Restitution 1

It was evening. In accordance with Eyna's knowledge, the sun should be setting at this moment and tint the whole world in a twilight light.

The space behind Eyna's window was probably shrouded in almost complete darkness, as it was facing eastwards, away from the vanishing sun. Only the few street lamps currently being lit would illuminate the otherwise obscure shadows.

Eyna herself was naturally not worried about the ever-growing night, because she had been left behind in such a dark world for the past five years. Only the falling temperatures through the lack of the sun would be of her concern.

Most of the students and teachers of the academy had already left, whereas Eyna was still seated in her comfortable desk chair. She had somehow managed to spend her whole afternoon doing nothing relevant, so she had to make up the lost time by working diligently up to now. She would probably arrive late at the mansion.

A sudden gust of wind swirled up her long hair. Goosebumps spread over her skin and she involuntarily shuddered. Yet, the source of this reaction wasn't due to the unexpectedly cold breeze, but because of another problem.

Eyna was quickly alerted. No person would open the door without announcing his arrival, nor did she remember opening any of the windows today. And Eyna was pretty boastful about her good memory.

Therefore, the room should be completely sealed off from sudden gusts of wind. Eyna's intuition told her that a person had invaded the office, however, she hadn't heard the distinctive clicker of the gas lamps being turned on. Hence, she came to the conclusion that the other person either was blind too or the intruder didn't want to get noticed.

What she couldn't tell if the other person would know of her presence. At least on the outside, she was seen by many people as a humble and generous person, so she found it difficult to think of this as an assassination.

And Eyna felt that she had concealed her hidden secrets well enough, so she would at least be alarmed in advance if something had come out. Her pride didn't allow her anyway to think of having made a grave mistake that had uncovered her secrets.

Thus, she deduced that her own presence was unknown to the other party. This conclusion wasn't even that farfetched, as the lights in her room were turned off. If the intruder didn't know that this office was used by a blind person, who obviously didn't need a lamp, he would probably see it as a dark and empty hiding place.

The real question was what her next action was. Moving to the door and leaving would mean exposing her existence to the intruder. If the other party was overly surprised and wanted to be cautious he may try to silence her before she could exit the room, since he didn't know if his presence was detected by her.

And a one-on-one fight as a blind person, even if it was in near darkness, wasn't what you would call fair, because Eyna didn't know if her opponent could produce some sort of light.

Additionally, if the other person was male, Eyna didn't see much hope in a direct confrontation through the physical difference of their bodies.

As the others' actions weren't necessarily malicious towards her, she decided to make her presence known with a little self-talk.

"Oh no. I must have fallen asleep," she said out loud while moving her hand before her mouth to fake a yawn. Then she slowly rose from her seat behind the desk. Nothing happened.

"Why is it so dark in here? Did the lights already break again?" Eyna continued her monologue secretly justifying to the intruder why no lights could be seen. By hiding the fact that Eyna was blind, she could lower the other's guard, so he would feel more secure in the depths of a shadow. Corner a dog in a dead-end street and it will turn and bite. Such a thing she wanted to prevent.

However, Eyna could detect still no movement. Now, things would get dicey.

"And why is it so cold in here? Did I forget to close the window?" Eyna loudly asked herself and embraced herself to get warm. Her slightly stuttering voice of agitation even helped her act, by underlining the freezing cold.

Eyna had already noticed the opened window whose wings now repeatedly slapped against the walls. This was probably the way the intruder had come in.

However, Eyna had to approach the open window, even if the other party was probably still near this unusual entrance.

Every innocent and unsuspecting person would choose to close an open window at the onset of winter, thus Eyna had to do the same. Just exiting the room could lead to fatal suspicion.

However, what flustered Eyna the most was that she could still detect no movement in the room except for the banging of the window and the slightly swaying curtains.

It would be pretty embarrassing for herself if the third party didn't even exist and it all had played in her head. This would leave a deep scar in her self-confidence.

According to her own foresight, the intruder should have moved away, the moment she had made herself noticed. There was plenty of furniture and even two tall curtains reaching down to the floor where one could hide easily.

Still, Eyna hadn't detected any movement since the intruder had entered her office. Eyna didn't want to show her rising inconfidence and walked as calmly as possible to the window.

However, a few steps before the window she had to stop. She now understood why the other party hadn't moved after hearing her voice.

Just as Eyna unexpectedly stepped with her shoe into a liquid, she could detect a metallic scent with her nose. Eyna quickly discovered the motionless body mist an ever-growing pool of blood.

She began inspecting the unmoving body while cautiously trying to avoid touching the warm blood. The woman was still breathing in a semi-conscious state. No external wounds could be found if one ignored the metal rod pointing out of her abdomen. The crude metallic object seemed to have struck her from the front, pierced through the whole body, and was protruding out from the back too.

All the blood most probably originated from this injury. After a further assessment, Eyna could conclude that the damage wasn't as grave as it seemed to be in the beginning.

The metal rod was successfully preventing blood from getting leaked out and the pool gathered on the floor was much smaller than Eyna first imagined it to be.

The injured intruder had a pretty high chance of surviving if someone helped her now.

The question Eyna asked herself was whether she should help the woman. The other person clearly was no threat to her anymore.

However, she had to maintain her public image. If she let a person die in her own office without even trying anything it would probably deal a heavy blow to her reputation.

And trying to hide the dead body wasn't an option either. The only two possible ways to move the body were through the window or the door.

Neither throwing a corpse on a public street, nor transporting it throughout the academy while being blind had much of a success rate.

Therefore, Eyna decided to reach out a helping hand to the injured woman, while probably even receiving her deep gratitude for saving her life.

It would still be the best scenario if the intruder could leave as silent as she had come after having mended the most threatening injury. Because there must have been an unknown party from which she had run away, Eyna didn't want to be included in their irrelevant and possibly fatal dispute.

On this account, Eyna didn't call for help so that she could be the only person knowing of the situation.

She would just use the bandage in her drawer of her desk to wrap up the wound and to prevent further blood loss. The metal rod should be left inside, otherwise, it would create a big mess of blood which Eyna didn't want to have in her own office.

Just as Eyna was trying to stand up and move to her desk, a hand gripped her wrist.