes began to carefully scour every visible spot of Elena’s skin, from her exposed arms to her slender legs. She even took a peek under Elena’s dress, much to her complaint.

“Hey, cut that out, pervert!” Elena grimaced as she blushed

Lucía ignored her and kept looking. Eventually, she inspected Elena’s back, right underneath her neck, and her face lit up.

“I knew it. You carry the Mark of the Raven.”

“Huh?”

Confusion painted Elena’s face, but it was a confusion quickly cleaned out by her previous knowledge.

“That mark… does that make me one of those ‘marked’ those people speak of?”

Elena raised a question she already suspected the answer to. She only wanted confirmation, from someone like Lucía, who seemed to know all the secrets there was to know in this world.

“Not just any marked, but a wearer of the Mark of Darkness,” Lucía replied, “The most despised marked of them all! Kicked from the mainland even in Eternasia, looked down upon by even other marked.”

Lucía spoke completely matter-of-fact, but the horror that information carved on Elena’s face was palpable.

She was in a world where she expected to live out a fantasy. To be able to escape the injustices of her own flawed world, where the course of your life was determined more by the circumstances of your birth than any aspect of your self.

Even she, who was relatively treated well by it, felt nothing but disdain for her world. Knowing she’d left such a shameful place was the one thing that had so far kept her going. Had her world not been as putrid as it was, homesickness would have long since begun to plague her. She’d start missing the touch of her mother, the warmth of her room, the pleasant sounds of the bands she used to idolize.

So to now know for sure that not only was this new world no different, but that she might be at the bottom of the ladder…

Her mind shut down, her body becoming a statue.

Mom…

That was the only thought she could muster. The image of her mother, that woman she once took for granted, now drew itself in the front layer of her mind, acting as a reminder of the safety net she now lacked, of the arms she could never return to.

Why… why did I do that…

Noticing Elena’s distraught look, Lucía attempted to console her. She tenderly grabbed Elena’s shoulder and said, “But hey, don’t worry! I am not going to harm you! I am a marked myself, in fact!” Lucía took a step back, then continued. “Here, take a look.”

She gripped her pants right underneath her waist, and began pulling it down, leaving her thighs and underwear exposed to the naked eye.

“Wowowow, relax, I believe you!” Elena covered her eyes, caught off-guard by the sudden exhibitionism. She did leave enough of a gap between her fingers through which to sneak a peek. Much as we wished to lust over Lucía’s long, slender legs, what she needed to focus on was the secret her skin hid.

Carved on her right leg was a birthmark, golden in color. It was hard to make out, but it appeared to be the figure of a woman. She had 8 arms; at first glance, it appeared each stretched out in a cardinal direction, however there was no arm stretched out to what would be the north; instead, there was one extra arm stretched toward the south-west. The marking featured detailed eyes and a detailed nose, but no visible mouth.

On second thought, it resembled the woman whose image adorned the ceiling. In fact, odds are they were one and the same.

Lucía fixed her pants back up. “So indeed, you can place your faith on this humble… baaaaaard.”

“What’s wrong?” Elena asked.

At a moment’s notice, Lucía’s gaze lost any semblance of a fixation. The focus of her eyes suddenly became the ceiling, then the floor, then the walls. The palm of her hand came to softly kiss her own forehead, and her torso and legs began to shake wildly.

“The Light of Justice… is drawing… my way forward.”

Those same eyes that before were in a frenzy now slowly closed, and the shaking of her body came to an abrupt halt. As she froze like an ice statue, Elena couldn’t help but savor the delicacy of her fine eyelashes.

“Let’s Go!” Lucía shouted with no indoor voice. Her eyes opened wide and her fists kissed her hips. She stared and pointed at the large, wooden door behind Elena, then began moving her feet rapidly.

“What? W—wait, don’t leave me here!” cried Elena, as Lucía dashed right by her. She had no idea where she was, and being left alone in this world was likely a death sentence.

Lucía stopped by the door, and without turning around to face Elena, said, “Well in that case, why don’t you join me in my little quest to vanquish despair? HIYAAH.”

