"I know you're not there."

Her lonely voice was carried by the chilly wind towards an empty yard, where in one of the ends stood a set of two towers against a wall.

"You're not... But I needed you to be. I guess I was looking for an excuse. But it's been enough."

The woman felt her blonde hair hitting her face and closed her hawk-like eyes to enjoy the cold she had never felt at the bay. Her nose, already red from the cold breeze, moved slightly as if to sniff away the last hint of remorse that still lingered in her heart— the conditioned fear of losing a status that she did not care for, but had been imprinted onto her soul.

The daughter of the duke? That title didn't mean a thing. She had already forfeited it when she had first taken her bow. The moment she had to take with her own hands the life that had given her a thing to cherish, a command issued by her father, Valta knew she would never regain the respect she felt— at an early point of life— for that duke.

She had deliberated about it before, about leaving behind all her ties. The deciding point, however, had been the sounding slap she had delivered to that rich kid, which had filled her with emotions that could not be attained by the simple following of senseless orders. She realized then that Thom Arburson's safety had been an excuse for her to remain on her seat and abide by the general's commands, a way to maintain uncut the last string that tied her to her father. She knew full well that Thom Arburson was not in that prison, and yet, trapped in a loop of indecision, Valta lied to herself.

Today, the little social sanity she had chosen to keep would vanish away.

Standing on top of the inner walls of the citadel, a sigh escaped through her nostrils. The wind blew cold again, but it didn't carry the strength of a storm in its fist. Her arrow would travel equally as steady, her hand would not waver in front of distance or the lashing climate of winter.

Two dead guards laid inside the tower in which she had taken camp in. Said tower, the tallest of the citadel, was also the one closest to the personal castle of duke Panal. A lavish mansion of several floors that flew his banners up high, surrounded by the fortification of the citadel itself. The place was in the highest area of the slope in which Pontya had been built, west from the river and the military headquarters. One had to cross the walls and go up several flights of stairs to even enter the safety of its fortifications, where the duke and many of his knights kept safe to themselves.

Panal was a duke: a noble with military power, oftentimes a general with high regard. In Kulkus, however, it was nothing but an honorary title. Dukes who had earned their title in wars had long lost their sharpness and merit to the comfortable indulgence of the nobles' life, having delegated their military responsibility to others. In many cases, the army around the duke didn't obey him, but the general he had appointed.

In such cases, it was to be expected that there was a shift in power. However, since the acting generals were usually family to the duke, it was strange for them to be killed by a power struggle. Unless, of course, the uprising was not initiated by the general themselves.

Valta pushed a small cloud of regrets from her mouth and tightened her grip. The gold-plated surface didn't shine. Clouds wouldn't let the moon cast her holy light over the woman's body.

The objective was the duke of Pontya. Today, and once per month, he took a stroll through his gardens. He was accompanied by a few knights, as always, and they stood around him as he took a seat on a perfectly cushioned chair beside a fine table, inside an intricately-built lightwood gazebo. He grabbed a glass of wine and opened a book on the page where he had left his placeholder, and sipped calmly from the glass of fine alcohol.

Valta could see him in the distance. Such a complacent man would not think under any circumstance that someone would be able to hurt him in his position. He probably thought that, unless a grand mage decided to siege his citadel, no magic could take down his walls. Siege weapons would not reach as far as to hurt him. No outer influence could reach him— and he kept his insiders well-paid for his own benefit.

There was no direct way to penetrate such a fortification and still remain unheard or unseen, surely not enough for anyone to strike down the duke. Short-range operations were impossible. So what about long-range attacks? An arrow from the walls? A bolt, perhaps? There was not a chance that anyone could do that.

Indeed, not even Valta could. Shooting an arrow from two hundred meters away and still making that arrow successfully pierce a vital organ in a man who always used enchanted robes and chain mail underneath was a difficult enough task. However, the duke also possessed two powerful rings in his fingers. One to create a first-tier magic barrier around him in case of a projectile entering his proximity, and another to heal him in case he received any major wounds.

If Valta wanted to kill such a man, her only option was hitting him in an unarmored area —his head— after breaking the first magic shield with a powerful-enough projectile, and making sure that the shot was powerful enough to get an instantaneous death.

It wasn't an easy job. For anyone.

However, her hands held the grip of an enchanted weapon. Her eyes were sharp and precise like a hawk's. She had been training the entirety of her life, and she had a gift like nobody else's with the bow. It was her biggest challenge yet, however, she was also sure that it would not be the wall in her life that could be depicted as insurmountable. If she didn't try— if she didn't succeed right now, would she be able to face the next barrier that threatened to stop her arrow? Valta knew the answer was a no.

