She had never known fear. She had never known terror. She had never seen the brute strength of a titan up close; watched the gargantuan hands encircle a comrade and devour them in incoherent pleasure- not until that day.

It was the day everything changed.

"Asuna, eat quickly." a gentle-faced woman nudged her daughter's shoulder, then turned back to her stitching, "Your father's almost ready to leave." The girl blinked twice in the slow, calculating way that her mother found familiar, then rapidly began to shovel food into her mouth. Soup dribbled down the side of her chin.

"You ready?" her father slipped into the room. He cast his eyes upward- toward the rough stone ceiling- the one that enclosed the Mines underground, the one that shielded them from the wrath of the titans. Asuna nodded, using a threadbare sleeve to wipe her face clean and catching a sharp look of disapproval from her mother, "Alright. Let's go, it's dusk."

"Be careful."

"Things'll be fine. You know titans don't move as often in darkness."

"Yes, but still-"

"But nothing." the father closed his eyes in annoyance, then forced a smile, "We'll be back later. I'll try for meat." he murmured, patting his wife's cheek and ushering Asuna out the door. The girl felt her mouth water at the mention of meat. Meat was rare.

"The two- father and daughter- climbed the rough hewn stairway that led upward; toward the light. The rest of the cavern seemed dark and dank compared to the solemn stairway, winding upward in solitude but still the only thing that connected them to the outside world, and when Asuna stumbled out from the crack in the rock that served as their makeshift doorway, she squinted at the brilliance that was above-ground.

A bloodred sunset stretched across the sky, marring the trees and grass with scarlet apparitions so brilliant that the girl almost believed she was before a raging flame. Asuna took a deep breath, letting the crisp, clean air fill her lungs. The dank air in the Mines was nothing compared to this.

(continuing...)