The girl ran through the thinning crowd, glancing backwards seeing that the three men who’d been stalking her for the last couple bells were still chasing after her. She had no idea where she was going but her pounding heart and her adrenaline infused body helped her speed up.

She kept sprinting straight for a couple of minutes and then quickly turned the corner into an alley. She should’ve noticed that the shutters on all of the buildings here were tightly closed and that there wasn’t a single person standing in the alley, but the girl was frightened and panicked and therefore, unable to catch these things. And then suddenly, the line of buildings ended in a brick wall and she realized that she’d stumbled into a dead end.

Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to run away from the castle, the girl thought to herself.

But at the time, it had seemed like the best thing to do to have some fun. Her escorts never would’ve agreed with the things she’d been doing in the past few hours. But what was she to do? She was a 13-year-old girl in a different city for the first time in her life. However, instead of letting her explore, the Counselor and her other escorts had kept her shut up in Novan’s main castle for the last week.

The gods only knew why her father had arranged for her to go on this trip. And now that she’d finally accepted to come here, the people she’d brought with her wanted her to do the same things she’d done back home.

And so, after a week, the girl had decided that enough was enough. It honestly hadn’t been too hard for her to get past the castle guards. They were much more focused on people trying to get in rather than out. Plus, she’d spent all week exploring the castle, and with her almost perfect memory, it wasn’t too hard for her to learn the blind spots of the patrols. This afternoon, she’d told her personal maid that she was going to sleep for a bit, and then she’d snuck out her window and subsequently, out of the castle.

It was a different feeling wandering the markets without her personal guards. She felt a lot more free and even though she’d been ripped off multiple times at different stalls, she was having fun for the first time since arriving in Novan.

That was, until she had noticed the three men stalking her. She’d seen them watching her earlier while she’d gone stall to stall, checking the wares. After glancing at them a couple of times out of the corner of her eye, she’d felt a little creeped out, so she’d gone to the next street over. However, minutes later she’d seen the same men watching her from a few stalls away.

So of course, like any other 13-year-old, she’d instantly panicked and instead of coming up with a plan to get out of the situation, she’d just started sprinting away, hoping they wouldn’t follow her.

And that’s how she’d ended up here, facing a dead end, in an alley in the most forgettable part of the city. The girl turned around and saw that the three men had turned into the same alley and had started to slowly walk towards her.

Their weapons glinted in the moonlight and she realized that they had followed her for the exact reason she’d thought. The man in the middle was the shortest of them, bald, sleazy, and potbellied, exactly the kind of man she could expect to find either in the lowliest of slums or in the richest room of any castle. He was holding a small, shabby dagger and from the way he held it, it was obvious he didn’t have much training with it.

It was the two men that flanked him that troubled her though. They were both tall and thin with sharp facial structures. After a closer glance at them, she realized they were twins. They both held curved sabres, but in a way that showed at least some training and usage. The girl could tell they were the real threats in the same way she could tell the short, bald man was their leader.

“Hey, girly, don’t make this so difficult,” the one she’d named Baldy said. We’ve been chasin’ you for half a bell and all of us are exhausted. There’s no need to fight. As long as we get what we want, we’ll be on our way.”

“Stop it, don’t get closer, or I’ll yell for the city watch,” the girl started to speak confidently, but the slight voice crack that resulted from her rising fear hurt her chances of scaring the men.

Baldy just laughed at her words for a few seconds before saying, “C’mon, girl. You think the watch comes way out here to the slums, especially for some screaming little girl?”

The girl could see some people stop at the entrance of the alleyway, look in, and then hurry away, trying not to invite trouble to themselves. She saw one tall middle aged man stop and look straight at her.

“Please, help me,” she called out to him.

He looked at her apologetically, before turning and hurrying away like the others.

“I’m telling you girly, no one here is gonna take the chance to help you.”

Seeing the men slowly getting closer to her, the girl stepped back until her body was pressed to the wall behind her.

The false confidence on her expression having been overtaken by fear, she asked in an almost whisper, “What do you want?”

“How about this? Start by dropping everything valuable you have on you, including the heaps of coins you have in the purse on your belt. I know you’re one of them nobles from the clothes you have which also means you should have a ton of money too.”

“Ok, ok,” she said in acquiescence. She pulled two pouches, which carried her platinum and the things she’d bought, off her belt and held them out. “Here, take them, just please, don’t hurt me.”

