The first thing Aurelie noticed was that she was back in her room at Farn’s house.

Getting up, she inventoried herself. The first thing she noticed was that her ring, and, therefore, her weapons, was lying on a chest across the room. Then she took note of her injuries. A pounding head, and she felt incredibly weak, as though she had lost copious amounts of blood. However, there were no visible injuries anywhere, and she couldn’t feel any of the stiffness that came with being injured. She couldn’t even remember how she had come to be here. Putting the strangeness of all that out of her mind, she hobbled to the ring.

It was made of a deep green crystal, which appeared to be jasper. It wasn’t though. It was a mineral, and an incredibly useful one too. It was a storage ring. It could hold ten cubic meters of space within it.

Aurelie hadn’t put all her weapons in it, leaving one gun in an ankle holster and a combat knife in the sheath on her arm. But everything else was in the ring. In particular, she liked that she didn’t have to wear the throwing knives all the time. They required that her hair always be in a bun, and she was bored of those. It was nice to have the opportunity to change up her hairstyle from time to time.

Just as she was smiling about that, she heard footsteps. She recognized them. Turning towards the door, she smiled at Kadaras, Kando, Danadie, and Mrs. Dreslin as they quietly slipped in. The three of them looked amazed to see Aurelie up and walking around.

Aurelie was already feeling very tired, though, so she stumbled back and sat on the bed.

“Hi!” she greeted them. “What happened? Why do I feel so weak?”

The adults looked at one another, silently agreeing to not say anything without first checking up on her condition.

“How do you feel, dear?” Danadie asked, concern obvious in her voice.

“I feel fine, other than the aforementioned weakness. Which you guys are suspiciously avoiding talking about.” She grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“The weakness is expected, as you lost a lot of blood. But you don’t feel any discomfort? Usually, it feels extremely uncomfortable when a practitioner has used up all their Spirit Energy, as you have. There’s no way you didn’t notice it.”

A stricken look briefly flashed across Aurelie’s face as she looked at them. In fact, she hadn’t noticed it. She had only been a cultivator for a short period of time. Waking up with no power had felt so natural and normal, she hadn’t questioned it.

“Of course I noticed it. But since I already knew about why I felt that way, I didn’t feel the need to mention it.” She said nervously. But they didn’t notice her fidgeting, accepting the plausible explanation.

“Okay, now tell me what happened.” Aurelie added. The avoidance of the topic hadn’t put it out of her mind at all.

The four looked at one another, and then Kadaras stepped forward. He wondered what to say, how to break it to her in such a way that she didn’t break down. Taking a deep breath, he started, “Gradas Meir…”

But it turned out that that was all he needed to say. When Kadaras forced that name out of his lips. Aurelie stiffened and gasped, as though someone had dumped a barrel of cold water on her. Images and memories cascaded through her mind.

“He’s dead, right?” She asked, her voice a whisper.

“Yes, he is.” Kadaras confirmed.

“Farn?” She asked, her voice going even softer, her shoulders hunched inwards as though afraid of the answer.

“He hasn’t woken up yet, but he’s otherwise fine.” A tremor could be detected in Kadaras’ voice, worry for his son temporarily breaking his composure.

Aurelie took a deep breath, and asked the question that she already knew the answer for, hoping against all hope that she had seen wrongly. “Mellana?”

A visible tremor went through Kadaras, Danadie, and Kando. Even Mrs. Dreslin looked saddened. The reaction to the question answered her query as much as the whispered, “She passed away.”

Aurelie flopped down on the bed, closing her eyes and focussing on her breathing, holding her grief at bay. The others crept out of the room careful not to disturb her.

~~~~~~~

Aurelie wasn’t sure when, but she had fallen asleep.

She knew this because she began to dream. Well, it was more a memory than a dream, one from when she had been a terrified child who was in the process of being molded into a terrifying killer.

“Hey did you hear? Another two died today. One was killed by Karen.”

Aurelie shut her eyes and plugged her fingers in her ears. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know anything about what the older girls in the room thought. It was night, the lights were already put out. The tiny room had no beds, no blankets, no pillows, nothing which denoted that it was the sleeping place of more girls than the feeble walls could comfortably hold.

“Of course Karen killed one, but what happened to the other?” One of the other girls asked.

“Got sick and died.” The first girl answered, and though Aurelie couldn’t see her, she knew she was shrugging nonchalantly.

“What a loser.” A third girl commented, disdain and contempt clear in her voice.

The little red-haired girl fought down the bile that rose in her throat, and the tears that rose in her eyes. ‘How could they just treat human lives like that?’ she thought. But she didn’t say anything, even though Dana, the girl who had caught a disease and died, was a friend. She had already lost so many friends, the sense of loss was beginning to lessen. That scared her.

“Speaking of losers, why hasn’t anyone offed the little waste of space yet?” Aurelie could feel multiple sets of eyes lock in on her, drilling their eyes into her back. She resisted a shudder, knowing that if they knew she was still awake, they would pounce.

“We can’t, she’s got a protector. You know that hot guy, the leader of the boys, Zane? He’s taken her under his wing. We hurt her, he’ll come after us.”

A whistle. “Wonder how that happened? And is Karen scared of him too?”

“Of course not. Rumor has it that Karen’s got a crush on Zane. She doesn’t want to get on his bad side by murdering his little pet.”

“Really? I heard…” Aurelie stopped listening, finally detaching herself from the conversation. She knew she was the weakest. She knew the only reason she was still alive was because of Zane. But she was only five years old, what could she do?