With a last long blink, she was ready to shoot.

"Arrive."

An extension of her aura sprouted from her back, but quickly faded to a deep blue-colored mist that wrapped around her torso. The essence she exuded began to take the shape of a robust man floating above her shoulder, a ghostly image that seemed to be crafted out of a witch's cauldron fumes. An avatar, perhaps, although to her it was something much more sinister than that.

The ghost placed his hands together, gathering some of his own body to recreate a perfectly-built turquoise bow. Valta took a deep breath and peeked above the walls of the tower. Duke Panal remained nonchalant.

Knights wouldn't sense her that far. But if she raised her head and pointed, they'd surely get in front of the duke to protect him. That meant she needed a shot as quick as she could get: a fifth of a second in total would be ideal. A tenth of a second after her first shot, she would need to shoot the second.

The first shot to break the magic shield, and the second one, to pierce the duke's head. In total, her shooting time needed to be 0.3 seconds, from the moment she stood up to the moment she let go of the second arrow.

In those 0.3 seconds, the woman would also need to adjust her aim to any of the duke´s minor movements to be sure that her arrow would cause fatal damage, and that the 20km/h constant winds would not send her shot astray. Since they came from the south and the trajectory of her arrow would need to take northeast, she'd have to angle the two bows so they'd take a proper curve towards the target.

If there was any change in the wind at the time of shooting, she would also need to correct her posture in a split second to secure the trajectory. Otherwise, a delay of just a tenth of a second would give the knights enough time to cover the duke.

She grabbed a robust arrow from her quiver, one akin more to a small spear than an arrow, and handed it over to the ghost. Her calculations would also need to change according to the projectile's size, but she had practiced in advance. After loading her own arrow and making sure to load the one on the ghost's bow, she finally felt ready.

"Huff." She sighed for the tenth time in a minute. "I could use a coffee right now."

With those words, the curtain of her peaceful noble life was closed.

She stood up and tilted her body to the right ever so slightly, immediately letting go of the arrow on the ghost's hand, and letting go of her own too. Infused by her aura, the arrows pierced through the sky like a blade through flesh, producing a sharp sound as they created an arch in the air, racing each other to their ultimate goal.

Without any warning, the first arrow activated the shield and broke it into pieces with a thunderous sound, making the knights throw their bodies forward to stop the second arrow that had already skipped past their helmets and was entering two centimeters above the Duke's left eye— piercing his skull and twisting the brains that had exploded through the hole the arrow had opened behind his parietal bone. The momentum carried his body backwards and slammed him against the wooden floor of the gazebo, throwing on top of him the wine he had been drinking, drenching the planks a color similar to his blood.

The knights turned around to look at their lord, but they only found a man's last twitch as his soul escaped his throat. It had been too sudden. The duke couldn't even feel the pain that had killed him.

"Ring the bell and call the army! The Duke's fucking dead you all!"

"No need to say it you dipshit!"

"Let's fucking move! Put your helmet on for fuck's sake!"

"There! The walls! A slim woman with a longbow! She's planning to escape into the city!"

"Did you see anything else?!"

"Blonde and right-handed! Two arrows so two possible culprits!"

"Got it!"

Those words were shouted around the citadel as Valta skillfully jumped down the tower by grabbing herself onto the stone putlogs of the fortification, like a jester prancing between the scaffolds of a building to entertain their public.

She took a last jump into the inner gardens near the stairs to the citadel, but didn't linger. Seeing how empty the city's plaza was, she jumped down and sprinted towards it.

However, as she was getting closer to the fountain in the center of the plaza, a sudden tingle in her gut advised her to take a step back. She summoned the ghost in front of her, before feeling a powerful bash push her whole body back. The ghost vanished like mist after receiving the hit for her, letting a pair of eyes shine through the night. Valta stepped on the border of the fountain, careful not to slip on the wet stone.

A pair of hands with a warhammer suddenly became a full man. Like a veil being removed only to reveal the body of Chamgue, holding his weapon with an enraged gaze.

"Why isn't it a surprise...?

"Valta Arien Louran Lockhart." Chamgue declared in a rough, violent voice. "It is truly pitiful that you have to suffer this fate. However, you have brought this upon yourself. A soldier exists to serve his master, and both son and daughter serve their parents. Your punishment was well deserved the moment you decided to rebel against both!" He swung his weapon with violence as he spoke, accentuating the power behind his words.

