"na....una.......YUUNA"

A female voice resonates through the area accompanied by a heavy rain, it sounds...familiar.

"Yuuna wake up! Please!"

I'm being held by someone. Her hands feel soft, she sounds desperate.

I slowly open my eyes, the view is blurry yet I'm still able to recognise the image before me.

The violet of an Annual Flower covers her hair as her forehead is drenched in blood.

"Le...na..."

A single faint word is all that exits my lips as I'm deprived of strength. Then, a sudden spring of joy can be heard through the girl's voice.

"Thank god, you are alive!"

She begins to cry as I get tightly hugged by her trembling body.

I use the last of my strength to lift my arm covered in blood and gently place my palm on the back of her head to comfort her.

I feel warmth, but it's not just her. As I inspect the surroundings, I'm presented with a bright burning view.

We are surrounded by ruins in flames indicating a fierce battle that has held place here. I try to remember but despite trying as hard as I can, there's nothing but a blank space.

Just what...happened here?

Life is a strange thing. At one moment you are living your life and the next, with just a snap of a finger, you are gone. Some take it for granted, but what makes life precious is that it ends, especially in a world with evil lurking behind every corner. The weak die and the strong survive. This is true but what people fail to realize is that the terms weak and strong don't describe a person physically only.

I chose to take the path of the strong. I chose to protect the weak and rid humanity of the evil opressing it.

I'm Yuuna Endou and this is my story.

[ 3 Years Earlier ]

"una....yuuna......."

I wake up from my slumber as I hear a voice calling out to me.

It is a beautiful day with a sky clear as the blue oceans and a gentle spring breeze. I often like to gaze upon it every morning as I lay beneath this cherry blossom tree, that is giving me a nice and cool shade.

I sit up and yawn

"Have you not slept? I was trying to wake you up for five minutes."

The voice comes from my right. I rotate my head to find my older sister crouching next to me.

"Oh...hey."

This is my older sister, Lena, currently at the age of sixteen. She has short hair, going just past her ears, purple as an Annual flower and orange, almost golden eyes. She's just a tiny bit taller than I am. Always dependable and kind, she puts her friend's well-being before her own. But there are certain people she can be mean to for no reason despite it being obvious she cares about them.

Someone starts yelling in the near distance. We look at the direction it’s coming from. A girl is running towards us while waving.

"You are late."

Lena and I pronounce in unison with a voice showing disappointment.

It’s my other sister, Charlotte, fifteen-years-old, "The Sleeping Beauty" of the trio. She's the tallest of us three. They call her "The Sleeping Beauty" for her school tardiness and laziness backed up by her obvious beauty. The long, black hair, reaching all the way to her hips. Crimson red eyes, just like roses fresh after blooming. A big rack though, and not just that, she's squishy in all the right places. She's often the target of jealousy. If only she wasn't so lazy…

She oversleeps so often that we usually don’t bother waiting for her, but since it’s the start of our school year, we make an exception.

"Sorry, sorry, won't happen again! Promise!"

Charlotte puts her hands in a praying position while closing one eye and slightly sticking her tongue out.

Lena looks at her with a serious expression for a few seconds and lets out a sigh.

"You say that every time… Now let's go, we don't want to be late for our first day at school, do we now?"

I pick myself up and follow my sister's lead. To reach our academy, we need to cross half of the town as we are at the very edge of it and our destination is located in the centre.

We live in the Tousumi town, the Hogo-sha district to be exact. Hogo-sha is a special district where people called "knights" live. We are the guardians of the town. Every single person living here either is or will be a knight. Your role in life is pretty much decided once you are born into this district.

When passing through the streets, you can see a lot of children being trained by their parents or masters. If a child refuses to become a knight, it is seen as disrespecting the god that has given us the power to slay and survive, to live in peace for quite a while now. We have been given abilities by this god. The children that are against becoming knights are sent to an orphanage outside of the district, or in the worst-case scenario, left homeless. It’s pretty rough.

Of course, this town has knights that were born outside of the district and thus do not have any abilities. These knights are involved in taking care of the small threats while the knights from our district deal with bigger problems. The work involves stuff like escorting important people around the country, expeditions to expand our territory, guarding important buildings and such.

