-Arana-

As I float in the air, I watch over a scene I've already seen many times before. A little girl is crying inconsolably next to a woman's dead body. I'm seeing this from a third-person perspective as if it had nothing to do with me.

That woman was supposed to be nothing more than her servant, her sisters had told her many times 'just because she was used to give birth to you, that doesn't make her anyone special'. And yet, the girl couldn't help but think of her as her mother. Now her mother was dead, and it was all her fault.

She had been born with a rank 10 in light magic, which allowed her to not only heal injuries but fix broken objects and cast blessings as well. Needless to say, that was a power that many people would want, but the girl was always happy to help anyone who would ask her.

Her older sisters told her many times to stop being so kind, that people would end up just taking advantage of her. However, the happy faces, the words of praise and gratitude... they were like a drug to her, nothing could be better than the feeling of being loved by everyone.

But as time went on, people began to take her for granted. At first most of the requests she received were about saving people's lives, then they kept asking for her help for matters that got less and less important, and the gratitude of those she helped also continued to fade away. Eventually, there was a group of men who thought that they could get her power all for themselves if they kidnap her.

Four men were somehow able to find her in her hideout, at a time when she was alone without her guards. Her mother tried to defend her but ended up getting killed, she could only cry as they were about to catch her. However, at the last moment, an older girl wearing a green hat, her older sister, killed them all and saved her.

In hindsight, the fact that her sister could maintain such a calm and gentle expression after having just killed four men should have been a red flag. But the girl rushes to hug her without suspecting anything. I want to tell her to stay away from her, that she was the one who had given them the idea to kidnap her in the first place, the one who told them where to find her, and the one who made sure her guards went away.

But there's nothing I can do to change something that happened in the past, I already know what comes next. Having lost her mother, her older sister is the only one left she can get attached to, having been saved by her, she will trust her completely, and since she feels responsible for her mother's death as a result of not listening to her sister's advice, she will obediently do everything she tells her from now on. Exactly as she had planned.

This is always the moment this dream ends, and I'm inside of my body once again.

Every time I see Luna being naive I end up having that dream as if my subconscious is reminding me that I need to do something before the same thing that happened to me happens to her as well.

I used to be just as naive as she is, and as a result, I let Cureva use me as a puppet for years, doing what I believed were good deeds, unknowingly hurting a lot of people...

Had it not been for an unlikely accident, I might have never learned the truth, but I was lucky and one day, Cureva lost her hat for a brief moment. She's normally able to lie as easily as she breathes, but without her hat, she became completely honest instead, and she told me everything that she had done as well as all the things that truly went through her messed up head.

After that, I ran away and was all alone for a time, until I met Luna. She was a bit intimidating at first, I'd say that she is the exact opposite of Cureva, one has an aura that makes people trust her, the other has an aura that makes everyone run in fear. That might have been part of the reason why I started wanting to get closer to her.

I still remember the first time I pulled a prank on her. When I make fun of or prank someone they usually react by simply getting upset, and Luna was upset too, at least on the surface, but for some reason, she also smiled, I don't know if she realized that herself. Even now, I still see her smile for half a second sometimes when I make fun of her, does she know that she does that?

At first, I thought that she was into some weird stuff, but when I got to know her better I understood. Everyone Luna meets is afraid of her, that must have made her feel completely lonely and unloved. It's not that she enjoys being made fun of, but the fact that I can make fun of her so easily is proof that I don't fear her at all. For most people that would not mean much, but for her... it was the thing she had always wanted, more than anything else. That's why she became my friend, I gave her something that nobody else did.

Of course, that was also true about me. After finding out the truth, that the one person I looked up to the most was truly an evil monster, I was convinced that I would never be able to trust anyone ever again. And then I met Luna, her kindness and naivete were so genuine that even I could not help but trust her completely, she was the only person in this world who could become my friend.

And that is why, deep down, I really don't want to change her.

But she's not someone who can afford to be such a good person. Her power alone would be enough to attract an excessive amount of the wrong kind of attention, and it's clear that she's someone who is meant to take an important position in the world. She will get enemies and leeches no matter what she does, she needs to stop being so naive, that's the only she can avoid ending up like me.

And how am I even supposed to make her change? Half-hearted measures are not going to be enough. I wish that there was some kind of middle ground, that she could become more assertive without her personality changing much, but I don't think that's possible for someone like her... I know that because I used to be the same. The death of my mother was not enough to make me wake up, it took me learning the truth about my sister and everything I believed in being proven wrong. After that, I was not the same person anymore, the same would be true for Luna... she would have needed to kill Cureva to stop her from escaping back then, something that the current Luna would never do. If that happens, the only person who can be my friend might not exist anymore, that's a really scary thought...

Or maybe all it would take is for Luna to figure out just how much of a bad friend I truly am. I've gone as far as to sabotage some of her attempts to clear the misunderstandings about her, all in a pointless attempt at prolonging the current status quo, as it seems that the fear she makes people feel is the only thing stopping them from exploiting her, the only thing that lets me have it both ways. And, of course, I've been planning to use her to stop my older sisters without telling her anything, I'm using her just like Cureva used me... I wonder... when she learns the truth, will she hate me as much as I hate Cureva?

For now, she's still acting the same as always. At this very moment, she's trying to lecture the gray demon siblings.

"... and that's why using violence to solve your problems is not a good idea, you need to learn to make peace with your enemies."

"Sis... is the scary lady going to kill us?"

"Yes, she is."

"NO! I'M NOT!"

At least with these two everything seems to be going fine, but for how long can this last? I'm afraid that if I remain undecided for much longer, the decision could be made for me.

Or perhaps it's already too late, that prophecy I made when I was wearing Ranna's hat sounded really bad...

It might be possible to stop it, a prophecy can be broken if the individuals involved in it die before the time comes. That's not an option for the 'queen of darkness' prophecy, as Luna would need to die, but for this one, all it would take is to kill that so-called Kalroth before it's too late. However, that's probably not an easy thing to do, and all I would be doing is delaying the inevitable once again.

I don't know what to do, not only am I a bad friend, I'm also a useless one. All I know about making plans or manipulating people is what I learned from being around Cureva for so long, she's the one who's good at that stuff. The only thing I'm good for is making it look like I know what I'm doing...

But that doesn't mean that I won't try. First of all, I need information. I'll ask Ranna to tell me everything she knows about Kalroth, she was around him for a while after all. If I can figure out what's the most likely way for that prophecy to come true, I might be able to think of a way to get out of this mess...

forli

At long last we got to one of the chapters I have been dreading to write the most, Arana's perspective, featuring part of her backstory. It took longer to get here than I anticipated.

I tried to make her a mysterious character for a while so that it wasn't even clear if she was evil or not. That made it really stressful each time someone made a wrong assumption about her as I thought that they might be disappointed when we finally got here, and I also feared that people might grow tired of her before I got a chance to explain her.

All I can hope is that now you can all at least understand why she does the things she does, I'm not sure if I did a good job.