Hushed voices conspired in the dead of the night.

The Lapis-Crowns were fanatics loyal to the Orso ducal family, the group's name deriving from the vibrant blue headbands they wore to secure their dark face masks of carven wood. Those blue headbands were worn in homage to the ancient crown worn by the duke, a crown carved from a single block of glittering blue lapis lazuli and inlaid with gold and precious gems said to be imbued with great magical energies from the forgotten past. Ironically, the Lapis-Crowns fetishized that ancient past of the Kingdom of Barsoa, idolized an era far before the island was brought under Gionia's silver yoke, but the blue-banded bastards were nothing but local lapdogs to the High Prince in distant Gionika. Regardless of ideological consistency, to a seven-year-old, the Lapis-Crowns were absolutely terrifying, dark-cloaked and snarling behind their carven masks as they cracked through the front door and surged into Uncle Horantz's clocksmithing shop in the middle of the night.

I hadn't been sleeping well in the weeks since my escape from the family manse… no surprise there. I'd been traumatized, separated from my parents and guardians, and thrust into the care of a grumpy clockmaker of questionable mien along with my baby brother. I, Alvixia Voltanica Altorelli, who'd been served, doted upon, and tutored, had been stuck in a mid-sized row house a block from the slums with nothing to read but Horantz's anemic library and nothing to do but read to my brother, fetch legal narcotics, and assemble and disassemble clocks…

To be fair, Chiaro and I sometimes played hide-and-seek despite Uncle Horantz's irate grumblings that he didn't want us rifling through his stuff. Tough luck, Horantz - kids will rifle through your things, especially if you tell them not to. In any case, my sleep was fitful and easily-disturbed and I awoke at the first hushed voices outside Horantz's door.

In a flash, I was off the little divan that served as my bed and dashing toward my baby brother. "We've got to hide!" I hissed at him, and I ushered him to the little backroom closet where Horantz kept his bric-a-brac, old tools, and musty, retired wardrobe items. "Stay under this and be quiet, okay?"

Chiaro nodded and whispered, "okay," but there was fear in his eyes.

"No matter what happens, don't cry. Tears are okay, but no crying."

He nodded again. With a grunt, I lifted my brother and maneuvered him inside an empty tool trunk that was missing its top. I draped a moth-eaten overcoat over the trunk to hide the fact that it had no top, and was satisfied that nobody would be able to tell a small child was crouched inside without removing the drape. I closed the closet and dashed out into Horantz's main workshop on the first floor.

I had just decided to flee up the stairs and hide myself behind the paneling in the second floor closet when the top half of the front door cracked open. As the Lapis-Crowns destroyed the lower half of the door with their battering sticks and as Uncle Horantz fumbled about upstairs, shouting bloody murder and thumping along the wooden floor, I realized I no longer had the luxury of dashing across the storefront. Instead, I took that split-second of noisy confusion to hide inside a grandfather clock that had been emptied out prior to some gearwork. Grandfather clocks are large but, I assure you, the space inside them is not. It was a tight fit but I managed to stuff myself inside, pulling the front panel shut with a click… and, just like that, I was crammed inside the claustrophobic space. My only view of the outside was the tiny panel that let you wind up the gear drum without removing the clock's whole frontpiece. I could stretch on my tiptoes to peek out, but otherwise I was fully hidden and all I could perceive of the room was slightly-muffled voices and the staccato thump of boots vibrating up through the floor.

"What is- ah!" Horantz yelped and tumbled the last few steps to the storeroom floor.

"By the authority of Duke Orso, we're charged with searching this house for Selenites," their leader barked. "Horantz Giespi, are you a Selenite or Selenite sympathizer?"

"No… 'course not, sir. I don't trust Seelies in the least. Please, I beg of you…"

"If you lie to us, old man, your punishment will only be that much worse. Anything you'd like to admit? No? So be it. Search the house, lads!"

I heard the thump of heavy boots and the clatter of clockwork and tools as they cleared half-finished projects from the work benches and sent Horantz's livelihood spilling all across the floor. They thumped along the walls and clocks to find empty spaces - including the clock I was hidden in. A Lapis-Crown thumped the frontpiece three times, but I suppose I didn't sound suspicious. The bastard stomped about the place for what felt like forever but was probably around ten minutes. With each passing minute the ember of hope glowed brighter in my heart: maybe they wouldn't find Chiaro and me. Maybe all we'd have to deal with was a broken front door, a lot of unnecessary clock repair, and a very irate Uncle Horantz.

Then I heard it - the sound of my hope extinguished, the sobbing of a young child. I felt the forceful thumps of two large men rummaging about and quickly restraining a much smaller person. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I didn't make a peep. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I stood on my tiptoes until my big toes sparked in pain as I practically went en pointe to peek out the little window. Lit by ruddy lantern-light, I saw two dark-masked, dark-cloaked men struggling to carry out a little thrashing bundle wrapped in the overcoat I'd draped over the open trunk. That was my baby brother they were leaving with. Chiaro whimpered and cried and, when one of the men tried to muzzle him with a meaty palm, of course Chiaro bit him. He was an Altorelli, after all.

"Damnit!" the Lapis-Crown shouted, and he dropped my brother to the floor. "Little Seelie bastard!" he snarled, and he kicked my four-year-old brother in the midsection hard enough to send him tumbling across the floor, where he crumpled, motionless.

I whimpered at the sight, but nobody seemed to have noticed. And, despite wanting to run feral over the thugs who'd just assaulted my little brother, I couldn't get out of the clock. Part of me wanted to force my way out and launch myself like a feral badger at the Lapis-Crowns. Instead, I curled up and quietly prayed to Honored Asuna, the King Most High, as my parents had taught me. I prayed for the safety of my brother. I prayed for salvation from the Lapis-Crowns. I prayed for revenge…

Let it never be said that Honored Asuna, if he exists, does not have a sense of humor. In this case, I was the punchline.

