For Nobara

Chapter 8: The Black-Haired Traitor

Her jaw snapped to the force of his hand tangled in her hair, her dazed eyes staring right into blues. And they were all so strange, how his hair could be as dark as hers with skin as dark as burned copper.

"She's delirious," said the strange man. "Is this really alright?"

"As long as they pay us," said the other. "This one has nothing to lose anyway. They all don't..."

"Poor thing."

He had brown eyes, the other man, and tender hands for a moment that coaxed her to open her mouth, gently—even though he held a knife so dangerously sharp. She didn't refuse him, or perhaps she just lacked the strength to fight anymore.

Her body. It felt heavy.

"This will hurt..." His smile was faint. She didn't understand what he meant at first, but as the bitter taste poured into her mouth along with the sensation that followed, she wished she never did.

"Hold her still!"

There were hands everywhere that kept her from throwing up whatever they forced down her throat. It began at her mouth and then down.

Everywhere.

It tore inside her and the pain that came with it was quick and unforgiving, clawing around her eyes as she tried to break free from them. She was screaming under their hands, trying to find an escape from the sudden pain that whipped her so ruthlessly.

She was begging for forgiveness she did not know the reason for, until her eyes blurred with tears as the pain latched onto her.

Master would have been angry at her insolence to cry.

It was one of the many things she was taught, to swallow everything without a word and accept it as it was. Perhaps that was why she was a failure, a disgrace—when she cried at how it cracked her open, when it made her bleed inside with pain and misery.

Until oddly enough there was nothing else left to fill.

She lied still with streaks on her face but they found her so beautiful like that, this abused child whose horns they had forced out of her seemed like they had been made with black gemstones that they felt the need to keep them for themselves. So they clutched with thieving hands and they stole from her.

There was blood pooling in her hands, dripping beneath her, and blinding her clouded eyes. There would be something else that came after that, someone calling her name... But by then, the darkness would have been too overwhelming to hear or feel anything else that followed.

She would only learn later on that the guards responsible for the ground's security were heavily punished for letting the unfortunate incident happen that day. Nobody could have easily breached Hyōgakure even if they had wanted to. It was easy to tell that someone within the ranks had cooperated with those outside, because that was what everybody wanted anyway.

They wanted children like her to be stripped off what made them a horned entity.

And to the people who lived inside Hyō Castle, the fate they gave to these monsters was the only blessing they deserved—because she was never meant to be alive.