A/N: Hey! Welcome to Legacy! I'm am so nervous and excited to post this very first chapter. Legacy is a fic I've been working on for a long time. The story came to me almost in full years ago, and I tried to write it back then and eventually stopped posting. This time I mean business. I've already, as of this very moment of writing, written the first twenty-three chapters. I'm serious. But I'm going to aim to update every Wednesday so that a few scheduled breaks I have in the coming months won't affect upload speed.

I wanted to establish off the bat that this fic does not work with canon. It is an entirely alternative story, with completely different character arcs and overall story in general. The timeline is warped and people are alive who shouldn't be. There is a barrage of non-canon characters in the earliest chapters, but the main focus of the story does surround the canon characters, as well as a few of my own. But hopefully, if you admire the world of Final Fantasy VII as much as I do it won't matter :)

Finally, I really, really, really hope to hear from some of you guys in reviews and messages and stuff. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I've enjoyed writing it! — spirit-energy xx

27th Feb '19 (This is for my own personal reference, but it might be interesting to you guys, too!)

Summary: We are manipulative, deceptive, selfish. These are traits we all share. Shinra. SOLDIER. Definitely the Turks. Even those we love the most. But how many times must a pawn be played before the pawn starts playing the game? The dark circle of blame and untruths may never be broken, but there is light to be shed. And it is uncovered in the depths of war.

Rated T for violence and bad language.

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all affiliated instalments belong to Square Enix. The only things I own are my original characters and ideas.


Chapter 1: Buried in the Snow

Flatline.

In a white room, a body lay beneath a thin sheet. It was skeletal. Worn away.

A barrelled man stood at the head of the hospital bed, clad in a green suit with military decorations upon his breast. He swung his fist into the wall above the deceased patient's head. The voice from his throat but a growl.

"That makes three."

"We must take a different approach," said a man with an angular face and a ponytail that tightened his skin. "If I may, sir, I will train the next vassal personally."

He was met with a stony glare. A warning. "Tseng."

"I already have my eye on her."

"As do we all—"

"—And I closer than most."

"Can't we just go in ourselves?" said a third, much more relaxed voice, throwing his hands behind his flaming red hair.

"And risk losing the entire Turks force? Absolutely not. We must hire specifically for this task…outsourcing, if you will. Someone expendable. Gya haa haa."

"We could send in SOLDIER, yo."

"Think about that suggestion for a moment, Reno, if it won't hurt your goddamn brain too much."

The red-head narrowed his eyes before coming to a silent conclusion and sealed his lips.

"If you are sure?" said the man in green, glaring deep into the face of his colleague.

Tseng nodded curtly.

"Then collect her today."


February 15th

Five confirmed deaths. Two missing persons.

Shinra had the place nigh on lockdown, now. There was nowhere in Icicle Inn you could go and not be seen. The horse had already bolted, but whatever.

The slopes and snowy ravines behind the town once popular with snowboarders, hikers, and mountain climbers were now strictly off-limits. Industry fell into a slumber as a result, and the terrain was no longer safe due to a lack of ploughing. But the people of the Knowlespole are resilient. Small threats won't keep them from living their lives. It would take one hell of a bang to disturb Icicle Inn from its sleep beneath its cotton blanket of snow.

No one seemed too concerned under the given protection of Shinra's infantry. Although the winters were harsh children still played outside, wrapped up in almost so many layers that they couldn't move their limbs and looking almost as round as the snowmen they built. People went about their daily life, swaddled in wool and fur sourced from local vermin. Monsters.

A girl in her late teens skimmed over an ice rink in well-worn, white skates and silver blades, her feet crossing over one another with a mastery that spoke of many hours of training. Fine etches and flakes of snow followed her skates on an otherwise unblemished plane, nestled amongst trees in a deliberate clearing just outside the town centre.

"Sis!"