Baldy, even though he was the leader of this trio, was still, in fact, a bit of an idiot. He felt no threat from the girl in front of him so he casually walked forward and started to take the pouches from her hands. But, before he could do so, the girl snapped her leg up and kicked him right in the balls as hard as she could.

She had worn her riding clothes this day for two simple reasons. One, they were the least furnished of her clothes which meant that she could pass as some rich merchant’s daughter in them. Two, they were the easiest to run around in, so that if she needed to move quickly, these clothes would allow her to.

Baldy screamed in pure agony as he bent over, both hands on his crotch area. The girl instantly darted forward, hoping that the entire trio would be distracted enough so that she could slip past them. Her thoughts were proven correct and she darted right in between Tall Idiot 1 and Tall Idiot 2.

They just gaped at her as she ran past, but right before she was about to exit the alley, the girl could hear Baldy screaming, “YOU FOOLS, CATCH HER!”

She turned right as she exited the alley, trying to remember the way back to the large crowds and many stalls, though she doubted there would be many people there anyways since the sun had set.

She could hear the footsteps behind her after a few seconds and realized that they’d been trying to trap her the first time they’d chased her, just like a cat that played with a mouse before eating it. This time, however, they were going all out.

However, even if they hadn’t decided to chase her full speed, the girl was still getting tired. Her legs were still burning from the earlier chase and all of the built up adrenaline had already worn off. She was running on her last fumes now.

It only took the thieves a couple of minutes to catch up to her, but catch up they finally did. The girl felt a slight push that normally wouldn’t have done anything, but with her momentum, it was just enough to send her rolling forward onto the hard ground. She split her lip and scraped her hands with the hard fall, but she still tried her best to get back to her feet and keep running.

The girl was able to get to her knees before she felt hands roughly grab her and force her to her feet. Those same hands quickly pulled her into another side alley and led her all the way down before forcing her up against a wall, keeping her limbs still so she couldn’t fight back this time. A few seconds passed before Baldy was once again there. This time, she didn’t even try to talk to him as she whipped her head forward.

She felt a crunch against her head and then heard another howl, but the vice grips on her arms and legs didn’t loosen and she wasn’t able to do much more. It only took a minute for Baldy to recover and this time he grabbed her head and slammed it into the wall.

She groaned in pain as she suddenly felt the touch of cold steel kissing her neck. And then Baldy started spitting in her face.

“Do you know what you’ve done to me?! My nose is all ruined now and everything hurts down there! My face and manhood are ruined!”

Wasn’t much to look at before, she said to herself, choosing not to say those words out loud lest Baldy became more violent.

“No, you know what, little girl. I was going to let you go after taking your money. I was going to let you crawl all the way back to your nice mansion and cry to daddy about how three big, strong, scary men robbed you because you decided it would be a good idea to go out into the streets alone. You were going to get the chance to leave this behind and go back to your dainty little life. But not anymore! Now, I’m fed up with this. No, you see girl, I’ve gonna have my fun with you and then carve you up and leave you in the streets for everyone to see tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t worry,” Baldy continued, grabbing her face and squeezing it with one hand. “I’ll make sure it won’t hurt much the first time.”

And at that moment, when Baldy slid his dagger down and started trying to cut into the front of her clothes. That moment, when despair had overtaken the girl and she’d exhausted all of her ideas on how to get out of this terrible situation. At that moment in the time, the voice of a young boy sounded in the alley.

“Hey, stop, what’s going on here?”

At first, when she heard that voice, the despair that was choking up her throat had started to melt away before she realized that it was just a kid talking, one that was probably around the same age as her.

The despair then, came back twofold as she realized that not only was she still going to get used and killed in this situation, she would also drag someone else down with her, someone else whose only crime was realizing that something wrong was going on here.

She heard Baldy say, “Get out of here kid, and forget what you saw or I’ll gut you like a fish right now. If you leave now, I’ll forget I saw you too.”

Again, the boy’s voice sounded out. “Hey, what’re you doing to that girl? Drop her now, or I’ll call the watch,” the boy warned.

Baldy laughed in the same way he had when the girl had threatened him with the watch.

“Kid, we’re still at the edge of the slums. No guardsman is going to come around here this time of the night.”

“Good,” said the boy, in somehow more of a relaxed manner, but the girl could hear the undercurrent of slight anger that ran through that one word. The boy was angry and for some reason he was also glad the city watch wouldn’t come here no matter how much he called for them.

