Content warning: This chapter includes graphic depictions of sexual violence.

Before I arrived in the clearing where our cabin was, I could hear my mother screams echoing from inside. I stopped running while I was still hidden by the trees and crouched behind to a bush, trying to swallow the overwhelming fear that gripped me. My mother needed me. I had to figure out a way to help her.

I peered around the bush and saw a couple of horses waiting in our open yard, but I didn't see any people. They were probably all inside. My mind was a mess, but I knew I had to do something.

I crept forward, trying to be as quiet as possible, but there was no cover in the yard to hide my movements. As soon as I was close enough to see inside the door, someone grabbed me from behind and pushed me inside.

"Well, look at what I found skulking about," my captor called out, "I've got the kid. We don't need this bitch to talk no more."

Inside the house, I saw my mother, her wrists bound behind her back, bent over the table where we usually ate. A skinny man with black hair pressed her face into the table with violent force. His pants were bunched up around his knees, leaving me no illusions about what he was doing. He paused his rough thrusting for a moment to look at us.

"Come on! We only just got started," the man protested, "Can't we have some more fun with her before we leave?"

"Hah, I didn't say the fun was over, did I? I just said she doesn't need to talk." My captor twisted my arm painfully behind my back and forced me to move forward toward the table as he said, "We've got all night boys. Let's show this little bastard what happens to whores who run away."

The black-haired man continued his assault with renewed vigor. He grabbed my mother by the hair and forcefully lifted her head so she could see me, before smashing it back down on the table, laughing merrily as he did so.

The look in his eyes was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen.

In violation of my will, my body went limp from the shock and horror. I desperately wanted to fight back, to make them stop. But all I could do was watch helplessly as my mother cried and begged for mercy.

They said she deserved it for running away.

The sun had risen again before they were finished with her. Before that night, I could have never imagined the depths of depravity that humans could be capable of. But after, I understood. True evil had no limits, no bounds. Kindness and compassion meant nothing to men who enjoyed having power and inflicting pain.

My poor, commoner mother had once been a servant to the Duke of Ramport, the southern duchy of Vrayna. The Duke's wife had borne him a single daughter. After a difficult childbirth, she was left barren, without hope of ever giving him a son. Rather than replace his wife, he decided to sire a son through different means.

My mother, a lowly kitchen servant, was unfortunate enough to catch the Duke's attention. He imprisoned her and forced himself upon her repeatedly, eventually resulting in a child– me. After I was born, my mother found a way to flee the southern duchy and disappeared, taking me, the Duke’s son, with her.

For the Duke, this was unacceptable. He searched for my mother for years. He finally found her by chance, thanks to information from a traveling merchant who had passed through our town, and he sent his knights to find us. I had to be brought back alive, but the Duke told them to dispose of my mother as brutally as possible.

The black haired man told me all of this in bits and pieces whenever he grew tired of tormenting my mother. Over and over again, he told me she deserved it, and that I deserved it too. Then, he started telling me all the things he wanted to do to me. He couldn’t touch me yet, he said, because I belonged to the Duke. But he promised me that one day, when I was no longer useful, I would belong to him.

The horrors in front of me continued through the night. I prayed desperately, begging the Gods for their mercy, but no mercy ever came. I was too weak to do anything. I couldn’t save her.

Finally, I could take no more. Reaching deep into a part of myself I didn’t know existed, I found a place where there was nothing at all. A place filled with thick grey fog, where I could hide myself away.

I sent myself into the fog. It was quiet there. It felt safe. I couldn't hear the screams there. I couldn't see the violence.

I sent all of my pain into that dense grey fog, along with all the pieces of myself that could still be saved. I let go of who I could no longer be and embraced the nothingness, leaving only a small fragment behind.

The morning sun was shining brightly in the sky when they slit my mother's throat and left her broken body for the animals. They bound my wrists behind my back, tossed me into a wagon, and began our journey south.