Alice was back in her home in the town of Urrutia. It was still too early to come out of hiding. Their enemies, the other clans that Ledanai’i stirred to war, were still waiting for them. She missed Cavite, and the other places she used to freely go to. The silence in the room she was in was able to push her to that remembrance. Dante, she sat there on her bed thinking. Are you happy? Was this what we wanted? A crash before the growth of something else? Did I do it? Was I successful?
It had completely been a year since his death.
Alice buried her face in her palms. She was tired, but now she had rest waiting for her. A little break before a few more. Where does this lead to?
She lifted her head from her palms, and checked the tattoo on her arm. It was still burning: the new one. She recognized the symbols immediately. There was a dragon, a hound, and a deer… fighting. It was the first new tattoo the Void had given her sin
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The bright and beaming white ball was firm above the sky as it stared down at him. It was a full moon. His breaths whirled rapidly. Gusts of air looped in and out of his lungs in an unstable, and unending, cycle. His head throbbed violently, like something inside was drilling his brain and he couldn’t reach for it. It felt like he had slept for a millennium, and his brain had already been shattered to pieces while he was asleep. He just woke up, after all. It felt as if he had just come back to life, after being left for dead—deep in a forest with no life in it. It was just… dark, woodland hell all around him. He was lying down in a small patch of seemingly dead grass. It looked as if the tiny pasture spot was purposely prepared for him—to die in an open, meadow-carpeted coffin. But, around him, it was all just trees. They stretched on; almost for forever. And without the sun, they were just color black. He couldn’t decide if the trees were also just victims of the darkness
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