You might be wondering, what kind of powers have we been given? How or why did the power come to us? I couldn't tell you.

The power varies from person to person, one could be moving objects simply through mental effort while another could control flames or any form of heat. The power usually surfaces between the age of six and ten, but if that doesn't happen, the child is considered a failure and is sent out of the district. There have been cases of the powers surfacing past the age of ten, but it's quite the rarity.

The powers belong solely to knight district, so people aren't abusing them against powerless citizens or becoming a target of jealousy. For this purpose, a variety of security measures have been put in place, one of which is performing a ritual with anyone planning to move out of the district. It seals off their powers and prevents the person from using it in the outside world as they are no longer a citizen of the Hogo-sha district. Another one is walls being placed around the district, separating us from the rest of the town.

Now why would we need these powers?

You see, it is not people we fight, but monsters. Demons to be specific. Although in the last couple hundreds of years it has been pretty peaceful here. They take on many forms, some resemble humans, and some seem like otherworldly creatures.

Apparently, a long time ago, there was an all-out war between humanity and the demons. Supposedly, when humanity was on the brink of extinction, beams of light rained down on earth from heaven like arrows and wiped out thousands of demons, giving humanity another chance to push back the enemy and live.

Or so they say…It might be a myth for all I know.

There are still some demons that happen to occasionally wander into the town, but these days they are nowhere near being a real threat like they once were. There are a few other towns with districts like ours, but it really isn't many. They are spread around the continent which makes us the last hope for the people living within the radius of a few dozen kilometres or so.

What can make demons potentially dangerous is that they suddenly appear out of nowhere, crawling out of the ground to be more specific. Usually blowing it up and causing damage to the surroundings.

Obviously, they don't just come out of the ground in towns. They are also out where there's no civilization whatsoever. The further you go into the wild, the larger and deadlier the demons get.

Demons aren't all the same. We give them a class depending on their threat level, from F to S. F to C-Class are the demons currently emerging in the town, they are easily dealt with, especially considering their low intelligence, and are classified as “Mild Danger”.

A six-year-old could easily take out an F-Class demon but it would take at least some training to get a C-Class one. For people living outside of our district that is.

B-Class are classified as “District Level Threat” demons and are further, lurking in the depths. They come out much less frequently. Unless you are a trained knight from the district and you somehow happen to meet one, it would be safe to say you can say goodbye to your precious life.

A-Class, otherwise known as “City Level Threat”, demons are a rare sight, but if one ever appears, you would have to immediately evacuate the city, except for the knight districts. One A-Class demon has the power equal to fifty B-Class demons. Only a few selected squad leaders are strong enough to take them on solo.

And the S-Class…the “World Level Threat”. So far it appears to be just a myth that once appeared in the Ancient War as nobody has seen it ever since.

Knights generally take pride in slaying demons and our family is one of those that especially do so, thus we have been trained by our parents since I can remember.

Oh right, I still haven't introduced myself. I'm Yuuna Endou, thirteen-years-old. My friends call me Yun-Yun. I have a bit darker blond hair, almost taking the colour of ripe oranges with eyes just like Lena's. I have a thing for ponytails, so I wear them often. I'm the shortest out of the trio, just a bit shorter than Lena. I don't talk with too many people, just with my friends. I have been interested in martial arts since I was a little kid and have trained for a couple years now. It's safe to say I'm decent at hand-to-hand combat.

I look around as we walk and spy the familiar cherry blossoms that are in full bloom whenever school starts. I never get bored of the sight.

The academy we are headed to is called Hogo-sha academy. We don't have the same grade system your average school has, instead we are put into classes based on our rank.

Knights are ranked in order to make their capabilities apparent, so someone that's twelve years old has a chance to be ranked higher than a useless seventeen-year-old.

The ranking has less of a value in our academy compared to its general value. For example, an S-Rank student is equal to an A-Rank soldier, A equals B and so on.

I'm currently a B-Rank with Charlotte, while Lena is working hard in the S-Rank.

It’s becoming apparent we're getting close to the school as the number of uniformed students is increasing.

