Chapter 1

“Father!”

Leslie’s desperate plea did not reach the man who was observing her at the other end of the bridge.

“Mother! Eli...!”

Leslie called out for her family, but there were no answers. They merely watched as Leslie was dragged to be thrown into a pit of fire. Their gazes felt like daggers that pierced her in every direction.

Behind her was a pavilion where the fire was roaring, suspended mid-air and connected to the solid ground by only two bridges on either end. And Leslie was being dragged into the center step by step, into the pit of scorching flames.

“Ughh...”

Leslie flailed about trying to grab hold of the rails of the bridge, but the thin metal could not support her. Her feet weren’t doing any better either. Beaten and abused in a twelve-year-old body, her scrawny legs could not hold off against the strength of the male servants dragging her.

She had no strength. All she had been fed for the past few weeks was watered-down soup, which was barely enough to survive. Her mother ordered this so that Leslie would look ‘beautiful’ for tonight.

‘You must look beautiful, do you hear me? You must be beautiful.’

Seeing as her mother kept telling Leslie that she had to be beautiful, Leslie felt that there was going to be a turning point. ‘Finally, will she be favoring me?’ Although the possibility was low, Leslie slightly looked forward to that sweet hope. But who could have known? It was the day she was to be sacrificed for her sister, Eli.

“Mother... Father...”

Leslie cried out once again, but there were still no answers. Instead, there were more annoyed and irritated gazes that pierced her.

“...What’s taking so long?”

Eli spoke, bored and annoyed by Leslie’s cries. She was slowly fanning herself because of the heat, and laces from the fan flowed to create a gentle breeze. Hearing Eli, their father, Marquis Sperado, yelled at the servants.

“Throw her in already! If the sun sets before this, I will throw you down into the pit!”

“No. No! Please! Please...”

Leslie pitifully implored the servants she knew too well, but their answers weren’t what she had hoped for.

“...I’m sorry, Miss Leslie.”

There was nothing Leslie could do. The servants were strong like a bull and immovable like a mountain. The rope around her neck tightened, making her choke.

She cried, tears blinding her eyes as the heat of the flames licked ever so close. Desperate, she tried to stick her fingernails into the floor. There was no way it was going to work. Her futile struggles echoed in the cliff and only made her family’s brows furrow in more annoyance.

“Just... give up!”

‘No, I don’t want to!’ Leslie reached out to hug a pillar of the pavilion as they arrived at the mouth of the pit.

‘I don’t want to die!’

‘I want to live, even if I have to live in the shadows of my sister. Even if Eli was the only reason I existed, I still want to live!’

“I want to live...”

Tear-stained and with her voice trembling, Leslie begged once more.

“Please...”

The servants hesitated and stopped forcing her fingers off the pillar. There it was, a twelve-year-old girl begging for her life. Everyone there, except for her own blood and flesh, turned their heads away. Guilt made them unable to look at the child at her imminent death. At this, the marquis and his family became irate.

“You useless fools.”

The marquis angrily strode past a guard towards Leslie, snatching a spear out of the guard’s hands.

“Father...”

Ignoring his daughter’s desperate cries again, he raised the spear high and then thrust it forward. The blunt end of the spear pushed Leslie’s tiny body, sending her down into the pit of blazing fire.

“Don’t you know that dying in place of your sister is your destiny? You pathetic, useless child!”

The marquis yelled after the falling child, who was being engulfed in flames. Leslie hoped in the last moments that her father might be coming to save her. In split seconds, she imagined what-ifs. But her hopes were dashed as she felt the first lick of searing fire on her back before she could even feel the fall.

“Kyaaa!”

Leslie screamed and screamed. The waiting flames licked, scratched, pulled and whipped. ‘Is this what hell feels like? Is this how it all ends—a child raised like cattle, only to be sacrificed for her sister?’

‘No, I don’t want to!’

Leslie tried to fight the flames with her last remaining strength, but the fire was eating away at her dress and many ribbons burned up brightly ever so rapidly. Her whole being was burned. She began to lose herself in the hot pain and wanted so desperately to drift away into the darkness. And when it was just about to happen, a voice came.

“Child, you must survive.”

‘Who is this? Who's speaking?’ Before she could ask, she felt tiny hands pushing her upward and away from the merciless fire.

The pavilion’s glass began to wrench. It was built with a sick intention to view the flames from afar, in which transparency was achieved by using tall glass instead of concrete walls. Leslie’s limbs struggled, along with the tiny hands in the flames that supported her, and pushed against the glass. It creaked louder and louder until it finally gave way.

A small crack between the glass and its frame was made, allowing just enough room for Leslie’s small body to escape. Ironically, her mother’s watered-down soup did help in the end.

“No!”

Leslie’s family screamed. But it wasn’t because of pity or sudden sympathy, but because of ever-growing annoyance and anger. Finally, the useless girl was going to contribute to the family. Finally, she was worth something. But it was now ruined by her escape, and the sacrifice ritual will be left incomplete. The useless thing was now back in their hands.