The skater slowed and sought the voice of a youth of smaller stature, with short brown hair and a shorter frame. She was visibly young, with shining grey eyes against a pale face. Her blades moved with much less precision than her older sister, yet it was still apparent that travel on ice was second nature to her.

The older girl smiled and brought her glide to a harsh t-stop, dragging up snow with her blade. "What?"

Her words snowballed into one another. "Danny can't board, right? 'Cause they cut off public access, so I got him on skates!" She smacked herself in the forehead. "He looks like, like—"

"A deer on ice?" The older girl's lips quirked, eyes scanning the rink.

"Yeah, you gotta come see him!"

Her last breaths were cut short by a thunderous boom, an unmistakable screech of scraping steel on rock and tumbling snow. The dull crack of skulls and backsides colliding with the ice filled the air as the rumbling ground threw skaters off their feet. The wind was snatched from the younger girl's lungs as her back struck the ice.

By some stroke of luck or skill, the older sister maintained her balance. She grabbed the shoulders of her coughing and spluttering sibling, who gasped for breath in an airless space. "Holy—are you alright?"

She was interrupted by ear-splintering shrieks beyond the trees. Towards the village.

"Aster!"

One of her blonde braids whipped her cheek as the girl, still cradling her younger sister, swung her head to meet the gaze of a rugged man of shadow and grey outside the rink some fifty feet over yonder. Yonder being towards the screaming.

He swept his arm in a commanding gesture and she knew to stand to attention.

She nodded, more to herself than the man of the shadows, and guided her sister towards the scattering crowd of the ice rink. Thirty people at an exit for only two. A jam of people. Easy targets. "Find Danny—get out of here. Get home."

A woman, maybe thirty, ran into the rink guard from the tree-line screaming. The fence bit her gut like she hadn't seen it in the way, blind with fear, face contorted. A wolf-like creature but twice the size—a Bandersnatch—launched for her, teeth and claws sinking into the flesh of her neck. Her scream met a wet, glottal stop, and her blood spilt over her long fur coat, down the fencing, and over the ice.

The grey man stabbed a short blade into the wolf's shoulder, limp in the instant of a whimper, and threw the beast aside like sliding it from a skewer. Too late for the woman, who hung over the railing by her armpits, long blonde hair falling toward as her head hung. He went to her aid regardless.

Aster pulled her sister into her chest to cover her face, but couldn't provide shelter from what she'd already seen. She skated her further away from the man and the wolf and closer to the exit, giving her a final push into the dispersing crowd. The sound of gunfire someplace not distant gave a popping sound vaguely like relief, and vaguely like fear. There were soldiers here. The infantry was here. Relief, it was, after all.

"There, look," Aster said, pointing towards a familiar shock of brown hair none too far from a group of infantrymen. "There's Danny. Go."

"Sis…!"

"Stay with Shinra!"

She spun on her skates and darted across the ice towards the trees, and towards the guarded back slopes of the Icicle Inn.

"What's going on?" she said, knees and skates thudding into the fencing while keeping her eyes firmly away from the growing pool of blood surrounding the woman in perfect snow.

"We don't know yet," said the rugged man as he reached and hauled Aster clean off the rink and over the barrier, earning a short gasp. He strode through the trees to a mustard yellow snow truck beyond. He hurled her inside and she crashed into another comrade, a boy. Young. "But we're gonna find out."

He slammed the door on her and got in shotgun, and the driver, Melanie, a woman of warm skin and a warmer smile, hardly gave him a chance before kicking into drive and ploughing through the snow.

"Second time this week. How many this month?" she said, eyes fixed forward, knuckles pale against the steering wheel. If she was unable to see a path down the treacherous ravines, she was doing a good job of faking it. The truck weaved through trees and between heightening peaks. "Ain't no way this's some run o' the mill monster infestation."

The weather-beaten man in front of Aster pruned and primed a narrow, saw-toothed blade. His face was deep set and hard lined, harrowed and tormented by past monsters and, potentially, humans. No one knew for sure. Some knew no more than his name: Bryan. But time had not been kind, and despite probably only eclipsing forty, or maybe forty-five, his face had aged far beyond that of his years.

