The door of her dimly lit room was flung open, and Janna’s joyful world was shattered in an instant as light filtered in from the open doorway. She froze, terrified, as a foreboding figure stood at the door, his head swiveling as it swept the room with a sharp gaze. The gaze fell upon her, and the figure marched over.

She tried to draw away, but there was nowhere to run. Not that she could outrun that figure in the first place.

“Still playing with your dolls? Give it here.” 

Janna flinched as her older brother Johan snatched the doll from her hands, turning it over in his hands. When she reached for it again, he stepped back and held it out of her reach, pushing her back onto the bed.

“Why are you so obsessed with things like this anyway? It’s not going to help you get better at your Blessing. That Vessel really is wasted on you.”

Crash! Johan threw the doll at the wall where its already cracked frame shattered into countless pieces. The chips of porcelain scattered across the floor, and when an especially large piece slid over next to Johan’s feet, a boot came down hard on it and crushed it with a crunch.

The boy looked down at his little sister with narrowed eyes as if staring at trash. His mouth twitched in annoyance; he didn’t want to spend another second here. 

However, he had lost the draw fair and square, so he had no choice but to deliver the message he came here for. Sighing, he spat it out. “Father asked me to tell you that if you cannot manifest the first Ring by next week, that will be the last straw. No matter what method he has to use, he will find the person that’s been sneaking you those dolls, and he will kill them.”

Janna flinched again, and tears rolled down her face, yet she said nothing.

Without a care for her tears, Johan continued. “As for you, you’ll be struck from the family records and cast out from this house.” He stared at her. “To be honest, I’m surprised he hadn’t done it sooner. You besmirch our family’s name.”

Spitting on the ground, Johan turned and stomped out of the room, the porcelain pieces crunching beneath his boots. When the door closed, Janna was alone in her room again, but her world of joy did not come back this time. She stared at the broken remains of her doll in silence, biting her lips to stop herself from crying as tears continued to flow. 

Unable to say a word, she fell over on her side and buried her face in her pillow, falling still. 

A while later, although Janna didn’t know how long precisely as the curtains were drawn shut, the door opened again. Instead of being loudly thrown open, the door first opened up a small crack, then gradually widened. A woman with a white lace hairpiece peeked her head in. 

“Lady Janna, may I please come in? It’s me, Emma.” 

Janna looked up, and upon hearing the newcomer’s name and familiar voice, she sat up and nodded. She even waved, and Emma waved back, although Janna couldn’t see because it was too dark.

“Thank you. I’m turning on the lights now, so please….”

Janna obediently closed her eyes, and through her shut eyelids, she saw the room become brighter. Taking a moment to adjust, she opened her eyes again and saw the person she loved most. Wiping her eyes, she broke out into a wide smile— one that Emma returned. 

After she came in, Emma closed the door behind her, returning a sense of safety to the room. It was just Janna and her and no one else that could threaten them.

“When I heard that there was a mess that needed to be cleaned up in your room, I swapped shifts with Rena so I could come immediately,” Emma said. “Are you okay, little lady?”

She carried a broom and dustpan with her. 

When Emma surveyed the mess that was on the floor, confirming her fears, she looked at the little girl with worry on her face. Sure enough, her little mistress’s eyes were red, and her cheeks were wet. She had been crying.

However, Janna just shook her head and slid off the bed.

“Wait, there are sharp things on the floor!” Emma said, trying to stop Janna from coming over, but Janna ignored her. The girl picked her way over the treacherous floor to Emma and gave the maid a hug. Sighing, Emma patted the girl’s head. “There there, it’ll be okay. Even if this one is broken, we can always get another one, right?”

Feeling the girl tense and back up, Emma laughed. “What kind would you like this time? Another princess?”

Janna shook her head hard. 

“No? Then, maybe a dragon this time? By the way, did you finish that book I got you?”

Janna shook her head again, even harder this time. Emma wasn’t getting what she wanted to say! She was trying to say, “no more dolls!” 

But yes, she did finish. That wasn’t the point, though.