Listening to her family scream, Leslie smiled despite the pain. ‘What a life I had, a life dedicated for my sister. I only lived to make her special,’ Leslie thought. Her father, the marquis, treated her like trash, and she never knew why.

“I heard you talked back to your sister. You are useless. There will be no food for you today. Go to your room and stay there. Don’t you dare think about doing anything.”

He used to say this all the time. He picked on Leslie for the most trivial things and starved her at least three times a week.

Her mother was the same. Her mother did everything to utterly destroy Leslie’s self-esteem and sense of self.

“Leslie, the tutor said you couldn’t properly answer the question.”

“No, but it’s because I haven’t learned it yet...”

“Do not talk back to me! The only useful part about you is studying! You should at least be able to do it to support your sister, you ungrateful brat!”

Then, she would hit Leslie with her fan until it.

Eli was no different from them. Eli knew how the family treated Leslie. It was easy to pick up on that. So whenever something went wrong, she blamed Leslie and watched her be punished by them. When Eli fell, Leslie was at fault. When Eli bit her tongue during the meals, Leslie was blamed. When Eli pricked herself while embroidering, Leslie was punished. When it rained on a picnic day, it was all Leslie’s fault.

There was one time when Eli returned from her theology study group and called Leslie to her room. Her icy cold stares made Leslie shake with fear. Eli had taken Leslie’s translation of a theological text written in ancient god’s words. During the meeting, Eli had read it wrong and thus, it was her own fault. But she blamed Leslie once again.

“You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You did it to embarrass me in front of all those people, didn’t you?”

“No, Sister. I would never. It was a mistake, I swear.”

Leslie knelt and bowed her head deeply. It was always best to apologize, as fighting back only worsened what came next.

“Whether or not it was a mistake, I don’t care, Leslie. I have still been embarrassed, and that alone is enough to punish you. You understand, don’t you? You are here for my sake, but you failed to prove yourself.”

Eli spat out words that her parents used to tell Leslie every time they punished her. She grabbed her younger sister by her hair and shook her head violently. Leslie’s hair fell out and a patch of scalp was left bleeding from the punishment. But Eli didn’t let go and merely found more hair to pull on.

Leslie begged at Eli’s feet for hours until her anger subsided. Only then was Leslie released from her clutches and was able to retire to her tiny, dusty attic.

A sandbag for the family, especially for her sister. That was the short life of Leslie before she was thrown into the fire as a sacrifice. Or was she always meant to be a sacrifice but turned into a sandbag until the time came?

‘I was naive.’ Leslie never gave up on hope. A hope that one day, she would be loved by her family. But hope was useless. Perhaps, if she had never hoped, she could have escaped and lived. As she was thrown into the fire, Leslie didn’t see any happy memories. The only thing she could call happiness was the first time she ate a piece of toast with jam and butter. And that was it.

Leslie felt herself fall.

Her tears kept flowing into the sky above her as gravity pulled her down. ‘I want to live,’ she thought. Just as she closed her eyes for the last time, a strange darkness around her enveloped her small body like a cocoon.

With a loud echo, Leslie’s body landed at the bottom of the cliff.

***

Opening her eyes, Leslie saw a familiar room. It was the smallest and dustiest room in the House of Sperado, a dark and abandoned attic. A smell of mold and dust hit Leslie’s senses as if to tell her she wasn’t dreaming.

‘I survived. I am alive.’ Leslie silently cried, tears running down the side of her temples, wetting the tattered blanket. She blinked and remembered the horrible night. She shuddered at the still-fresh memories of pain from the licking flames. She never wanted to experience it ever again.

‘I was never a part of the family.’

More tears flowed to soak her pillow, as sobs escaped from her lips.

Leslie buried her face in the pillow, trying hard to hold it in.

How long has she tried to meet her parents’ demands and expectations? How hard did she study not to ruin the family name? And how much did she try to become closer with Eli?

Now, Leslie knew that all was indeed useless. All her hopes and dreams were shattered, and her heart was broken and aching.

A sacrifice, that’s what the marquis had said.

Leslie looked at her hands. Her nails were all broken and dried blood was still on her fingertips. Soft skins around the nails were swollen and red from when she was grabbing onto the stone bridge with all her might. She traced down her back with her hand and felt a throbbing pain. It was clear that it was badly bruised without even looking at it in a mirror. Then, she felt the spot of flesh where the marquis had speared.

All of her injuries and pains whispered the painful truth: “You aren’t loved. You aren’t welcome here. You will never be their child because you are useless.” Leslie wanted to scream and say something. But her voice didn’t come out because it was the truth. There was no denial and that hurt more than anything. So she buried her face once more and let the tears flow.

Soft sobs and painful moans could be heard outside the door of the attic. But for many hours, Leslie was alone as no one came. So she cried to herself until her sadness was exhausted. When her eyes finally dried up, she sat up.

It was time for her to make a decision—stay and become the sacrifice or leave for a chance at life.

And she already knew the answer.