He made a gruff sound of dissent. "It's a bigger problem than that."

Aster looked at the kid beside her as she yanked off her skates. Similar age, similar size, although he seemed a little more green in a wet-behind-the-ears kind of way. Snotty air of arrogance. He didn't honour her by meeting her eyes.

Resisting the urge to roll her own, she tugged at the laces to a pair of brown boots that had been waiting for her. Expecting her. "Won't Shinra handle it? The infantry is in town. Might as well make 'em work for their pay."

"We don't need 'em in our town, kid," Melanie said, slamming the steering wheel with a fist. Warning flags streaked past the windows like flares. They were heading on a direct line to peril, teeth bared. "Gotta show the villagers who the real heroes are. This is my town and I'm sure as hell gonna defend it."

"Then where the heck are we going?" Aster stomped her foot, leaning between the two front seats, and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. "The party is that way!"

"Some of the monsters appearing in town are not native to this area. They're sweeping in from Gaea's Cliffs," Bryan said, rubbing the bristles of an unshaven chin with the back of his bloodied hand. He stared into the white blur, catching the shadows of fiends as they barrelled past. "This is a disaster. The monsters from beyond these ravines are much more vicious than those we hunt for sport and pelt south of the village."

"So, what are they doing in town?"

The boy beside her sighed. "That's exactly the point. What are they doing in town?"

"They're being pushed. We're damn sure of it," Melanie said, full lips carving a smile over her teeth. Aster was beginning to believe the prospect of bloodshed gave the warmth of this woman's smile, and she didn't know whether to be inspired or frightened.

"Pushed by what?"

"Somethin' bigger." The boy beside her leaned forward and cracked his knuckles. Sounded like he was deliberately trying to creep her out. "Somethin' scarier."

"If we can stop that," Bryan said, "we can stop these onslaughts for good."

"We're gonna go see what's makin' 'em shiver before SOLDIER gets here." Melanie snickered. "Then it's buh-bye Shinra."

"Bit of extra security never hurt anybody, Mel."

She straightened her back in her seat. "Still leaning on Shinra after all these years?" Her tone was more than a little accusatory; words left her mouth positively caustic. "After everything you lost?"

A chilly air seeped through the truck, but not from the snow. Aster watched Bryan, mouth agape, trying to gauge his reaction. He merely barked an empty laugh. He had been involved with Shinra to some capacity, but she didn't know what field. Hell, no one did. But what she did know was that it couldn't have been SOLDIER because his eyes were grey-blue. He lacked that SOLDIER trademark.

"Of course I cling to Shinra, 'long as I shit, shower and breathe, whether I like it or not." His rebuttal was cutting, sharp through stagnant air. "This is a Mako-powered truck, is it not?"

Melanie nodded curtly with a tight jaw, though no one had seen.

"Sure is," she said through her teeth. "Don't mean we need 'em to tuck us in at night, now, does it? I want freedom."

"We got freedom," the boy piped up, voice crackling. "What we don't got is a backbone."

Aster glanced at him sidelong, through narrowed eyes. "Talk like that and people might start to think you're against the Shinra."

"While sat in one of their trucks," Bryan added, eyeing him skeptically, but not critically. Appraising him.

"Far from it," he said, and not another word.

The enormous snow truck ploughed through the lowlands, spitting up sparkling dust in its path and mowing over anything smaller than an average man—which included small trees. Deep gouges in the snow lay in its wake, torn up by the tracks of the tank-like vehicle.

Aster's thighs were tense and trembling. No matter how hard she gripped them the shaking wouldn't stop. They were travelling away from everyone and everything she knew and loved. Away.

So it was met with half-relief when Melanie shouted, "Over there—look!"

