𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 has known only one thing for a decade-destroy everyone who betrayed her. Everyone has mistaken her silence for a weakness.
Their downfall is inevitable. With each step, ruin draws nearer.
For as long as The Underworl...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
There's been a quote stuck in my mind since I left Italy, and it's been nagging in my mind day and night, buzzing like a fly on a quiet night.
"We're all killers. We've all killed parts of ourselves to survive. We've all got blood on our hands. Something somewhere had to die so we could stay alive." -
There is no denying that I've killed for my benefit so that I could carry on going forward. The spilt blood on my skin should make me guilt-ridden, or at least cower in a corner far away, so there is no possibility of harming someone. No amount of sinful blood could drown out the hint of innocent blood buried deep in my soul. It's there to haunt me like I'm its prey on a silent night.
I should feel guilty when I say that I disregard the feeling I get when I think back to the innocent victims that I had to look in the eye when the knife pierced their skin as their blood burst all over the place, scarring even the silence.
"A disciplined assassin should only possess a knife to survive. It's there to make sure you are the one ending your chosen victim and collecting their soul as they die by your hand."
These were the words I spent more than a decade going by as they've been forced into my mind since I could remember. They are there every time I wield the knife and take someone's life, sitting on the edge of my mind, overwhelming any other thought. It's almost like a reminder that feeling anything but triumph after taking someone's life is a sin, and you should be punished for feeling anything else.
These feelings I haven't felt after neglecting them have started to break free of the chains. Keeping them suppressed behind these words has become almost a routine that they have blended in with the hidden see-through wall, hiding and waiting to be let free. I can faintly feel them bubbling up once in a while, not quite overflowing the edge, but not far behind. But before I could crush them down, locking them away, they would quiet down once again, making them blend in with the endless darkness, just waiting for the right moment to rise again.
Guilt.
Pity.
Empathy.
Mercy.
We were taught from the beginning how to shut out our feelings that may surface to disrupt the focus we had to keep staying afloat, proving to them we could endure whatever they threw at us.
No matter how patient and observant you were one time or all the time, there wasn't a time when we didn't get some kind of discipline because if you were good enough to achieve it, then you had to be tough enough to handle the agony that comes with the prize.
Before every hunt or mission, they used to say to us, "There is no prize without some suffering. If you're ready to step up, you have to receive your punishment before getting closer to the reward."