The bottom of Lucía’s foot struck the doorframe of three times her height. It was a double door, each side engraved with a depiction of a woman carrying some sort of crystal, both carvings a mirror of one another. Said crystal lit up all of a sudden, and soon afterward the door opened on its own.

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“Did you do that?”

“It was the Light of Justice. Now come on!” Lucía rushed back to Elena and grabbed the latter’s hand. “There is not a lot of time.”

“Wait, where exactly are we—gaaaah.”

And so, hand in hand, the two Marked left the strange chapel by way of sprint.

—

“Slow… down…”

As the weird woman pulled her along like a horse pulls a cart, Elena’s lungs started to cry out in pain, a burning sensation making its home on her chest. She wasn’t much of an athlete in her past life, and her new body appeared to make little difference.

“We can’t… any second longer and that person…” The usually plucky Lucía spoke with an unusual tongue soaked with grit. Elena couldn’t see her face, but she swiped the sweat off her forehead as she continued her relentless charge forward.

While her speed was nothing compared to that of a Sword Dancer, she still dashed across the streets of the city at a velocity impossible for your average woman to reach. Elena’s head bobbed up and down, her attention divided between the desire to observe her surroundings and the need to watch her step.

Not that there was much to gain in doing the former, anyway. It was nighttime, meaning it was far too dark to easily make out much in the way of architecture. There were next to no people wandering the streets, nor were there any vehicles to take note of. It was only when they approached the occasional streetlamp that a clearer picture of the environment drew itself; compared to the more obviously medieval buildings she’d seen earlier, the faint few houses seemed more modern, featuring walls of concrete and clearly built with simplicity and minimalism as a priority.

Then again, she wasn’t able to carefully inspect them. Right now, her priority was to not trip and fall over.

Which of course, happened anyway.

“Shit!” Elena yelled as her body plunged head-first to the ground, paddling the air with her arms. Unfortunately for her, Lucía ignored her cries, refusing to slow down.

Elena therefore was dragged across the city roads face-down, earth filling her mouth and muddying the beauty of her face as well as any remaining glamour of her dress.

Fuck my life.

“Here we are!” Lucía suddenly exclaimed. She released her grip on Elena’s arm, and ventured forward on her own.

Elena, for her part, took a second to rest her body, as she remained prone for a couple of seconds. Eventually, she planted her hands and pushed her body upward.

What greeted her eyes was a new picture for her, yet one that sent a chill down her spine due to its uncanny familiarity. She was standing on top of a bridge, overlooking a river of crystal blue water. It floated at sufficient height for a fall to prove lethal.

A puff of wing breath at her neck, suffocating even her spirit. The hem of her dress danced alongside the wind, flowing delicately. Her hand pressed against her own chest, as if to ensure her heart remained in function.

She recognized what was sweeping at her soul. It wasn’t the wind itself, but rather the memory the wind carried within its grasp.

“Stop!”

A booming roar shook the air, bringing Elena back down to Earth. She turned her head to the left and was witness to Lucía, who found herself wrestling with another girl. Her body under Lucía’s grip, the girl was skinny, had long red hair, and had short legs that kicked the air as an act of defiance. She was clad in a black dress with red slippers, and the sleeves were short enough to reveal her arms.

“Let go of me! I just…”

The girl pleaded for Lucía to free her from her grasp. But Lucía did not relent, holding the girl with ever-more increasing strength. The girl struck back, trying to break free by kicking at Lucía’s legs with the heel of her foot.

“Impossible. Nobody will die under…” Lucía’s words were briefly frozen, as she felt the impact of the girl’s strike. However, the strength of the blow was that which was expected out of a fourteen-year-old, so she brushed it off and continued talking “...under my watch!”

Elena ran toward the two of them with her leg’s remaining strength, and, as she watched the scene unfold, asked, “Lucía, what’s going on?”

The young girl gazed at the approaching Elena, and knowing she was outnumbered, halted her struggle and calmed herself down.

Lucía meanwhile looked bizarrely gaily, smiling as she gave a thumbs-up. “A job well-done, if I would say so myself. Through the power of the Light of Justice, I have brought salvation to yet another soul preyed upon by the hands of death!”