Amidst the blowing powder of snow, several large, ugly beasts loomed. Colossal, wyvern-like fliers of navy, leathery scales dominated the immediate skyline. Their beaks tapered into needles; it was hard to say whether they were red by nature or coated in the blood of their last meal, but after taking a glance at the scorpion tails as long as their wing-spans, it was safe to say Aster didn't want to get close enough to find out.

The warning cries were piercing, but the party still made their advance. The group surged from the truck, grabbing weapons from the rack as they did, opening attack with heedless aggression. Melanie took point.

"Kieran, ammo!"

He threw a magazine towards her. She tore it from the air and jammed it into her rifle with unnecessary force as she charged towards the fiends, wasting no time but surely ammo, blazing a path through endless white.

The winged fiends, known as Lessaloploth to the learned, seemed accompanied by the bravest of the Bandersnatches around. The only ones that didn't run. The ones that couldn't. Their snarls became louder, like a rumble of the earthquake of before, and the ones that were able stalked toward the group of unlikely mercenaries.

Paws bundled in knotted fists of bone and claw. Jaws bared fractured teeth. Long, matted, damp manes of blonde and white draped over tense and corded, muscular shoulders. An offensive stance and a threatening snarl.

Aster pulled the butt of her rifle into her shoulder and carefully eyed the closest of the filthy dogs, watching it pull back its lips and pad through the trees.

It turned a pebble eye towards her and growled throatily, spreading and ruffling the putrid furs of its chest, either warning its enemy or sending a scented signal of danger to its kin. The stench was choking and pulled the trigger for her, bringing her into a semi-automatic heaven: a headspace reserved for assault.

Bullets lodged into the wolf's dirty chest. It charged towards her on four brawny legs and lunged through the air, slamming those knotted claws into her ribs. Her back bit the ground with a gutting thud. She drove her boots into its paunch to throw it from her and fired relentlessly in the general direction of its wounds. Long lacerations streaked its back.

She swallowed and stumbled back as the Bandersnatch keeled over for good. She hadn't inflicted those lacerations. Something else did. Something bigger.

Maybe Kieran was right.

"Aster, concentrate!"

She scoured the field for her chastising mentor. With his foot-long blade, he slashed the neck of an unlucky Lessaloploth that got too close in two places, leaving its head hanging. Wings limp, it hit the ground with a cloud of snow.

A shriek rang through her ears. The squawking cry of a lesser drake, but equally enraged. It lurched for her on swift, ragged wings. Tattered, damaged. Wounded.

She almost didn't notice it dive for her eyeball until some higher reflex forced her to duck and cower under her arms, but those reflexes helped her little in defending the blow to her chest received from the wyvern's stinger, which threw her off her feet. Once again for the eyeball, it missed only for the fact that a bullet knocked it off course and sent it plunging into the frozen earth beside her.

"I said concentrate!" Bryan bellowed over the cries of monsters and crack of gunfire, holstering his rifle and drawing his bloodied blade once more.

The monster, struggling to remove its beak from the solid ground, was blindsided when Aster socked the butt of her rifle into the side of its head. With a splintering, sickening crack, the beak snapped off in the ground.

"Gross!" Aster's back arched into the snow as she retched. A shadow trickled over her—a shadow cast by a freshly beak-less bird—and her daze was only broken by hot rain on her forehead. No, not rain. Blood. Blood dripping from an ostensibly melting face.

Which made the retching decidedly worse.

She shook the stun away and rolled to stand, firing off her rifle again but the bullets merely embedded in the wyvern's solid chest like cork stoppers in wine bottles. It slashed for her, narrowly missing when she sprang backwards. She caught her mentor cutting the throat of yet another oversized dragonfly on steroids. Inspiring stuff.

Honestly.

Aster snatched the snapped beak from its sheath in the ice. When the wyvern lurched for her, she grabbed it by the throat and skewered the beak through its neck. It hit the ground with a muffled thunk, spraying its murderer with yet more muck, blood and snow. She threw her arms in the air.

