Chapter 1

She sat next to the bed, looking down at the other girl with concern on her face.

"Is that her…?"

She turned to see Gray and Juvia, who had entered the room behind her, then her eyes flew back to the unconscious girl immediately.

"…yeah. Yeah, that's her."

She was positive – even though she hadn't seen her in over ten years. This girl had the same eyes, and she had used the same magic.

"But that's great, isn't it? You found her."

Gray approached, while Juvia lingered by the door, watching.

She shook her head slightly. "She tried to kill me."

As he gasped in surprise, she reached out and brushed her fingers against the other girl's. She felt pain clenching in her chest as she fought the feelings bubbling up inside her. Don't break down, you can't break now, you're so close.

She brushed a strand of flaming orange hair out of the girl's eyes – eyes that had been so full of hatred when they had looked at her for the last time.

What in the hell did they do to you?


The late afternoon sun warmed the soft hills surrounding a small cottage, practically in the middle of nowhere. It was modest but well-kept, with red and yellow tulips lining the front lawn and climbing plants with elaborate purple flowers clinging to its walls. It was a little ways away from the nearest road, but close enough for a traveller to admire it from afar while passing by. The road on the hilltop provided a lovely view on the scenery in its entirety, of how the cottage and its little back garden full of plants and herbs fit snugly in between the soft mounds of earth surrounding it, which melted into a forest not too far away. The nearest town was three or four miles away, so the cottage was nestled comfortably into the silence of nature.

Occasionally, when travellers passed and spotted the cottage, they could see a pretty woman with vibrant orange hair tending to the flowers in front of the house. Sometimes she would even look up and wave at people passing by, mostly though she simply kept to herself and her work.

If one went on to the next town to ask questions, people would say: "Oh, you don't want to mess with those folks. The husband's very sick, so's she – they live out there by themselves 'cause they don't want no one to catch their disease."

On further inquiry, the stories started to differ. Some said the husband had already died, because no one ever saw him leave the house. Some would say the woman had outcast herself and invented the story about the disease out of shame, because she was hiding a far worse secret – they claimed she had killed her husband and didn't know how to dispose of his body, and now she was using his remains to fertilize her flowers. Still others believed that she had been cursed by a powerful guild so that everything she touched would die, and now she lived alone because she had accidentally killed her husband.

The legends knew no end.

However, after a while, travellers began hearing other sounds when they passed the cottage – sounds the woman would always flinch at when she realized people had heard, and she would quickly return inside to silence them.

The sounds of children laughing.