A drop of moonlight

Prologue: Cruelty

There were screams of pain echoing in the space as the whole village was in chaos. Blood was splattered all over as everyone was trying to flee for their lives. Their assailants were not fretted and were only excited as their prey tried and failed to escape from them.

Perhaps the only thing that is unnerving about the whole thing was that they had separated the children from their bloodied victims. Children are placed in the center of the village unharmed, though not exactly sound of mind. They are in a state of shock. Eyes open as they watch their loved ones die at the hands of the monsters.

In a world where magic is real and the supernatural is normal, monsters born from darkness roam the land. It is not really known how these creatures exist under the eyes of the gods, but they harvest life one after another from anything that roams on land. Great tragedies come with them when they descend and death reeks the lands they stepped on.

One of the children cannot take the torture inside of their mind and screamed in pure agony. Like a chain of reaction, the rest of the children cried as well. Their cries and the ongoing tragedy before them made the whole place reek of despair and gloom.

This was the scene that the young order of knights had seen when they first arrived. Some were affected at the gory sight before them, but most of them were angry and were full of rage at the hapless and catastrophic fate this village had been befallen to.

One of these knights especially was a young and lithe figure. Blazing golden eyes stared down at the monsters as she took away their lives as they had done to the villagers. The sword was dripping with blood as she gave her punishment to the low lives who targeted the village and committed such a horrible crime.

In the wake of their rampage, more corpses were on the ground, but survivors glorified the corpses as it gave them justice. They were avenged. They are saved. They are not abandoned to die in such pitiful circumstances like it was typically for those in such villages as theirs.

“Denise.” Said a young man as he approached the blood-soaked figure. He had blonde hair and the most hapless face as he looked utterly exhausted at the girl before him. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

The lithe figure wiped out the blood on her cheeks as she replied. Her silky black hair was carried away by the wind, which made her frown and think of cutting it off. “It wasn’t much, Theo. These people deserve what I did.”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Theo cried out as he looked utterly panicked. “We’re supposed to be at the back, helping with the logistics as we were instructed and told multiple times! Where did you even get a sword to use? Aren’t they restricted before we are dispatched onto the field? How can I explain ourselves with the mess you made?”

“Say we are just carrying out the duty of a knight we aspire ourselves to be?” Denise said cheekily.

“Who would believe that nonsense if we said that?” Theo was on the verge of crying saying that. “We’re not yet knights and it was even unknown if we could continue our knighthood with you doing something so outrageous. Didn’t the instructor have already given you enough warning to start listening to how precarious your status in the academy was?”

Denise Liam. A genius swordmaster whom the whole academy has welcomed with open arms. A talented girl who was only 13 when she manifested her Aura and climbed into the ranks of swordmasters. A student with great grades and a great attitude towards studies that made her the darling of the academy.

Darling she might be, she is also known as the most troublesome student in the Academy’s history. While geniuses have their own erratic traits, Denise has topped the worst they had in the last hundred years. While she was an ideal student, she was severely lacking in terms of common sense and even following social cues that most people are familiar with.