"OH, YEAH!"

The new wind in her sail soared her over to another wyvern. She slung her rifle behind her, the leather strap sliding across her chest and shoulder, and packed the shape of her heel into the snow in halt. Sleeping under the guard of her knee-high leather boot was a switchblade strapped to her shin, waiting for the moment she'd yank it out. That moment was now.

She smacked the blunt edge of the handle into the side of the beast's head and grabbed its slimy beak with her free hand before ripping the serrated edge of her blade through its bared throat. Each tooth snagged on gristly fibres, splitting blood in every which way. There was something too satisfying about the splattering of red swallowing away the purity of the snow.

Aster's eyes darted between lifeless carcasses. Fourteen, fifteen…

"And that makes sixteen," Melanie roared, yanking a wedged dagger from the depths of Bandersnatch lung. She waved it broadly at the fallen monsters.

But they hadn't killed all of them. Some of them were already dead.

Aster lurched forward, tripping over her urgency. "They were already injured. Something…something did this to them!"

"Correct," Bryan said, sheathing his iconic—at least in Aster's eyes—blade and sweeping back to the truck with a throw of his arm, ordering a regroup. "I'm not a gambling man, but I'm willing to bet that whatever it was that did this is the very same thing that has been driving these monsters towards the town."

"Wait!" Aster hurried to his side and placed her body between him and the truck. He towered over her by at least a foot and he was easily twice as wide, but her posture was not timid. She was dwarfed under his steely gaze, but not fazed. "We have to find it—whatever it is! Or the monsters will just keep coming back to the village!"

"Honey, this's far as she'll take us," Melanie said, sweeping past and slapping the hood of the truck. She was a striking woman, with beautiful dark, coiled hair brushing her shoulders, dusted with snow and, sure, some blood and guts in there, too.

"Then we'll have to go on foot!"

"Die trying, kid." Bryan pushed her aside by the shoulder and strode toward the cab. "There aren't many strong enough to conquer the temperatures of Gaea's Cliffs, not even someone born and raised here."

He looked off towards the north—maybe ten metres in this visibility, but the Cliffs were off that way somewhere. "Or raised here, anyway."

He slammed himself in the cab.

Aster fumbled for coherent words. "Wha—Melanie? What happened to being the heroes of the town!"

She folded her arms and spoke begrudgingly. "Old man's right," she said, although he could only have been five to ten years her senior. "Much as I might hate it…gotta leave this one to Shinra. Maybe even SOLDIER."

The door closed on her, too.

Aster stamped her foot in the snow and surveyed the area. Bodies littering the floor, blood melting the snow only for it to be frozen over and covered by more white. This time tomorrow there'd be no trace they'd ever even been.

"Are you kidding me? Goddamnit…"

And in she followed.

She flopped in the truck dramatically and sighed, throwing her hands behind her head. "Guess I'll just have to join SOLDIER, then."

The sound of the engine straining for the power to drag the truck uphill towards the town again almost covered the sound of Kieran's scoffing. Almost.

"And what would Shinra's elite SOLDIER force do with an eighteen-year-old figure skater?"

"You make it sound like I don't possess a valuable set of skills."

"You might. On ice. Not in war."

She picked at the beaded bracelet surrounding her wrist before folding her arms. "Well, someone's gotta protect the people."

"And Shinra has that bit covered," Bryan said, "…for the most part."


By the time the party disbanded and Aster reached the outskirts of town, the sun had laid to rest. In February, sundown was no later than four, but the streets should've still been filled with people going about their business. The only business dealt here was with a body bag. One for the woman in her thirties, and a pile for the monsters yet to return to the planet. Shivers prickled Aster's spine. This town couldn't take much more before grinding to a halt.

Six confirmed deaths, two missing persons.

And yet by morning, all evidence would be erased, just the same as her earlier battle. New snow would settle, blood beneath the blanket; out of sight, out of mind.

