Aveline Potter - The Truth

Prologue

A young girl with the most stunning auburn hair, a face belonging to royalty... In a place like this? Roaming these unknown streets, abandoned towers lining the byways. She knows not how she stumbled upon such a place. She knows not how or why she was rescued from the mindless confines that she has come to associate with torture. She knows not that what she is about to wander into will start influencing every aspect of her life... slowly and steadily consuming her whole...

A man with bright silver hair and a beard long enough to be tucked into his belt. A deceivingly innocent twinkle in his eye that has led so many people astray. He is smart, no doubt. But he is reckless. He knew not to check the surroundings before performing the ritual. He knew not that a girl with a terribly important fate would seal his own. He was too eager. He knew not that because of his carelessness, he would lose not only his rise to fame but also his sole lead to destroy his enemy...

The girl thought about how much of a waste of space this place was. A whole avenue dedicated to ... abandoned buildings? She wanted to explore. After being trapped for so long, she needed to explore, go out, and breathe fresh air. She was not allowed to do even that in her childhood home. Not that she would ever be going back there...

One of the broken inns had a flickering light on. She closed her eyes, trying to sense if anyone or anything was inside. She couldn't. Her powers were not strong enough yet. She decided to take a risk and venture in. Nothing could hurt her if nobody was there ... right?

Oh, how wrong she was of her self-assurance.

The door was barely hanging onto its hinges but the light that was coming from the ground floor window did not shine through it. She pushed at it lightly, but it fell with a deafening thud. That was enough to distract the old man. Enough to put a stopper to the ritual that was erroneous in the first place. Enough for the trapped soul inside the precious token of heredity to escape into a living being. Enough for the girl, so innocent in her doings, to fall, a pain that could rival the Cruciatus Curse itself coursing through her...

The old man, enraged at the girl for stopping his incantation, unbeknownst to him that it was already doomed to failure, marched over to her twitching on the floor. She had never known true pain before this. She had never known that her life and her fate would be fixed from this point onwards. She had never known that this pain would not be the last...

Without an ounce of sympathy, the man performed the memory charm on the girl and left. But because of her weak state and the fact that her pain was ongoing when he did the charm, it left flaws in the result. A crack in the concrete that could be widened and was fated to be opened, a few years from now...

That girl was left there, unable to move from the pain but in a constant spasm. It took more willpower than physical strength to push herself off the floor and run home. It took more willpower than physical strength to run itself, because all she wanted to do at that moment was die. Escape the world and the agony it was causing her. But she remembered what she arrived in the village for: a new family. She had to get up for them. She had to stay alive for them. What she didn't know was that her love would cause her more tragedies...

A girl of her age should be playing with dolls and gnomes and gobstones and broomsticks. She should not be feeling like she has reached her end. She should not be feeling burdened by nothing but a scar. She should not be feeling dread when she has just managed to gain an escape into the actual world. She should not be experiencing this torture every week...

Fate is a fickle thing, they say. Not for her. For her, fate was like concrete. Hard. Set. Difficult to change, but not immune to cracks.