"Always hated your sermons." She scoffed.

"Did the dirt from that farmer's shoes spot your robes, Valta? You deserve the same treatment as him, no doubt! But the general won't have to put a bounty over your head, because I will end your life at this same instant!"

"Don't you think it's unfair? I didn't kill Panal out of my own volition."

"You did what you had to, and obeyed your general!" Chamgue gritted his teeth with an anger-red face. "So I will do the same, and end your life for your crimes against nobility, right now!"

As he raised his voice, the mages holding the invisibility spells seemed to finally reach their limit and appeared out of thin air. Valta immediately understood the situation, but since speaking had never been her strong point, she decided to keep it to herself. Her goal had been to leave the city alone by herself, to begin with.

"So the others don't know anything about this." She said with indifference. "What do you think the rest of the army would think if they knew?"

"Shut it, criminal! Kill yourself in honor of Lord Panal and General Miel, or die by my hand!"

"Hm." Valta took a single step back. "I tried."

Swish!

The woman bolted back as the warhammer crushed the stone of the old fountain. Valta jumped on top of one of the empty stalls with grace, Chamgue following after her. He crushed the stall as well with a mighty swing, missing her once more. Her feet danced through the air as she continuously dodged the attacks coming from the heavy hammer, irritating the brute even further.

"Quit escaping!"

"Why?" She said with a straight face. "That doesn't seem convenient for me."

"Hurry up and die!"

Bang!

Valta sighed. The hammer broke the cobblestone into smithereens after gracing her body, but Chamgue didn't stop. He yelled as he shot from his hand a small firebolt, successfully hitting Valta on her shoulder and igniting her vest. Her feet moved back as her hands ripped apart the cloth, but as she was trying to escape and rid herself of the burning clothes, she didn't notice she had run out of places to escape.

"Tch."

Her back hit against the wall of a building— no, the bow that wrapped around her torso did. Chamgue's hand quickly grabbed the string of the bow and harshly pulled from it with ten men's strength, snapping it and getting Valta close enough to land a striking headbutt on her forehead.

A rotund, dull noise echoed in her ears. She didn't have the time to be dizzy, however, and took advantage of her falling motion to hastily dash under Chamgue's legs. The man turned around and slammed his warhammer towards her, and finally landed a hit that resulted in a disgusting cracking sound coming from Valta's arm.

"Urgh!"

She fell to the ground and rolled, avoiding a follow-up attack from the mastodon. She dashed towards the residential alleys with a dangling arm completely in shambles, her world spinning as her forehead bled and her ears ringed.

"Stay there!"

Valta instinctively jumped to the left and crashed her shoulder against the wall of someone's shop, a flash of fire bolting past her. She turned in her spot and entered a small alleyway where she hit herself with a barrel, which she rounded and kicked towards the main street.

"Damn!" Chamgue saw a barrel suddenly jump in his direction and didn't doubt to smash it into pieces, making rice explode all across the ground.

Valta was about to exit the alleyway when a pair of spears suddenly attacked her from both sides. She easily dodged them and dashed forward, leaving the two soldiers that had been waiting for her frozen in their spot. Valta had a sudden thought: So they're all over the city, hm.

To the left there were more houses, to the right there was a long alley— and she dashed that way. The woman was about to turn on a corner, but she stopped dry and jumped against a wall instead, using it as a support to send herself flying towards the moulding of a window. Using her functional arm she grabbed herself to the eave of the roof and balanced her way onto the top, successfully landing but immediately losing her balance.

"I'm too dizzy..." She pressed one knee on the tiles of the rooftop.

"Over there!"

"Spear her!"

"Chief, she's up!"

Valta heard the noise of several guards looking at her from afar, and Chamgue's heavy metal plate bulling down the alley. She clicked her tongue and summoned the ghost once more, although feeling like her soul had started burning for a second.

"Valta Lockhart, hand yourself over!"

Her shadow moved from one rooftop to the other, the streets flooding with guards throwing their weapons at her, people yelling her name, torches kindling the hysteria that had filled the hearts of the city's guard. The entirety of the military had turned against her while the people they protected slept— she had a sudden thought of how appropriate it all seemed.

