1 Chapter 1: A Familiar Face- Part 1

It was a bright morning. The blinding light was both familiar and foriegn as it shined into the wide and neatly decorated room. Avella opened her eyes, squinting as she faced the light on her right. How long had it been since she was awake at such an early hour? She groaned for a moment before a wave of memories washed over her. Grabbing her head with both hands, she recalled what had just happened.

'How can I be here?'

Avella looked down at her arms, her bare arms that should have been covered with cuts and scars were now clean and soft.

'Moreover this place is…'

Just as Avella's thoughts began to develop further, she heard a groaning sound from under the sheets to her right.

Avella reached for the weapon she would have usually kept on her body even as she slept but it was now gone. The silhouette under the blanket looked small but she knew better than to judge from appearances if one was a threat or not. She slowly and silently inched back to the corner of the bed but suddenly, the silhouette revealed itself by ripping off the blankets suddenly.

"Wahhh!"

Avella heard a girl's scream.

But as the light shed on the girl's face, Avella saw that it wasn't just any girl. It was Avella. More precisely, it was Avella but with the face she wore as a teenager.

When Avella was 8 years old, she was taken in from an orphanage after being recognized for her talents. She was intelligent, focused, and was judged to have a strong aptitude for magic. Her adoptive father cultivated her abilities with home tutors in every subject that the lady of the house was expected to know and more. Every waking hour of the day, Avella was studying or training. Her new father told her she had to make up for the years in the orphanage when she couldn't study.

While Avella certainly hadn't studied most of the types of classes her new father was prescribing, she had been training from an early age both in the orphanage and in the streets. In her new home, she was expected to know proper manners and home skills such as embroidery and poetry. Of course, she was also taught the basics of countless other subjects from music to arithmetics to magic. She even dabbled in some of the more refined sports such as horseback riding and a few less refined activities when there were no wandering eyes.

Her less refined activities could be seen as a continuation of what she had taught herself before entering the household. While she was now encouraged to be active, she was strongly discouraged from pursuing any seemingly dangerous activities.

Avella would wake before the sun and sleep after dark, cultivating the skills her new father ordered, saying they would give her value in the household.

When her adoptive father came to the orphanage, she had heard his reasoning for adopting her behind closed doors. Simply put, it was because she looked like his departed wife. But in this case, it was anything but a sentimental act.

His daughter had been sick most of her life before dying at 10 years old. When the departed daughter, 'Avella' who had closely resembled his wife died, his wife followed shortly after. With his debts piling up, he had intended to marry off his daughter for a high dowry as soon as possible. However, when he lost his wife and daughter at the same time, he no longer had anything to fall back on. Without a daughter he wouldn't be able to demand a dowry. Without money, he wouldn't be able to keep his house, or continue to gamble, or find a new wife of high caliber.

The orphanage director lied to him when he asked about the ages of the girls in the orphanage and he ended up taking a girl with a similar appearance to his departed daughter. The 8 year old girl who soon inherited the identity of 10 year old 'Avella' went home with the man she was told to call 'father'.

She began to attend social events. Ironically, it was 'Avella's' first public appearance as she had been in poor health from an early age. But thanks to this, no one suspected a thing when he showed up lamenting his wife's death while also thanking the heavens that while god took his wife, he had restored his daughter's health. He began to use this as a selling point to increase his daughter's value as he spoke to various men who would be looking for a wife in the future. He bragged about her talent and potential and whispered about how talented her children would be even before their education.

Of course, the new 'Avella' had not grown up in a gentle environment. While pandering to the social world was new territory, the dirty eyes of adults were familiar to her. From the beginning, she was only biding her time here as it was impossible for an 8 year old child to defy a man as powerful as her new 'father'. She learned any information she could get her hands on and trained any skills she had. It was the same strategy to survive she had always lived by. In truth, she didn't completely hate her new environment. She simply saw it as a tradeoff of sorts. Instead of struggling to eat everyday, she had to train harder. Instead of being able to sleep whenever she wanted, she now had a comfortable bed to sleep a fraction of that time in. She looked around the mansion with dry eyes unlike that of a child. In her eyes, her environment was more comfortable without having to worry for her life everyday. However, it was if she had traded her freedom for guaranteed physical safety. The girl now called Avella lived this way for 8 years. As she got older and older, the pressing threat of marriage had drawn nearer. Perhaps if her father had given any consideration to her happiness, she could have considered staying and marrying for convenience's sake, however, the most likely candidates were by no means an acceptable option for her. She had been planning an escape for years but something unexpected occurred before she could finally break free of her father. His body came home from a brothel in a white sheet. For a moment, she allowed herself to be optimistic.

'Maybe I can keep the house now and throw away those trash marriage candidates!'

Avella had many skills and was more than prepared to run an estate such as this. However, Avella had overlooked a few things. Number 1- She had underestimated her father's debt. 2- She had underestimated her uncle's family's greed and craftiness. 3-She had underestimated the man who had been preparing her dowry for years.

Her uncle's family quickly swooped in, seizing the property and establishing a deal with her potential marriage partner. The deal was that he would pay the dowry in full, paying off her father's entire debt, with the leftover dowry belonging to the new owner's of Avella's house- her uncle. Avella would be left with no money and a middle-aged groom.

She quickly reverted to her original plan to escape. Her only choice now was to choose between the options she had narrowed it down to; would she run away to the academy where she could be safe gain but retain the chance to try to reclaim the house later on? Or would she run away to the lower districts where she had been closely acquainted with as a child, throwing away the burdens of the past 8 years?

She made her decision that night.