The crackling of timber was the only music left in the valley.
Everywhere Hazel looked, there was fire, death, and the metallic tang of blood thickening the air. Just a moment ago—or was it a lifetime?—they had been the happiest family on earth.
They hadn't provoked anyone; they hadn't tried to stand in anyone's way. They were a house built on kindness, a source of happiness for many.
And yet, that house was screaming as it burned.
"Urg..."
Hazel lay on the blood-drenched ground, her back facing the smoky sky. The left side of her head throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening heat. She had been struck by something heavy—a mace, a falling beam, she didn't know—and the world had gone black.
Now, as her eyes flickered open, the atmosphere in front of her had completely changed. The vibrant colors of her home were replaced by the orange glow of destruction and the grey of rising ash.
"Wh..." Her voice was a fragile thread, and the copper taste of blood was heavy on her tongue. "What happened..."
Her eyes were wide, blinking against the stinging smoke. The white dress she wore—the one her mother had embroidered with small daisies—was completely ruined, drenched in deep, blossoming bloodstains.
"Mommy... Daddy..."
She was only an eight-year-old child. She had lived her entire existence under the soft, warm protection of her parents. She had never known an argument; she had never experienced a moment of disrespect. Her world had been a sanctuary of gentle words and safety.
"Mommy, where are you?"
She cried out with all the strength her small lungs could muster, but the sound was swallowed by the roar of the fire.
"Mommy, it hurts," she whimpered.
A few tears escaped her eyes, tracing clean paths through the soot on her cheeks before falling into the red pools on the floor, mixing with the blood of her kinsmen.
She tried to push herself up, her small hands slipping on the slick marble. She looked around, searching for a familiar face, but all she could see were the corpses of men in heavy armor.
Some had swords buried deep in their chests; others lay in unnatural positions, their limbs detached and discarded like broken dolls.
Gasp!
The sight hit her like a physical blow. A cold, suffocating fear seized her heart. Her breath came in shallow, jagged bursts.
"No, it is a nightmare. Yeah, a nightmare. It is just as Mom explained," she whispered to herself, her voice trembling. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the world to reset, to go back to the sunlight and the smell of baking bread.
She paused for a moment, her small body shaking violently.
"It is... scary."
But the heat of the fire was real. The smell of the smoke was real. And as she lay there, a shadow began to stretch over her small form—a shadow cast not by the flames, but by a man standing amidst the ruins.
"Who..." Hazel tried to form a sentence but failed. She opened her eyes and looked at the figure next to her.
It wasn't a monster from a storybook. He was a man in polished armor, his cape stained with the very blood Hazel was lying in. It was the Duke of Veynar, looking down at the "trash" left behind by his conquest with eyes that held no more emotion than a winter sky.
In that moment, the eight-year-old Hazel realized something that no child should ever have to know: the world didn't care if you were happy. The world only cared if you were strong.
And as she stared at the Duke, a tiny, dark seed was planted in the depths of her shattered soul. A need for something to hold onto. A need for a center to her universe that could never be burned away again.
That was the moment Hazel felt hatred—true, visceral hatred—for the first time.
It wasn't that she hungered for a grand revenge; she wasn't waiting for a legendary hero to descend and raze House Veynar to the ground for her.
At eight years old, she simply wanted to survive. After all, survival was the only thing her small, trembling body was capable of.
She had no power. She had no authority. Taking an eye for an eye was a fantasy far beyond the reach of a girl whose world had been reduced to ash and service.
Her years in the Veynar household were not lived; they were merely endured. Each day was a blur of scrubbing marble floors that still smelled faintly of her own history.
The other maids didn't like her—they saw her as a "mercy case," and bullied her, tripping her in the kitchens and mocking her silence.
She didn't know the reason for their cruelty; she only knew it was constant. Every member of the Veynar bloodline looked through her as if she were a smudge of dirt.
Her hatred should have stayed cold. It should have been for everyone under that roof. It was supposed to be her only armor.
But then, the air changed.
"Do not tremble in fear."
The fragile Young Master she served—the one the world called a failure, the one who usually stared at the walls in silence—had begun to act in ways that defied all logic. He was unpredictable. He was... different.
"Not for my father. Not for Alaric. And certainly not for a house built on the ashes of yours."
Hazel had frozen when he said it. He had never bullied her, and he had never joined in the casual disrespect of his brothers, but he had never spoken to her like this before.
It felt new. It felt dangerous. Moreover, it was the most soothing thing she had ever heard.
For the first time since the fire, someone hadn't looked through her. He had looked at her. He had acknowledged the ashes of her home not as a trophy of his father's, but as a reason for her to stand tall.