She was being chased under the orders of the same person that instructed her to commit the murder of his own uncle for the sake of an insane ideology. Her arm was broken, her ears were bleeding, and she was about to fall with each step that she took. There was the lingering sense of death in every passing second, in every pike hurled her way and every new torch that lit below her feet. It was cold, she was lonely, and she knew that the privilege of her lineage had abruptly ended. She had thrown away her life in a few short seconds, and yet, with every step she neared the northern gates of Pontya, she felt an immense sense of freedom that she couldn't have felt anywhere else.

Was this all she wanted to smile for? When she heard Thom Arburson's delusional speeches about hatred for the nobles and ignored them, knowing in her heart that she agreed, never for a second did it cross her mind that she'd be flying away from that life so soon.

"Halt there!"

The shape of several soldiers climbing to the rooftops alerted her, and activated the only response she could muster to think of. She jumped and tilted her body in the process, gracing above the head of a soldier, and falling down into a handful of barrels and crates.

"Rope." She didn't waste any time and used three of her four available hands to quickly unfurl the rope around the barrels, obtaining around four meters of rope.

"Over there!"

Bang!

She leaned back and saw a pike grace her chest.

The soldier opened his eyes like plates before receiving a swift kick to the face that relieved him of his helmet and his consciousness. Valta grabbed the pike before it could fall and bolted down the street, finding a barricade of soldiers in her way.

"Around her!"

"As if."

She threw herself at them, and their reaction was to shove their weapons forward, from where Valta had already vanished. One kick to a man's chain mail and two hands to hold the pikes surrounding her, with that, she broke the line of defense and kept running.

With close to three hundred people now behind her and a couple more peeking through their windows, Valta finally made it a hundred meters away from the gates. From the top of the walls, a dozen archers let go of their arrows towards her in an orderly manner, a straight line that detailed her streamlined trajectory.

"Tch." She easily dodged them and got up closer to the wall. "I didn't teach them well enough."

After dodging a few more arrows directed at her, she finally made it close enough to the wall to start her escape. Using the ghost´s dexterity, she tied up the rope to the upper end of the pike's shaft.

She grabbed the rope and the ghost grabbed the pike. Summoning his bow, he pulled from it an impossible length back and shot it like an arrow towards a minuscule putlog six meters above ground, where it lodged. With a short wallwalk that imitated the movements of a cat, she climbed onto the shaft of the pike about to snap, and held onto the base of the head. Her first thought, once she was higher up, was to immediately pull back the rope, which seemed appropriate since the first thing the soldiers tried to do was pull from it.

"Somebody impale that bitch!"

"Take her down, take her down!"

"What the fuck are the archers doin'! Hey, fuck off man, if you're not gonna help don't be a bother!"

Before she could prepare herself to keep climbing, the soldiers started throwing pikes at her. She opened her eyes wide and covered her face with an arm, only to receive a grievous wound to the thigh. She gritted her teeth and let go of a small whine, retiring the iron head of the weapon from her flesh with the specter´s hand. Half a second later, a pitiful scream came from down below.

"Fuck! You killed Arnar you shithead!"

"My arm! Agh!"

"A pike landed on my foot, stop throwing that shit you absolute airheads!!"

Valt grabbed the pike that had just been thrown at her from below and used the ghost's strength to bury it between the brick's seams, then grabbed the one she had been using before and did the same. The soldiers ceased their shooting for a second since they had suffered casualties from their own thoughtless moves, and began retreating to hit her without killing other soldiers.

However, moving a mob that size back wasn't easy no matter how much you yelled.

Before they could reposition themselves, Valta had already reached the top of the wall, and she made her way onto the top with a hand ready to slash the archers' throats, when she was met by a strange scenario.

There were no archers whatsoever.

"Hey."

She turned back and pointed the ghost's bow towards the direction of the voice. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the origin of such bothersome sound— the face of General Miel standing a few feet in front of her with his arms crossed.

"I'll take that as a thank you." Miel said with a smug smile. "You know, for putting the archers in standby."

"Ha... Ha... Ha..."

Valta held her broken arm and felt the warm sensation of blood running down her leg and soaking her boots. Her eyes could barely stay open. The pain was starting to kick in, and no matter how much stamina she counted with, it had definitely run out from before. She was in shambles and that was easy to see, so she did not try to hide it.

"Hm. Well, I promised to myself that if you made it to the wall I'd let you continue with your attempt at an escape, so here we are." Miel slowly put one foot forward. "I honestly think it was a fun show. Of course, it was just petty guards after you, but I had fun nonetheless."

"Are... You satisfied now?"