There she spoke again of those so-called hands of death. There had been no appearance of a Hand-monster of any kind, yet Lucìa still spoke her words with conviction. Elena stared at Lucìa for a second, in complete befuddlement. Her focus then darted toward the young girl, who was sitting on the ground with crossed arms. The girl’s cheeks were drenched with tears, and her arms were filled with scratches colored like rubies. Her eyes were so devoid of soul they threatened to pull those who stared at them for too long into a white void.

Elena bent her knees and extended her arm. “Is everything OK?” She attempted to run her hand through the girl’s hair, but an attempt would be all it’d be.

“Don’t touch me.”

The girl slapped Elena’s hand away. It wasn’t painful in the slightest; what was, however, was the duel of gazes Elena and the girl were now having. Whereas before those eyes were devoid of anything, now wrath was brewing within them.

“You…ruined my death!”

“Ruined?” Elena’s fingers kissed her chin.

“I just… can’t go on living anymore… without him… so why did you two imbeciles…”

Her mouth continued providing further sound to that ire, endless profanities flowing out of it. She hurled curses at Elena and Lucìa, for daring to stand between her and the death she yearned for. What the contents of those words were, Elena did not know, as their meaning had become lost by the time they entered Elena’s ears.

Her mind was too focused on the girl’s glare, which was sharp enough to pierce Elena’s skin…

No. That would be an inaccurate assessment of the situation.

The girl’s eyes served as a mirror. Reflected in them, was Elena’s face, a face that wasn’t hers, but rather she was just borrowing, one blooming with a beauty she never could’ve hoped for. It was that image then, what trapped her attention, as she stared at her own curious gaze.

That her face wasn’t hers was a blessing in this scenario. If she had to see that old, putrid figure, while simultaneously being assaulted by obscene, hateful words, then she wasn’t sure if she could even—

“Shut up.”

A whisper leaked out of Elena’s dry lips. Her voice lacked power, and thus the girl continued her rant.

“...don’t you get it? I just want to die. What do you idiots gain by…”

“SHUT UP!”

Elena’s yell slashed through the veil of anger the girl was covering herself in, her eyes turning anxious while her mouth opened wide. This was due to the transformation Elena’s body language had taken; her brows were furrowed, her fist was clenched, and her legs were stiff.

Elena grabbed the girl’s arm in a hush, bringing it closer to her eyes. She inspected the scratches it hid. They were the work of a knife, albeit with not too deep of a stab as for blood to leak out.

As she held that arm, Elena stared deeply at the girl’s face. “Repeat,” she said with her voice turning taut, “why do you claim to want to die?”

The girl drew her eyes away, likely suffocated by the fire of Elena gaze. She gritted her teeth, but through the gaps between said teeth a response to Elena’s question came out. “My boyfriend cheated on me… called me horrible things…”

It was now Elena’s turn to be filled with ire. She tightened her grip on the girl’s arm, and her stare grew in intensity.

“I just want to die…”

“SHUT UP!”

The girl had repeated those words, and Elena thus repeated her answer to those words. This time, Elena would challenge the girl’s supposed death wish even further, as she then added, “What do you know about death?”

The girl flinched back at the cutting edge of Elena’s question.

“Do you think death is an escape? A solution to every one of your little problems? Do you not care about your family, your friends, who will no doubt grieve you?”

Elena hurled those questions with reckless abandon, unconcerned by the distraught that was increasingly building across the girl’s face. She was speaking from a position of authority, for not only was she older but had also experienced death itself.

“I…I…I…” was all that the girl, confronted for the first time with what the reality of death truly entailed, could manage to mutter as a response.

“Of course…” Elena wickedly grinned at the girl’s speechlessness. “You are nothing more than a stupid little girl,” she uttered under her breath.

Under the judging eyes of Elena, a unique existence who carried knew death, this girl was no more than naive and ignorant. How dare she think she was worthy of throwing her life away, just because of some mere relationship problems? Did she not consider all of which she’d be leaving behind? Did she not think of all the places she knew, she’d never get to see again? Did she not think of her mother, whom she’d abandon senselessly?