She cut through woodland to prevent coming into contact with the infantrymen patrolling and clearing the area. She went the road-less-travelled frequently, although never for such a disturbing reason—to avoid the dead. Light was low but reflected off the pillows of undisturbed snow that wound between the conifers stretching their needles, sure to touch the low clouds and skies before they found anywhere near the tops of the mountains beyond them. She trudged through them until she stopped dead in the tree-line before a small clearing.

A looming, black truck sat like a predator in a shadow. Three solidly built men stood beside it, two clad in a dark, purplish hue, and one in black, watching something in her general direction. Waiting.

Her breath caught in her throat. Not even a fool would fail to recognise them as SOLDIER.

The elite fighting force of Shinra Electric Power Company, the governmental rulers of the planet. Genetically engineered men who are deemed worthy of pure strength of mind and body. A prized accomplishment of Shinra. SOLDIER, who only need to be seen and not heard, yet heard when they speak.

The wind seemed to halt, doubling, trebling the pressure surrounding her neck. Many had never seen a SOLDIER member in the flesh up here in the north—hell, before the recent monster invasions, there were children over ten who had never even seen an infantryman. Shinra Inc. owned most of the television channels on which the world was taught the recent heroics and promotions of their elites. Their names and faces would be broadcasted when they won, and when they died. They were truly remarkable and both boys and men alike would dream of the day they might join their ranks, even if the chance of making it was slim at best. They were elite for a reason.

SOLDIER eyes bored straight into her own.

Bright. Abnormal. Blue, blue and green and blue, glowing—glowering—through the grey cold and black damp, almost less than human. Almost more than. Aster's own blue eyes were nothing like this. She watched these unnatural eyes on hers and never had she felt so normal. A clear divide. Something sank in her chest as she looked them. She wondered if their chests were sinking, too.

If they knew what was coming, they just might have been.

Then, through the shadows of the trees, she caught sight of a sturdy man in a sharp black suit. One of the Turks. Looking straight at her.

Molten rock pulsated through her heart. Terror. She kept along the tree-line, maybe four trees deep and gradually going deeper, striding with purpose but as quiet as the cushioning snow beneath her would allow. Of course she was heard. SOLDIER-standard hearing probably heard her before she arrived.

The concrete man in a suit—the aforementioned Turk—placed a finger gently to his ear. Soundless, but far too loud.

"Target acquired. Heading towards anticipated haven."

Her heart rose to her mouth with intent to choke. Her face was numb, lips likely blue, but her legs pushed on, unrelenting. Running in the snow wasn't easy—luckily she'd had plenty of practice. Despite that fact, buried tree roots still threatened to trip her and her ankle almost gave. Low swinging branches whipped and scratched at any exposed skin, and in general, the elements were against her.

With every stolen glance over her shoulder, the man in the suit and sunglasses was just a few steps behind, carving through brambles and thickets effortlessly with a short blade.

She pelted out from the trees and towards the residential streets of Icicle Inn. Her boots skidded on the packed ice over ploughed pathways but she dared not take the snow route for fear of leaving footprints. She pulled down an alleyway she knew to offer another route home and watched as the Turks operative strode onward through the street.

Her lungs shuddered as she collapsed into the wall, breath billowing into a cloud. Somewhere towards the inn, she could hear roaring, juddering winds and perhaps a call from an infantryman, or member of SOLDIER, in the distance. She'd never outrun SOLDIER. She pried herself from the wall and picked up a jog, deeper into the alleyway, winding through the backstreets. Quickest way home—now the only way home—was through a small snowfield.

She darted for the fence of the field and yanked herself over the edge with little regard for her shoulders. The snow should have been cool on her fingers as she stabilised her shoddy landing but feeling was gone. There was no time to spare a glance back to see if she was being followed. It was best to assume she was.