"Certainly." Miel nodded. "You did a good job. I could hear that fucking bell all the way from the damned citadel. It's a shame that it is the last job you'll do for me."

"I told you in advance that I'd be leaving."

"That doesn't make it any better, Valta." Miel frowned slightly and lifted his upper lip. "First Erina turns her back on me and lies, gets those bastards into my army and tries to make me like them. I'm sick of treason and team changes."

"Says... The one who just ordered me to kill his uncle."

"Ah, yes." Miel closed his eyes. "My uncle alone."

Valta suddenly felt a sharp pain on her neck, and a warm sensation spread throughout her body. A shadow graced her side and slid underneath, falling in front of general Miel in a kneeling position. Valta touched her neck and removed a small needle.

"Petyo. I trust you did your job well too."

"The heirs to the duchy are no longer alive. You are the only one in the succession line for the title."

"Excellent." Miel smiled relieved.

Valta's face contorted slightly after hearing the exchange between Miel and the assassin. "Was it always about the duchy?" She asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

"It has never been." Miel walked past Petyo and stood by Valta's side. "It's more of a personal thing... I have been doing the job of a duke for a long time, either way. This is just a means to make it... Hm, official, I guess."

"Then I hope you're happy."

Valta looked away from Miel and dragged her leg towards the edge of the wall.

"... Do you not have... Anything to say?"

"It doesn't concern me." She replied. "Nothing does."

"Now you're sounding like it!" Miel let go of a small chuckle. "You know, I was flustered that maybe things wouldn't turn out as I planned, but now that I see it, it's all going pretty nicely. Since I am in a good mood, I won't be hard on you. Hahaha, you were a valuable asset to the start of this revolution after all, so I am grateful for that. However... treason is still treason."

Miel placed his hand on Valta's head and giggled to himself, looking at the small wound on her neck.

"Poison?" Valta asked.

"More or less. It's a paralyzing agent... Or something like that. I don't know shit about alchemy. Thing is, if you want to escape, you better do it quick. If you make it to the forest, then at least you'll die in your sleep. If you don't, however... Well, wouldn´t it be ironic to be filled with holes by the archers you trained?"

Valta answered without a trace of concern. "Fair enough." she said.

"Oh, and send my regards to Thom Arburson's corpse, dear."

"You—"

Thump!

With a solid kick to her back, Valta was thrown off the wall. She quickly gained balance and upon touching the ground with the tip of her feet, she rolled and fell on her back, sliding down the small elevation of the hill until she hit her body against the barricades outside of the city.

She stood up, smirks from the outer guards mocking her sorry state, laughing at her body which was covered in dirt and bruises. Her eyes trailed back. There she saw Miel smiling, his hand resting on the black titite sword hanging from his waist.

"Ha..."

Valta sighed. Her eyes were set forward once more. The guards didn't stop her from scaping. She dragged herself down the slope and carried her wounds through the grassy plane, following the river upstream into the forest where she had once gone hunting with that black-haired man.

Her heart stopped ringing in her ears. The excitement and sense of control became tremors that assaulted her whole body. Pain, sharp pain all across, accompanied by a slight sense of regret and a bigger sense of liberation, was all she could feel. Until, not much before reaching the forest, numbness began reigning over her, starting at her neck.

"Come on..." She muttered, now almost unable to move her jaw.

Her hands pulled from the barks of the trees with each step. The dry leaves under her feet didn't seem to make sense. Why was the forest so desolate? Why was everything so cold? If her senses hadn't gone completely useless, she'd be feeling the blood trailing down her wrist, the cuts across her hand, and the weight of her own body. She would be able to remember, somehow, for how many hours she had been aimlessly carrying her pain through the forest. However, she couldn't feel a thing.

"Ha... Ha..."

She cried with a voice that she couldn't hear.

"Ah."

Her hand slipped.

Valta fell to her knees. Her breath was inconsistent. Her eyeballs where shaking although her eyesight did not work enough to give her a hint of where she was. She held her chest in an attempt to feel her heartbeat, but it was so slow that it didn't feel like beating.

Her head hit the ground.

"So this is..."

She finally breathed out with a small smile forming in her mouth. Her body was shaking. There was no glimmer or shine in her pupils, there was only an empty hope that sought to keep walking, which did not agree with her powerless body.

"This is... freedom, hm?"

A dark chilly breeze gently caressed the pale skin of the woman, who breathed so softly that no one would hear. In the middle of the lonely night, she rested, numb to any pain and free from every shackle.