Aria took her shawl out and wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t wear her usual outfit and that she was going to abandon dancing and singing. She also took her luggage with her. At best she’d be a sad wreck who had finally made her choice. She collected her thoughts and memories and concluded.

She walked out of her room. The usual chatter of the Inn did not bother her. Though the appearance of another man surprised her inside. She continued down the floor where the Innkeeper was entertaining the guests. “Where’s the person that was with me?”

The Innkeeper looked up and was visibly surprised at the sight of Aria. “Madam, it has been quite a while, and I trust that you are well-rested. As for your companion, he had left the city two days ago. I believe that he took all of his belongings and left to the unknown lands.”

“I see,” Aria was shocked. In her head, Nolan Salvatore wasn’t a man who’d just go. No, he was exactly like that, and she was thinking that he wasn’t. “I thank you, and I shall vacant my room now”

The Innkeeper wanted more words. Aria left with a quick strike and paced out of the room. She turned her attention to the highest point in the area. She walked towards the vantage point with her thoughts swimming around. She had been a woman who had been steel from the start.

I guess he must have remembered something. Hmm, the memories that I have points out to what I did. I don’t blame him, and he must have hated me. I don’t think there’s a man capable of enduring such long-lasting torture. I mean, what did I ever gave him other than the misery?

She was no saint. She had been a tough bitch for the sake of saving the world. She admits inside her heart that she truly wanted to save that world. That even with all of the suffering, she wanted to save her homeland. That was the place she was born and raised. There was no greater glory to her other than saving it. She had dedicated her life to it that the appearance of a smitten young man. Oh, how had she made that sweet young man, who grew up to become a fine man who had taken the eyes of others as well. Her heart was an icy fortress and it took thirty-years to melt it.

She could not forget the day that she accepted that love. Her heart was so filled that the frosted smile on her face vanished. Those days were sweet and tiring. Her stolid heart became a worrywart and one of the pleasures that she had was seeing him alive and back to her. She had seen so many of her people die and yet he endured and stayed strong.

With the sun out of the picture life was tough and it was a place where children were forced to hold weapons instead of toys. They did not know of the sun and all they had in them were this dedication to fight. She had wanted to save the world for the sake of seeing a world without children holding weapons.

When she got pregnant and the battle with that monster of the pale pass was coming. She had chosen to abort her child rather than fight for it. She thought that it was only fair as a warrior. She had seen women who did it for the greater good and she was no exception. That broke Nolan Salvatore. She understood that. And maybe, that’s why when that blast was about to kill Nolan Salvatore. She didn’t dare to use her powers or block it while strengthened. She knew that she could survive that at least once. But she chooses to die for what she had done. To save the world she was willing to do anything. But yet the phantom pain of losing her child by her own choice dented her steeled heart.

Aria found herself on that vantage point. She thought back to the Abyss that she saw. The truth that she told herself that it was a lie. It hurt. The painful feeling that in the other worlds she had caused suffering to an honest to goodness man. That his love might have been a lie itself. That the reason for his fanatical affection was due to the charm spell that she had induced unconsciously to him.

She sat on the edge of the vantage point with her eyes staring blankly. Ciara Alician, the person that she was a woman who had grown ill with power, and that power had driven her to the most heinous of things. To think that her intentions turned malicious and the man she loved tortured in such a hopeless amount of time.

“It’s shameless to ask more of you,” she said to the wind. It was an honest to God words. She knows that she was not in control. That in the time she strolled in that abyss and the time she watches Nolan Salvatore suffer at the hands of a woman who had held her face.

It was painful. So painful that she couldn’t even ask her heart to calm down. All she could do now was to live the life the song maiden. That was her role and her aspirations and dreams stayed with her. Ciara Alician, no, Aria, the Song Maiden had always been strong. She wished that she had at least talked to him once before parting. But he had made a choice and she did as well.

How many times had they parted? No, she was sure that she had only parted with him once. And that she had fulfilled her death do us part.

She looked at the world distantly. Body-shaking sobs escaped her and she held cheeks, hollow laughter coming out of her, which turned into soft weeping muffled by the winds. With her back turned and cries unheard, the steeled woman whose heart was steel broke for the second time.