The Lapis-Crown leader barked out more orders. "Take these two back to the wagon… you two, do another pass of the downstairs. You two come with me to search the upstairs…"

"Yessir!" they shouted back - most of the Lapis-Crowns were guards or former military, and it showed in their discipline. That was to say, they were capable of following orders but easily corrupted by the promise of coin, especially when their officers weren't looking.

Three of the men tromped upstairs, their footsteps growing fainter until they were muffled creaks heard through the ceiling. Another two went outside with Chiaro and Horantz, which left two remaining thugs to case the downstairs where I was hiding. The thump of their boots moved right toward me.

"I know I heard something over here," one of them said.

"Yeah… same. Think it might've been a pet? A cat?"

"Maybe," the other replied uncertainly.

Thump… a fist thumped on the wall. Boots shuffled toward me. Thump!... a fist thumped on the wall. Boots shuffled toward me. Thump!... a fist thumped on the wall. Boots shuffled again. Thump!... Thump-thump! A gloved fist struck the wood panel of the clock mere centimeters from my face.

The latch to the clock door clicked, echoing loud and clear even as my thudding heartbeat sent blood roaring like a mongrel-bear through my ears. The door creaked open. Cool air rushed in and I caught a glimpse of blue eyes behind a dark and scowling mask.

"Gotcha," the man hissed.

He reached for me and… missed. Somehow, miraculously, he failed to grasp me because I wasn't somewhere that he could reach me anymore - I'd slipped into the Shadelands for the first time in my young life. In my moment of greatest need, I'd been blessed with a mote of shadow magic.

I gasped as the world fell away, suddenly replaced by a chiaroscuro facsimile. I hadn't moved a millimeter, but now the world was devoid of sound but for the whisper of voices on the wind, voices mumbling in some strange tongue long forgotten. I was still in the shop, but nothing seemed solid anymore, all form and substance reduced to gauzy fuzz in a mere parody the real world - clocks on the walls bore the likeness of boxy, dark-silked spider's nests long abandoned, the streamers of little sepia fibers whipping in an imperceptible current. Where there was light in the real world were pale shafts that radiated no warmth and only the barest luminance, but I could not cross them. I found this out soon enough as I stumbled out of the clock enclosure, gasping and sobbing, and right into a pillar of pale moonslight.

I have long since learned how to cross such feeble barriers of light within the Shadelands, but as an untrained child the harsh decree of light in that dark place dragged me back into our world of shape and color. Suddenly back in the real world, I tripped over the other Lapis-Crown and stumbled forward, sprawling out onto the floor, my small palms digging painfully into the gears and metal tools the bastards had scattered in their carelessness. A large hand, a hand much stronger than my own, gripped me by the bicep and forced me to my feet.

"What in the holy hell?!" the man exclaimed, eyes wild behind his mask.

The other Lapis-Cloak raised his mask from his face, squinting at me. He had a patchy five-day beard, a crooked, aquiline nose, and pale blue eyes. "That's… Beni, do you realize what she just did?"

"She bloody disappeared is what she did!"

"Keep your voice down!" he hissed at his comrade, taking a cautious glance toward the stairs, beyond which the other Lapis-Crowns thumped about Horantz's chambers. "She's got the gift, Beni. Rook will pay good money for her…"

"I guess we got to tell Brother Tersieno about…"

"We got to tell him jack shit, boyo… what does it matter if the girl's sold to slavers or sold to the Shadows as long as she and her kin are gone from the island?"

"What about the other kid?" Beni asked.

"What about him?" the man shrugged. "He's already in the carriage, but nobody but us two knows about this one. Come on, let's go…"

I tried to pull away, but Bei's grip was like iron. "Where… where are you taking me?" I whimpered. "I'll… I'll scream…"

The man crouched down to my level, his breath sour in my face, his teeth glinting with a half-dozen silver false teeth. "Scream all you like if you want to spend your life shackled and sweating under the hot Turan sun. We're taking you to the only man in Barsoa who can keep you safe…"

"I… I want my mama," I sobbed. And, even then, I knew it was a foolish thing to say. My mother had been dragged off into the night by the comrades of these two men. Wherever my mother was, she couldn't offer me safety or comfort. My hands clutched at the air - I wished I had my stuffed magpie, Tess, to grip for comfort, but they'd literally ripped her from my hands. I wanted my parents, my nanny, my brothers and sisters, the household servants and my pony… I wanted my old life, but it had all been taken by these thugs, by men too cowardly to show their faces to the world.

"Sorry, darlin'," Beni said. "You'll thank us when you're all grown…"

There was thumping upstairs as the search party approached the top of the stairs, and part of me realized that, once they got downstairs and their officer… Brother Tersieno, apparently… once he saw that they'd found another kid, I'd be hauled off to wherever they were taking Horantz and Chiaro. As much as I wanted to save my brother, part of me knew my only chance was to secure my own safety first.

So I nodded. "I'll go," I said in a small voice.

As tears streamed down my face, I let the two Lapis-Crown thugs escort me out of Horantz's busted-up shop and into the cool night. They hauled me off in my night clothes, the cool, rough cobbles scraping my little feet, and it was the last that little Alvie Altorelli ever saw of her family…

But I would never forget.

I would never forget the stubbly, unwashed face of my unmasked abductor or his slightly-sour breath. I would never forget Beni's sturdy frame, the way he favored his left foot, the bloodshot blue eyes behind his mask. I committed the voices and mannerisms of each and every Lapis-Crown I'd seen that day to memory, and my memory is very, very good. I would remember and, with Honored Asuna as my witness, I would have my revenge.