Her footsteps were solitary but firm on the black stone steps. The metal parts of her light armor made a minimal noise as they brushed against each other with each small movement as she climbed. It was a faster pace, since she didn't carry her great-sword. Her legs didn't feel the fatigue of going against gravity, nor did a drop of sweat trickle beneath her armored imperial uniform.

As she reached the top of the wall, Astoria Silverthorn was enveloped in the warm light of the new day. It made the plates of her light armor, her silver hair, and her ruby-like eyes shine with divine beauty. Even the soldiers present there and patrolling were entranced by her splendor.

Astoria was a woman blessed with everything her peers desired: natural beauty, talent in the art of combat, intelligence, and cunning. Someone whose gifts could easily propel her toward a bright future.

"…"

But she was also a woman cursed with one of the most hated surnames in history. Someone who found refuge in alcohol and the company of courtesans. Someone unwanted in society, even in the southernmost city in the world. Someone unloved.

As she took several steps forward, between ammunition crates and mounted barracks, she lost the influence of the sunlight. The shadows of the watchtowers covered her, and the soldiers continued with their routine, pretending she didn't exist. And those walking near her gifted her with gazes full of loathe.

"Good morning," she greeted, receiving no verbal response in return, only a spit at her feet, one of the worst forms of disrespect in the Empire. "…"

Astoria was used to such treatment, after a lifetime of slander and insults. She always found a way to stand up and face the day with the professionalism and honor required by her role as an imperial knightess. Always with her head held high. Always one step forward, with determination and firmness.

"…"

Steps that felt light and effortless to her muscles, but deep down she felt agony with every single movement of her body, as if her limbs were shackled to boulders, telling her that it was pointless to keep trying.

The heat of the sun against her skin was nonexistent, as the unbearable, permanent cold froze her from skin to bone.

The imperviousness to the insults and vilification of every citizen she crossed paths with, it was all a façade. To hide all the suffering that brought her to the brink of tears every minute of her existence.

A sigh, from a very tired soul. Astoria walked straight to the edge of the wall and placed her hands on the stone railing, a space delimited by two mounted crossbows equidistant several meters apart. The sun shone brightly in her face again, though it didn't bother her for one simple reason: her gaze was fixed on the Meridion Highway, a dozen meters below, stretching beyond the cultivated fields and disappearing into the first forests that abounded on the distant horizon.

There, the stagecoach of the blood elf Severus Malak Drakan was transporting a most interesting duo: the disgraced gunslinger Auron Casimir, and that mysterious girl she had met outside the very wall where she stood, dying, miserable, and without a passport to enter the city.

"Tristessa, huh?" the blonde knightess whispered her name. A strange name, difficult to pronounce.

A name she would have great difficulty forgetting. And not because it belonged to the first criminal she had intentionally let go, dishonoring her profession and further tarnishing the almost nonexistent honor of her name.

What is compensation for the stupidity she'd committed while under the influence of alcohol and emotions of shame she couldn't control? An indirect way of apologizing for leaving her in such a vulnerable state, inside a place where it was very unlikely anyone would find her?

After everything that happened at Roundtable Cabaret and in the sewers of the industrial district, the last thing she'd expected was to see that girl again. Something that, by her cursed luck, took place that same morning. Tristessa was in the company of two men who had without a doubt have done what she hadn't.

Because of how cowardly and ashamed she was. Too scared to go save that girl from abandonment and heal the wounds she herself was guilty about.

Severus and Auron had done what she hadn't: agreed to help her save the exiled family from the clutches of the Coven. Something no one in their right mind would accept, not from people associated with one of the commanders of that gang of psychopaths.

"What if...I had agreed to help? What if I just missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?" the knightess wondered, clenching her fists tight as she watched the stagecoach disappear from sight. Perhaps never to be seen again. "Oh, kitten…"

If there was one thing her aching heart didn't need at that moment, it was an endless wave of guilt that she hadn't even remotely atoned for by letting go of that girl, as cute and adorable as a kitten, with a kiss on her knuckles.

More suffocating pain in her chest from her uncontrollable violence toward the only woman... No, the only person in decades who had treated her like a human being like any other.

Without a regard for her last name. Without judging her for the crimes committed by her ancestral great-great-grandmother. With no intention other than to solicit her help in her mission, based on a few actions she carried out every day to convince herself she had a purpose in this life rather than to suffer every passing second.

Because everything hurts for Astoria Silverthorn.

Getting out from that big, cold, half empty bed every morning hurts.

Walking hurts.

Climbing the stairs hurts.

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Breathing hurts.

Existing hurts.

And the sunlight against her face had never felt so distant. So, so far away...

"You're going through difficult times, aren't you?"

Astoria's gaze, lost in the horizon, twisted so sharply that she almost screamed. The woman hadn't even noticed the presence of the person standing next to her, making her jump not only because of his sudden appearance, but also because of the monstrous voice he possessed, deep and guttural like that of a creature from nightmares.

It was a hooded figure, dressed in black and wearing a mask that completely obscured its face. A white mask with the drawing of a demon with a creepy, toothy smile, four horns, and three black eyes like the supernatural darkness that existed within the empty sockets.

"A Wraith?!" Astoria exclaimed, as surprised as she was terrified.