Suddenly, she felt the hands that had roughly gripped her arms slide off. However, this time she fell to the ground, the fight in her having been exhausted. She saw the boy then for the first time since he’d come into the alley.

He was wearing a black cloak and was holding a sword in his relaxed hand. His jet black hair moved a little in the breeze while his eyes, the same color as his hair glinted in the moonlight. They were dangerous eyes. Eyes that promised death.

But, it wasn’t the weapon in his hands or the slight smirk on his face that made her a little more hopeful. It was the confident stance of someone who’d practiced the art of fighting that made her despair finally start to melt away. She’d seen that stance many times on her Armsmaster before and could tell that the boy in front of her was trained.

The boy was outnumbered, with the entire trio now facing him, the girl having been forgotten. Maybe they’d seen the same confidence that the girl had seen, or maybe they’d caught something from the one word he’d said at the end. Either way, they could feel at least some danger from the boy and Baldy had decided to take him seriously.

The boy walked leisurely into the ally, like a tiger slowly stalking its prey. His eyes ran over everyone, stopping on the girl for a few seconds. And then, it was as if the tiger had become feral. For just a second, the boy’s face had twisted into one of pure unadulterated rage before it reverted back to the relaxed smirk. But his eyes were now exuding that same rage.

The other four in the alley had all felt it for a second. The ferocity of a predator that had decided that it was time to stop playing around. A few seconds later, the boy’s body flashed forwards, sword outstretched to attack.

Of course, Baldy had sent Tall Idiots 1 and 2 out as a buffer to protect him and so that’s who the boy met first. And as he stepped easily between them, sword flashing out in familiar patterns, the girl understood that she’d been right with her analyzation of his stance. She could see the Forms that her Armsmaster had tried to get her to practice but failed once she had realized the girl wasn’t interested in weapons.

The girl now was staring in awe because she’d never seen someone so young have such a complete understanding of any of the Forms, and with her status, she’d seen a lot of examples.

The boy slid through the buffer of Tall Idiots 1 and 2 easily and glided forward towards Baldy. The boy must’ve seen something in Baldy’s face because he suddenly, savagely smiled and rammed the hilt of his weapon into his opponent’s head, pushing him to the side. The boy’s hand snaked out and snatched the dagger that was somehow still in Baldy’s hands.

“Stay there, asshole,” he said. “I’ll deal with you in a second.”

The boy then leisurely walked to the girl and pulled her up to stand.

The girl swallowed visibly as she just stared at the boy. Up close, she realized he was about as tall as Baldy, which meant he was half a head taller than her. This didn’t mean either of them were necessarily extremely tall, but that Baldy was just a short man. The boy’s eyes looked even more ferocious up close, though she could see they’d softened as soon as he’d lain them on her. The smirk wasn’t present on his face now as he ran his eyes over her, checking on her injuries. He nodded to acknowledge there wasn’t a serious physical injury on her.

She realized seconds later he was now talking to her.

“W-what?” her voice sounded out with a stammer.

Understanding clearly written on the boy’s expression, a complete opposite of the ferocity he’d shown when facing the trio, he asked again.

“What’s your name?”

“My name? Oh, it’s Alyssia,” she answered awkwardly.

He raised his eyebrows for a second in surprise before asking, “Like the elemental goddess?”

“Yes,” Alyssia said, a little embarrassed, pink slowly rising on her cheeks. “She’s my namesake.”

“A little ambitious, no?” He said under his breath before shrugging.

“Ok then, Alyssia, hold out your hand for a second,” he finally said after a few seconds.

She held out her hand without hesitating, for some reason fully trusting the boy who’d decided to save her. He placed the dagger he’d taken from Baldy into her hand and curled her fingers around the hilt.

“Hold on to that dagger, ok? None of these fools should be able to get past me, but just in case go straight for the heart with a quick thrust. The crappy looking thing should be long enough for that much.”

She just nodded, speechless at the fact that not only was he so confident in the face of three armed adults, but that he was also just a kid like her, maybe even younger than her.

“All right. I’m gonna go take care of these three idiots and then we’ll get you home.”

“That’s what I call them too,” Alyssia’s voice burst out, before she covered her mouth in embarrassment.

“Hmm?”

“I mean, I call them Tall Idiots 1 and 2 and the one you hit Baldy.” The sentence ended in almost a whisper as she realized how lame that sounded outside her head.