More exposed than ever with nowhere safer to turn. The backs of her boots rubbed into her heels and her skin was blistering and screaming in pain, red and angry. They stung like they were bleeding but at least it distracted her from the searing burn of her lungs, cracking of her lips, and aching of her thighs. Her footsteps were the metronome to remind her to keep the pace.

Maybe another fifty feet was all it would've taken.

The still air and silence were replaced with wind which grew rough and choking, getting worse and worse and louder and louder until she could no longer run and the light was blinding. Unnatural.

She scrambled away from the light, throwing her arms in front of her face. Peeking through them, she stared into the brightness until her eyes began to adjust and could see more than just white and a blazing halo, and could, at last, see what was turning her long twin braids into violent whips that lashed her cheeks.

Without claiming to know much about air travel, she knew the vehicle to be the B1-Beta series helicopter whose lamps glared down on her.

To Aster, there was nothing in this void. Just herself. Just the droning, whipping, chopping. Just the heat of the light. Nothing else. Maybe melting snow. No natural warmth. No breathing. Perhaps she wasn't breathing at all.

Her fingernails dug deep into her skin as she grabbed her arms as though she were trying to peel it back and hide under it somehow. She tried to scratch back her thoughts and senses but could only wish to sink into the ground beneath the snow, away from the intense heat of the lamps and the slicing of the rotor blades. They taunted her, tilted towards her, threatening to scalp her and have her crumple in a beheaded heap. She tried to push that ridiculous and overall futile thought out of her head, thinking only: At least it would be over then.

The brightness dimmed only slightly, but just enough for the girl to make out a figure standing on the helicopter's carriage platform. She squinted until she could distinguish a man with black hair slicked into a ponytail, deathly pale skin and a suit. A suit notorious in its own right. The infamous suit donned only by the Turks.

She knew who he was; only fools didn't. This man was not a regular man, but an extremely unpredictable man. A dangerous man. His eyes that tilted upwards just slightly indicated a western background and were much less eyes than they were black pits with no discernible iris or pupil, as though they were both one and the same. They drilled into hers almost painfully, even if he looked less aggressive than he did observant. She could feel herself shaking, yet nothing else but fear.

The toes of his shoes hung off the edge of the platform as he loomed over her. Teetering. For a moment, he looked as though he would jump—from almost the height of a small building—and maybe slaughter her in a way only the Turks could.

As her mind ran away with possibilities, her body stood rooted in shock and her breaths were short and choking in the choppy winds. She mourned for the options she hadn't taken. For the escape she could have made. For the way out she hadn't found. She wished to any given Higher Power that her body may have been fixed to the gravestone she had never managed to find, and not this circle of light in which she could undoubtedly face death.

That was when he jumped down, with the barrel of his pistol licking her chin.

"Don't even try to run."

Snowflakes and icy wind whistled into Aster's throat as she sucked a breath through her teeth. Dry throat and cracked lips. The cold had won over her fingers and began to seep up her arms, chilling her blood and taking hold of her heart. She was well-acclimatised to the weather, but not the fear.

"Get in."

Her chin, pulled by puppet strings, tilted toward the light to expose her throat to the ghostly iris of the gun's muzzle, but her eyes stuck solidly on his. The emptiness of her gaze betrayed the warmth of her outstretched palms: a welcoming, a surrender, or a peaceful acquiesce.

Would the cold take her life before this man had a chance? He knew he hadn't the time to wait and find out.

He smacked her upside the jaw, steel of the cold pistol splitting her skin as her teeth cracked together. She stumbled, touching her wound numbly, dazedly. Hot blood slid over her fingers.

The second blow came quicker than the first. Blunt steel of the pistol butt clubbing her skull. In a crumpled heap, she fell in the snow.

Six confirmed deaths. And make that three missing persons.


A/N: I hope to update every Wednesday! Really hope you enjoyed this first instalment. And don't worry, things get a lot more confusing before they get any better ;) Have a lovely day or night wherever you are in the world, and please do drop me a line!