She had only seen one of the Imperial assassins once in the past, and that was by pure chance. Calling them a legend was more understandable, given that one could go their entire life without even crossing paths with a wraith.

They operated in the shadows. Clandestine missions, of high-risk nature deep within enemy lines. Agents wearing masks cursed with dark thaumaturgy, making them ruthless killers, devoid of morals, and extremely effective at their tasks.

And within the Empire of the Night's Watch, they were charged with one thing only… A single, permanent and ancestral mission.

"What's that?!"

Astoria heard the soldiers meters below, shouting to each other. She peered over the wall and saw that the gates had instantly opened to allow six dark figures mounted on equally black-furred aracrosses to enter the Meridion Road, passing through the frightened homeless people living on the periphery of the wall and heading south at high speed.

"A thousand apologies for the inconvenience, young Silverthorn," the wraith said, lowering his hood and letting his mane of snowy gray strands blow in the wind. Astoria couldn't be sure in the darkness, but it seemed the man was watching in the direction of the fading riders. "We didn't mean to operate in such an indiscreet manner, but your actions forced us to take drastic measures."

"M-my actions?" she repeated, not understanding.

"Exactly: you let a [Stranger] escape," the assassin replied, closing the distance with the wall and placing his hands on top of it. His fingers were bony and aged, with long, sharp nails as black as the darkness of his mask. "You had no way of knowing, of course… But the sin was committed nonetheless."

Astoria heard that word, entering her ears and activating such an exorbitant, violent, and desperate array of emotions within her head that the effect was instantaneous: she began to cry.

"S-Stranger...? You mean...?" she asked, hesitating and knowing full well the answer the wraith was going to give her, now that she had heard the truth.

"Yes. That girl named Tristessa Irandell is a Stranger. She is not of this world and possesses at least more than two Divinities in her Discord-saturated soul," he explained. "You know what that means… She will die. This very morning, the ground of the Abandoned Meridion Highway will be soaked with her blood and her companions'."

The blonde knightess couldn't stop crying, her stupefaction slowly changing into a grimace of resignation that had no end. That word, Stranger, had completely changed her understanding of that frightened and vulnerable raven-haired young woman.

If Astoria had felt irreparable guilt for what she had done to her, now that she knew what Tristessa was and the fate that was in store for her, it resulted in her soul falling into an abyss from which she would never be able to escape.

The implications of what being a Stranger meant for Astoria had caused her emotions to get out of control. There was no turning back.

"Yes... Now I'm certain I missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," the knightess whispered, her cheeks and eyes brimming with tears that never seemed to end. "T-Tristessa... I'm so sorry! I-if only I... If only I hadn't... You wouldn't have to die, and I would be by your side, begging you to help me fulfill my deepest desire!"

Her deepest desire forever lost. The deepest frustration, poisoning her spirit as if it were the venom in the blades of the daggers the assassin carried inside his robes.

"What you're saying is very dangerous, young Silverthorn. I advise you not to continue with that thought," the wraith warned her, in such a way that anyone else would have died of fright in the most literal sense.

In Astoria's case, that didn't happen. Her expression was that of someone whose spirit had sunk to the depths of despair, aware that now…

"Now there is nothing."

The sun shone against her tear-stained face, trying to convey the warmth she had stopped feeling years ago. Something truly beautiful, but that Astoria could no longer even appreciate. She no longer saw beauty in the small things, no longer believed in dreams or fate. She no longer believed in the mercy of the Gods or in a brighter future for Nekrom.

She no longer even believed in herself. And that was what drove her to climb the wall and stand on the edge, eclipsing the sun as if she were a long-lost sister of the Twin Moons.

Shining with the beauty of a divine being. So perfect, so majestic…

And yet so empty. So forsaken and unloved, that she allowed herself to fall.

"…"

Below, chaos had broken out. Soldiers screamed, some trying to keep back the crowd of people who wanted to see what had happened. Others were demanding assistance from any healer, who would be helpless for the silver-haired woman whose body had been smashed against the ground, some of her limbs in abnormal positions.

Soon, a pool of blood formed around her, emanating from every hole in her body, from every of the dozens compound fractures, and countless deep cuts into the muscles caused by the deformed and twisted metal plates of her armor that had sunken far beyond her skin.

From the top of the wall, the wraith of the demon-themed mask hadn't even leaned forward to look. He hadn't even lifted a finger to prevent what had just happened.

He stared toward the horizon, that dawn of a new day, where more blood than that of the Imperial knightess would flow.

"I've heard many things about you, young Astoria Silverthorn, but committing suicide and leaving a poor old man like me talking to himself? I certainly didn't expect that... Ah, how sad, truly...," he sighed, a whisper of doom from within his mask. "Your vacant eyes were even darker than mine."

On the blood-covered ground, Astoria's head had been fractured so severely that the top of her skull had split into dozen pieces, her brains leaking outward among her red-stained silver hair. Her right eye lay a few inches away, and blood was constantly oozing from her ears, nose, and mouth.

The only thing that had remained unchanged between before and after Death, immortalized forever, was her paradoxical and beautiful countenance of eternal suffering.

"For a woman with your last name to give up so soon... Such a waste."

"The wound in me is pouring out.

To rest on a lover's shore."

Isolation Years, by Opeth (Ghost Reveries)

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