For Elena, such a being was not deserving of her pity, not deserving of the grief victims of suicide get. That was the reasoning for the heat that fueled her eyes, with which she sternly engulfed the girl, hoping to forge the meaning of her wrath into the girl’s skin.

“María, that’s enough.”

That name. A name only uttered by her mother.

Its sound washed Elena’s body like a bucket of cold water. Her eyes began to blink in rapid succession, as if reality was redrawing itself before her. She felt the warm touch of a hand on her left shoulder. She cast her gaze upward, as she looked for the owner of that touch.

It was Lucía, of course, who remained standing. Back during their first meeting, Elena had given her full name, María Elena, but despite her stated preference for her second name, Lucia had clung to her first.

“Look at this poor girl,” Lucía continued, “You’re tearing her tiny heart apart.”

Slowly, out of hesitation, Elena turned back her head toward the direction of the girl, seeing first-hand the result of her handiwork.

The girl was fully bawling, her hands shaking rapidly. Her voice had turned into an incomprehensible shriek, and it was clear she was hyperventilating. Finally, her long nails were digging into the skin of her knees.

Elena’s eyes, once fueled by fire, turned sour. A freezing wind bit the nape of her neck, and her heart pounded in her chest so rapidly it was clear it yearned to escape.

Why did I say such awful things?

The girl weeping in front of her was a mere teenager. Could she really be so lacking in compassion as to not feel for a young maiden who lost their first love? Was she so cold, as to judge someone’s reasoning for taking their own life?

Besides, who was she really, to speak so confidently about death? Just because she’d seen face-to-face with death before, didn’t mean she was a worthy arbiter to decide who was worthy of dying and who wasn’t. Especially when she herself…

“...”

The answers to all those questions were complicated, so much so her brain wanted to shut down. But unfortunately for her, she couldn’t stop thinking, and in doing so, she realized the truth.

Those words of anger she’d lobbed at the girl had their target wrong. Elena, who considered herself a caring person, could never hurl undeserved abuse at someone else.

Therefore, the real target of her hatred was…

One last time, Elena stared into the eyes of the girl. There, she saw the reflection of a beautiful, thin woman, with brown hair and perfect skin.

Now, that reflection began to morph. That skin became corrupted with spots of acne, and her torso began to grow in width.

Elena’s throat ached, for the reflection began to show the source of her anger.

That old, putrid body she wished to leave behind and never see again.

“No… nonononononono!”

Like birds, a storm of thoughts flew toward Elena from all directions and pecked at her skull, too many for all of them to be processed. She began pulling her own hair, attempting to shut them all down. It proved futile, for she was a slave to the darkness of her own mind. She quickly got up, turned back the way they came, and began to dart out of there.

“María, wait!” Lucía cried out, but it was too late. Elena had left the scene, and while she probably could catch up to her, she couldn’t leave the young girl alone.

—

Stupid…stupid little girl…

Elena continued to run. She ran and ran across the bridge, no destination in mind and the above as her only thought. So long as she escaped that cursed place that’d brought her so many bad memories, she had no doubt she’d feel better.

Her run was as brisk as she could manage, despite there being no reason for it to be so. She wasn’t being chased, and even if she was, no way could she outrun Lucía.

In reality, it was her past what she wished to escape, despite the understood impossibility of doing so.

It was because her past had no physical shape, then, that her sprint was aimless. A simple charge forward, indifferent to direction or course.

And because of that, she was not paying attention to her road forward.

And because of that, she was in for a shock when she bumped into a person at full speed.

“GAH!” Her body was shoved backward because of the resulting force of the collision. However, before her back could crash into the ground, her downward momentum was stopped by a pair of burly, masculine hands.

Elena performed a long blink, and when her eyes opened again, she was transported into the sun, as she was absorbed into the golden abyss that was the man’s eyes.

“Are… are you ok?”

“It can’t be… Miles!”

The man she thought twice she’d never get to see again. Who she thought death had split her apart from on two separate occasions. That same man was now who was holding up her body, a miraculous meeting only the night stars were witness to.