Bella Clairborne heard a snicker and stopped knitting, instead choosing to watch in horror as her grandmother started mumbling to herself, a maniacal chuckle sometimes escaping her pale lips. A frown came across Jane’s mouth as she fiddled with her large telescope and briefly broke her line of sight to glance at her granddaughter.

“What is that look for? Can’t an old woman enjoy the rest of her life the way she wants to, and in peace?”

Bella averted her gaze and spoke in a low voice, “No grandma, I’m sorry. I’ve just been worried about you since your last trip to the capital. You don’t visit Songrande very often, but whenever you do it feels like you change afterwards.”

Jane huffed and shook her head. “I’m fine, for the gods sakes just stop worrying about me, will you? Instead, why don’t you try to think of ways to get a husband for yourself? I’m not going to be here forever you know, and I’d at least like to see who would be taking care of you with my own two eyes instead of watching from beyond the grave.”

Bella’s face flushed as she returned to knitting, this time at a much more furious pace. Sighing, she recalled that her grandma had been this way ever since receiving an official prophecy from the Oracle’s Committee, one that she refused to show or speak of to anyone, even Bella herself.

After a few minutes in silence, she snuck a peak at her grandmother out of the corner of her eye. Looking her up and down, Bella noted the worn leather boots she wore, caked in mud from visiting Hokuto lake every morning for the last fortnight. Her dark blue gown carried with it an aura of regality, and as a memento of the time her grandmother was in power, that aura didn’t seem to be something of her imagination.

However, more impressive than Jane’s clothes, Bella thought, was the woman’s body herself. Even though her grandmother was considerably older than Bella, Jane looked as if she hadn’t aged since she turned 25. A bewitching figure was accompanied by skin that looked as soft and supple as Bella’s, which was something Bella begrudgingly accepted due to what were prominently featured behind the curtain of lucious navy hair on her grandmother’s head: two pairs of curved horns that intertwined on either side of her and pointed skyward.

Yes, Bella was the granddaughter of a demoness. Although Bella had heard her grandmother speak of Bella’s mother, Rora Clairborne, as someone who had a genetic mutation and recieved much more of the demon’s power than ever before, Jane herself was on an entirely different level, even able to wield magic like the ancestors she thought to be long extinct.

Sighing once more, Bella looked into a mirror placed on the back of the study’s door and took in her own physical appearance, something which she loathed to do on a regular basis.

Her own boots were worn down and starting to smell, something which bothered Bella no an infinite degree, and something she’d have to take up with her grandmother the next time she departed for a trip. Bella owned no fancy dresses like her grandmother, and instead opted to try to sew the best imitation she could come up with out of the ever common silk that her grandma had been harvesting since even before Bella had been born. Even this couldn’t hope to have been as beautiful as the dyed silk gowns her grandmother had received from expert seamstresses, another fact that depressed Bella. Although she felt bad taking from their only source of income, her grandma met the request with a wide, mischievous smile.

One thing she didn’t envy about her grandma, however, was her physical condition. A guilty glance at the cane sitting in the corner of the room made Bella’s eyes well up with tears. She had caused so much trouble for her grandmother after being taken in, that she almost cost Jane the use of her left leg. If only she wasn’t such a brat at first… if only she didn’t-

“Hahaha! I see, I see…”

Stirred out of her thoughts by another fit of laughter from Jane, she once again began comparing herself to her grandma. She wasn’t as… gifted as her grandmother in terms of appearance, and had an overall thinner countenance than the woman she strived to be. Although her grandma assured her that both herself and Rora looked just like Bella at her age, she had a hard time believing any of those who carried magical blood would ever know the suffocating normalcy Bella felt every day.

Finally running out of patience for her own self-loathing, Bella calmly left the room and quietly closed the door, so as not to startle her smiling grandma. Walking down the stairs, she lamented how they lived in a mansion by themselves, which made her realize how isolated and shunned they were. It brought a tear to her eye remembering the cause of her mother and father’s death, but Bella had already resolved to move on, and was soon fetching a glass of water from the well out back.

If only grandma would take her out when she left the mansion, the isolation was much more intense when Bella knew that there was no one she could even speak to in the house, rather than one who appeared to blissfully ignore her.

As she lifted the bucket up and out of the well, Bella heard a sharp crack in the sky, which startled her and caused her to let go of the bucket. Cursing as she heard the wood hit the water down below she turned around and looked in the sky for the cause of the noise, which caused her heart to drop.

Why was the sky burning!? No, but more importantly something looks like it would hit Hokuto Lake! “Oh no, Grandma!” Bella shouted in frustration as she realized what her ride-or-die grandma would do after seeing that.

Sure enough, Bella intercepted Jane at the door to their mansion, gazing at the look of pain on her face, but also the sparkle in her eyes. Those weren’t the eyes of someone waiting do die, but rather those of a woman looking to go out in a blaze of glory.

Bella tried to speak up but was left behind as her grandmother hobbled at a frantic pace out the door and towards Hokuto lake. Losing herself for a moment, Bella quickly collected her wits and began to run after her insane grandmother.

After finally catching up with Jane, Bella grabbed her shoulder and spun the woman around. “Grandma! What in the gods names has gotten into you!?” Jane’s eyes widened and her jaw hung open as her granddaughter raised her voice for the first time since taking her in. However, that quickly faded into a smile and a good-natured one at that

“It’s finally here Bella! The prophecy, the prophecy said-!”

“No, it’s dangerous! How the hell could I let my only relative go down there where we don’t even know what’s happened!?”

Feeling annoyed at her overly protective granddaughter, Jane tried to shake Bella off but the younger woman hung on with a vengeance. “Please…,” Bella whispered, tears coming out as her voice trembled, “I don’t want to lose you too.”

Jane smiled sadly and stroked her granddaughter's head with her free hand. “Silly girl, did you forget who I am?” Suddenly the ground trembled beneath them, and roots pierced their way out of the ground, slowly coming to rest behind Jane. “I am former Rank 10 of the Imperial Coat of Arms. If something can kill me that easily, then the world is already doomed regardless.”

Bella acquiesced, but still held her grandmother’s hand as they walked up to the former lake. All that was left was a large bowl shape in the ground, as if all the water had been evaporated by the heat of whatever landed in it. Just as she thought that, Bella turned her attention to a spot not even 10 megards in front of them.

He was battered, bloodied, and burnt, but even so Bella would never forget the feelings of happiness the first time she would lay eyes on him, and how even to this day she never regretted meeting the remnant of Leo Jones.