And after a few moments we arrive.

A three-story tall stone structure with wooden support and flooring. Basically the same as any other, or at least most buildings in the town.

A sudden wind blows and I feel a figure latch onto me.

I quickly turn my head around just to see Charlotte with a sulking expression.

"Yun-yuuuun, take me home! It's too cooold, all these people are draining my spiritual energy, I won't last much longer without a good nap in a comfortable bed!"

I look down for a moment to let out a sigh, then divert my gaze back to Charlotte with a disappointed expression.

"You have slept long enough…"

Charlotte starts sulking even louder while repeating my name.

Lena walks up to us with a tired expression, grabs Charlotte by one of her ears and drags her to the academy.

"Stop embarrassing us and get your butt inside before the bell rings."

"Lena wai- ouch ouch ouch, stop it! My ear will fall off!" Tears start to emerge from Charlotte's eyes.

I continue on walking, following Lena and her freshly caught prey to the school when I overhear a couple of students in the crowd chatting.

"Look look! It's Lena from the S-rank!"

"So cool! She's really kind and looks pretty too, I wish I could be like her!"

"Hey look, isn't that Charlotte?"

"Smoking hot! I wish I was in the same class as her…"

I nod twice as I walk forward

"Horny dogs."

Though, I completely forgot how popular those two are, yet they don't pay any attention to it.

"Hey, what about the younger sister? She's pretty hot too."

"No thanks dude. You know how she is, one wrong move and she would bite off my testicles.”

The second I hear that I stop and investigate the direction. There's eye contact between me and the morons pretending they are whistling as I give them a deathly glare.

I walk into the classroom, there's nobody here yet.

I wonder where Charlotte ran off to again… Oh well.

I place my bag on the desk, do a one-eighty degree turn and kick the desk in front of me to the back of the classroom.

"Those little shits….Bite it off? NO, I WILL CARVE IT OUT WITH A KNIFE AND STUFF IT UP YOUR FACE! WHO WOULD WANT YOUR D*CKS ANYWAY?!"

I yell at the abused desk that has clearly done nothing wrong with nobody around to witness it.

Or so I think…

"Okay Yuuna, temper tantrum over."

I hear a bag drop on the ground from the direction of the classroom's entrance. In response I rapidly turn around and give the person in the doorways my brightest smile, then pronounce with a cute voice.

“Oh hi! Isn’t the weather lovely today?

There are two people standing there. Charlotte and a male student.

I really feel the fear in his eyes as he’s holding his crotch with a single hand….

On the other hand, Charlotte is trying her best to contain her laughter-

I start giggling as I wish I could erase their memories.

The guy standing next to her is my childhood friend, a thirteen-year-old boy named Hidiku Sato. A bit taller guy with medium length black hair and dark blue eyes.

Our parents know each other well, and we don't live too far from one another either, so we hang out pretty often together with our other siblings. He also has two other siblings, the same ages as Charlotte and Lena.

"H-hey, you...okay?"

Hidiku asks out of concern as hesitation springs through his voice.

I nod twice as I keep the positive expression.

Noise starts coming from the hallways.

I look towards it with the others as we hear the students finally arriving to the classroom.

Charlotte turns their way and skips to the closest student.

I give Charlotte an intense stare because I know how much she loves to spread rumors.

She responds with a confused look.

"You two, class is about to start."

Hidiku sits behind the desk next to me.

Our previous homeroom teacher, Miss Hanabi, walks in. A tall, long black haired, busty woman with glasses and black circles beneath her eyes no matter when or where you see her. It makes you wonder what she does all the time. She also has a thing for lab coats, I don't think I've ever seen her wear anything else.

Also, her hair looks like seaweed.

"All right brats. Don't forget about tomorrow's physical tests. Miss out and you will get ranked down. That's it, you are dismissed for the rest of the period."

Miss Hanabi proceeds to lay her head down on her desk and go to sleep.

Right... I forgot to mention… She doesn't care too much for her lessons…

"She’s the same as ever."

Hidiku giggles to himself.

I look at him for a few seconds with a surprised look and turn back.

"Cute…."

I silently mumble to myself.