Stupid, stupid Alyssia, she told herself.

However, the boy just flashed a smile at her and said, “Good descriptive names. They sound about right to me.”

He suddenly turned and flashed away, meeting the Tall Idiots in battle once again. She realized then, that at some point during their conversation, he’d wrapped his cloak around her and that she was now gripping it extremely tightly.

She watched the battle, now only fearing for her helper’s life. Alyssia’s throat caught every time she saw a cut or a thrust narrowly miss him and she flinched whenever the weapons did manage catch him. However, in two short minutes, the boy had brutally cut down both of the saber users in sprays of their own blood.

Alyssia saw that his face had once again changed expression to that of a savage animal. His burning dark fire eyes had followed through on their earlier promise of death.

He then turned to the pathetic bald man that was trying to push himself backwards towards Alyssia, this time not trying to get to her, but to try to get himself out of the violent boy’s field of vision instead. It was a futile effort.

Alyssia stepped forward towards Baldy and said to the boy, “Let me have him, please.”

The boy snapped his head up to look at her, this time his expression staying the same before a simple, “No” escaped his mouth. He then stepped forward quickly and before she could do anything, rammed two feet of steel into Baldy’s chest, towards his heart, exactly how he’d told her to do it if she had to. Alyssia looked at the boy in slight anger.

“Why?!” she cried out. “He started this whole thing. He did this to me. He’s the one who made me helpless and full of fear. He…”

Her savior cut her off then with a question. “Have you ever killed a man before?”

The abruptness of the question caught her off guard. “No,” Alyssia simply said.

“Neither had I, before those two,” he said, waving towards the other two bodies.

“They why…”

“Listen to me,” he said to her, wildness still fully exuding from his eyes. “You’re a noble. I could tell that just from what you’re wearing. Answer this. How many other nobles do you know have directly killed a human? Not ordered someone else to but done it themselves.”

At her silence he continued. “That’s right, not many. For the rest of your life, you’re going to be behind the walls of a castle, training to be a Cultivator in a couple of years, servants at your beck and call.”

“It’s a different story out there,” he continued, pointing his sword towards the edge of the city. “For the rest of my life, I’m not going to be behind any walls. I’m going to be struggling against others to get stronger, to become more powerful. There is a zero percent chance that I’m going to go the rest of my life without killing at least a few more people. I’ve already been marked, but you don’t want that on your conscience, especially once you start to Cultivate.”

And so, Alyssia realized, in the end, he’d done it for her, a random noble he’d never seen nor met before. And for that reason, because he’d saved a random stranger without a second thought to who she was, her anger melted away and she etched his face in her mind. She would never forget what he’d done for her.

Alyssia looked back at him, giving him a simple nod, showing him she’d accepted his explanation. His face softened then as he said, “C’mon, I’ll walk you back home.”

He wiped his blade on the pants of Baldy and then sheathed it in a practiced fashion. He then turned and gestured at her to follow him out of the alley. They’d started to walk but of course, after a few minutes, Alyssia had had to start leading since her memory could mostly remember the route back to the castle now that she wasn’t in such a frightening situation.

It only took them half a bell to get back to the gates of the castle since the crowds had left the streets a while ago. They hadn’t met any trouble along the way, but every time Alyssia had tried to make conversation, her savior had either shushed her or given her short answers to shut her up.

Once they’d arrived at the gates of the castle and two guards had started to open them to quickly let her in, the boy turned to her and asked, “You’ve got it from here?”

A thousand different questions ran through her mind, and she almost even asked him to come in with her, but knowing he would refuse, she just nodded.

However, just as he turned to leave, Alyssia called out one last question, “Wait, what’s your name?”

“Does it matter, Milady?” He asked, that small smirk having etched itself back onto his face. “It’s not like we’ll ever see each other again.”

“It matters to me,” she answered him, her voice almost cracking at the realization he’d given her.

“Kai,” he said after a few seconds, the edges of his mouth turning up a little more, before he turned and disappeared into the shadows.

And as the gates opened, and the guards, having recognized Alyssia, rushed her into the castle. As she stood in her room a bell later in a blue dress clutching the black cloak that the Counselor and then her personal maid had tried to take from her, as the Counselor yelled at her for her disappearing act and as her personal maid silently agreed with his words, Alyssia stared out window of her room in the castle, at the shadows near the gate with regret, longing for the freedom that lay out there with the boy she believed she would never see again.