The late afternoon of the desert brought the night winds into the cozy verozean house, easing the strong heat experienced by the busy day.

Under the lights of the central fire pit, the place expanded into beige walls filled with small windows for the entrance of open air, even if this meant the loss of a little privacy. Inside, the palm wood furniture was strategically placed for a great decoration for the interior disposition, being it through tables, desks, bookcases, and chairs; all in a meticulous arrangement that preserved the value of the aggregate space.

Some valuable objects, such as vases and books, adorned the furniture with their coloring, in addition to the carpets that filled the built floor of that singular home, imputing the image of the appreciation of material wealth to the owner who lived there.

He - the keeper of the beautiful house - took a smooth-covered book from his shelf to his possession, immediately opening it on the page that he had stopped at his last reading. Even in that act, he walked towards the sofa beside the fire that lit the walls of the house, acquiring his seat right in the middle of the length of the strictly patterned furniture.

His golden eyes absorbed that work word by word, completely taken by the strange tale the author had woven, even if it meant wasting enormous time to decipher its strange secrets.

The fire inside the pit danced with the small passing winds, and at times, this bothered - even more - the guest that the owner had brought to his home.

"E-Excuse m-me..." the girl rescued earlier in the market, sitting on the couch parallel to the other, not quite understanding what the host was planning for her, tried to conceive some way of communicating with her supposed captor. "I-I..."

"Silence," Druko commanded. "It is extremely rude to interfere with someone else's reading."

"Oh," the verozean girl said, shutting herself up again. "S-Sorry..."

She remained a little calmer than before but that didn't stop her from being afraid of staying there, and of what he would do to her. She thought it was only a matter of time before something happened, after all, the youngest son of the most prestigious of the High Masters had a reputation to maintain, and still afraid of what had happened to the marginals who pursued her earlier, she knew that good things wouldn't come out of him.

Her thoughts wandered with some many hypothesis of what could happen that it made her eyes uneasy. The girl soon made her head fall on her hands with the malicious ideas she was having about the situation. Her eyes shook with the fright she was experiencing, and soon began to water through her fingers.

She conceived the idea of running away; of getting away as soon as possible from there. However, she feared that she was not quick enough, or that there would be a reprisal the next day if she was found.

Even so, she didn’t have where to go.

Only to remember that her mother was killed by those two were enough to make her shake in distress. Her fingers trembled as she recalled the blood and the lifeless eyes of her parent on the floor as the criminals laughed about it.

Paralyzed with fear and despair, the girl didn’t dare to make a single move while they boasted about what they did.

Until they finally saw her hiding in a corner.