Her face grew red as she panicked, and she began to look around for a piece of paper. She quickly found one on her desk along with her pen. However, there were many more porcelain shards between the bed and the desk, and she was reluctant to try her luck…  

She tapped on Emma’s shoulder and pointed at her desk, trying to get the maid to give her what she wanted.

Sure enough, Emma understood her, and as soon as Janna received the paper and pen, she scribbled out something.

“No more dolls! I have to practice Blessing. Father said he will find you, so hide for now.”

She wrote more after that, summarizing her whole conversation with Johan. Despite how hastily she wrote it, Janna’s handwriting was small and neat. 

After she finished, she handed it to Emma, and with each sentence that Emma read, the deeper her frown got.

“How cruel of them. But little lady, you are already practicing. No one practices as hard as you.” Emma sighed. “Why can’t they just accept you, right? Is being talented with their Blessing really such a big deal? Instead of treating you like this, they should protect you instead, since that’s what older brothers should do for their little sisters.”

Janna just looked down at her lap, unable to say anything. If only she had a family like Emma described. 

As Emma began to fold the paper to hide away, they heard loud footsteps from the hallway outside, a mixture of the heavy boots Johan wore and the heels of maids. Emma fumbled, and the paper fell onto the floor. 

Before she could pick it back up, the footsteps stopped just outside, and the door burst open.

Johan walked in, followed by Rena. His eyes shifted over to the piece of paper on the floor that Emma had just picked up, then at Rena, and finally settled on Janna. He smiled, lips parting to show teeth in a savage grin.

 

While dressed in her favorite black suit and heels, hips swaying, Zoya easily slipped past the guards around the mansion— if killing them counted as slipping past. Using her strings, she quickly decapitated everyone she came across, not allowing them to make a sound.

As usual, she didn’t even bother hiding the bodies since she already knew from studying the shift schedule and patrol patterns that no one would be passing by any time soon.

Since there was no one left to sound the alarms, naturally, no one noticed as she walked up to the front door. She easily avoided or dismantled the traps she came across, and as boldly as if she had been invited, Zoya stepped up to the grand front doors of the mansion, avoiding the growing pools of blood on the ground.

“Targets: four men, three women, two boys. Time to get to work.”

Zoya picked the locks with her strings, threw open the doors, and stepped inside just as the spreading blood reached where she had been standing. 

The moment she appeared, the maids inside froze. Then, they saw the bodies and blood outside, and they began to scream.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Just passing through.”

An alarm sounded inside, but by now, Zoya no longer cared. Her strings had already created a field that encompassed the entire mansion. There would be no escape unless she was defeated or someone on par with her forcibly broke through her field. There shouldn’t be anyone present that could do that, though.

Her heels click-clacked on the polished marble floor. Maids and guards alike jumped at her, trying to stop her, but none could get close enough to so much as spray blood on her. 

Zoya sighed. Even though she was going to let them leave if they didn’t attack…

As she killed the maid that still stood against her, the head of the house, his older sons, and his wives came down from the second floor to personally greet her.

The man looked around in shock, then anger at the carnage. “You did this?”

Zoya didn’t reply, merely smiling, and the man grew angry.

“Do you know who you are offending? I am Lord Cuvier! Former ace of the Fierce Eagles! I—”

“—am retired after a serious wound and is now a target for assassination. Please, the dead do not speak.” She waved aside the lord’s speech before he could really get going. For the first time since she set foot on these grounds, Zoya broke into a run, charging straight at Lord Cuvier.

Lord Cuvier was a Rover with strength roughly in the same ballpark as her. However, unlike him, she wasn’t a cripple. 

Seeing her charge, the man’s family jumped to defend him: two older sons, three wives.

It was a shame that some of her targets were rather attractive, but the silver lining was that they had terrible personalities, so the world wasn’t losing much.

Pulling out a giant axe, Lord Cuvier attacked her, a vast aura of power surrounding him. One of the sons and two of the wives stood in the back, preparing spells, while the last son and wife backed up Lord Cuvier with their own weapons: a sword and shield, and a spear.

