Two Hunters, from different worlds.

Chapter 10 Reya~

You see, it's not as simple as it seems. Before you, before you could wake me up, decades had passed, and the wait felt endless.

My birth was both a curse and a blessing.

My parents were ordinary yet extraordinary. My mother, a formidable healer and sorceress; my father, a seasoned corporal commanding five thousand men. He was stern, disciplined, and unyielding, but when he met my mother, it was love at first sight.

I never had the chance to know them. My mother died in childbirth, bleeding out in agony, while my father was captured and executed by the enemy.

They had longed for a child for years. When my mother learned she was pregnant, she spent months preparing for my arrival, planning every detail of the nursery, every aspect of my future. They were overjoyed, impatient to hold me in their arms. But fate is cruel. On the very day I was born, war came.

I was raised by my grandmother, Bayka. Like my father, she was strict and unyielding-sometimes cold, sometimes distant. Perhaps she blamed me for her son's death. Perhaps she had never known a life filled with love and warmth.

Yet I do not resent her. She took me in, gave me a home, and taught me discipline. I never understood why she was so rigid, why she nitpicked over every little thing, but in her own way, she passed down her knowledge. She trained me in magic, just as my mother once wielded, and she placed in my hands the sword my father had carried into battle.

That blade was his most prized possession, an extension of his very being. He never parted with it. Holding it made me feel close to him. And when I used magic, I swore I could feel my mother's presence, lending me her strength.

Now that I think about it, I trained for hours each day just to chase the ghosts of my parents, to feel them near, even if only in the echoes of steel and flame.

But tragedy never stops to catch its breath.

One night, my village was swallowed whole by fire and destruction. The flames were merciless-devouring homes, scorching fields, consuming everything in their path. I remember the chaos, the desperate cries, the people scrambling to escape. Everyone was searching for a way to survive.

And it was then that I met him-Aartock.

A Yautja hunter, a warrior of unparalleled skill. His clan followed him with absolute obedience; none dared defy his command.

Before my people could be completely wiped out, Aartock and the Montrer family intervened, repelling the attackers and turning the tide. They won. But I lost everything.

That night, my grandmother Bayka perished. My home was reduced to ashes. The few friends I had were slaughtered. My parents' house, the only link to them, was nothing but cinders. I stood there, alone, watching it all burn.

And I was furious.

I knew the name of the man responsible. Revon-the "Faceless Man." He was the one who laid the trap that led to my father's execution. He was the one who set my world on fire.

With nowhere to go, I thought I would be captured, enslaved, or worse. But Aartock found me.

He saw me, standing there in the dark. He approached, knelt before me, and without hesitation, lifted me into his arms.