In the next instant, Lord Cuvier became wholly encased in armor, becoming a knight of death.

Zoya’s hand twitched, and strings whipped from some of her fingers. Other fingers pulled on strings that had already been spread out all over the grand foyer. The strings instantly killed one of the women, first taking off a hand and then her head.

As for the others, Zoya kept them on their feet with lashing strings, slowly wearing them down. For good measure, she also tangled up her enemies’ weapons to keep them down. A single minute into the battle, only Lord Cuvier still posed a threat to her.

Sidestepping the giant axe that was bigger than her whole body once again, disrupting the slicing winds that surrounded the axe blade with her strings, Zoya snapped her fingers.

Suddenly, the armored figure stopped moving. 

With a shocked expression frozen onto his face inside that helmet, Lord Cuvier’s head separated from his body, and a bloody looped string slipped out of his visor.

More screams of grief and shouts of anger filled the grand foyer, but soon, those faded as well when the mouths producing those sounds joined their family on the ground as decapitated heads.

After checking how many heads there were to make sure she didn’t make a mistake, Zoya continued up the stairs. “Two boys left.”

She found one of them with a maid trying to escape into a hidden exit, tripping her string trap, which left only the last one. She closed her eyes, trying to match up to her targets’ faces with their names. She knew where their rooms were, but suddenly she couldn’t remember. All she knew was that both younger sons slept in the same part of the mansion, but the sons looked so similar that she couldn’t be bothered to differentiate them after learning that she had to kill them both.

With a sigh, Zoya came to the general area she knew the bedrooms were and began to look through them one by one. Empty. Empty. Empty. Not empty, but no one inside. It seems to be the room of the son she caught escaping.

Empty.

Not empty.

Zoya lifted her fingers, about to kill the figure laying on the bed, but then she stopped. The figure had long hair and a small face, which meant that the figure was clearly not the son she was looking for.

Usually, she’d leave, but the figure caught her attention. It was a little girl, but she was staring up at the ceiling. Although the alarm was still blaring, the little girl didn’t react. The girl didn’t even respond to Zoya opening the door.

The girl wasn’t looking at her. That wouldn’t do.

Zoya’s mouth twitched, and she walked over to the bed, looking down at the girl.

“Hey, little girl. How can you not look at a pretty lady like me?”

The little girl didn’t answer, and this time, Zoya’s eyes twitched. “Can you hear me and my beautiful voice?”

Still no answer.

“Are you mute?”

Just when Zoya was about to turn and leave, the girl seemed to notice her presence for the first time, as if waking up from a dream. The girl’s eyes moved and fixed on Zoya’s face, and then slowly, the girl nodded. 

“…I see. By the way, I killed your entire family. Well, I’m still missing one. Aren’t you happy that you’re going to be the last one left?” Zoya grinned. “Just like me.” 

The girl’s eyes widened.

Satisfied with the reaction she got, Zoya left the room, with the girl’s gaze boring into her back.

She found the last target she was looking for in the room two doors over, but there were a few more guards in there too, bunkered down. However, there was still not enough to pose a threat to her, so after slicing off the head of the final son, she beautifully finished her assignment this time too.

Splat. The sound of bare feet stepping through blood came from behind her.

“Hmm… well, I suppose it’s time to leave then.”

Just as she was jumping out the window, the little thing behind her reached out and grabbed her shirt. Zoya stopped. 

“Is there anything I can help you with, little girl?” she asked as if she had not just orphaned the little girl in question.

Surprisingly, the little girl nodded, reaching around Zoya’s stomach and buried her face in Zoya’s back. Zoya’s stiffened, and the two of them stayed like that for a while. Finally, Zoya broke out of the trance first and shoved the girl away, jumping out of the window in the same movement.

“What a strange girl.”

And just as she turned to leave, a tiny figure appeared above her and jumped out. Zoya’s eyes widened and a curse she would’ve never uttered escaped from her mouth as she reached out and caught the suicidal child.