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Montranoe wasn’t particularly known for any kind of rough weather but it was a country that was neither free of them either. In the rainy seasons, rain storms were bound to drop inches of water per rainfall, filling up water reserves, lakes and widening rivers that have dwindled throughout the year. It was during this raining season that would start the catalyst to change many things known to this nation because it all happened to a special boy, at the age of 8, named Rannith.

Rannith, while biological child of the current patriarch and lady of the Steelingfleet house name, being born into the name has long since been considered unworthy. To acquire or inherit the family name, their children must complete one of the many, unspoken trials, through their life. 

Become better and more of themselves than their former, accomplish more than their former or kill the head of the house. It is a cruel and undeserving fate for children, generation to generation, to be born to accomplish, complete trials, always striving.

Kahlia was not aware of the cruel weight on their shoulders just yet, like her older brother has, growing more aware with each day and week and month goes by. Days before this rainy night he had overheard his parents in his father’s study, sitting warm by the fire while they sipped at a nice bottle of Murrah wine. The alcohol seemed to help them relax as he overheard how they enjoyed the spoils of his father’s success, in recent business negotiations with a particularly troublesome company. It was the first time he’s ever heard them laugh before. As much as he wanted to see what their stone chiseled faces looked like when they smiled, it would only get him in trouble for opening the door and eavesdropping. So he decided to listen quietly to the relaxed and unfamiliar tones of his family until they brought up the conversation about him and his sister. 

He listened with a held breath, yearning to hear any kind of praise, good word or kind favor to either of the adults’ own children but there was none. The words they spoke in relaxed and content tones about their own children were snide, jeering and seemed to bore their jovial moods. The blessing that their prayer had been answered by the goddess for their first born to be a boy but found it disappointing that he wasn’t blessed with any other gifts; besides that he didn’t HAVE to be their first born son if they ever changed their minds. Mused at the strategic advantage it could bring for a child who can change into anything they told them to be, but his sister. Not even in their ridicule was she considered anything besides a disappointment. The only usefulness they considered that she might have is if she could be taught chores along with noble etiquette so that if she couldn’t push bast her withdrawn nature and become useful, she could always be sold off as a high lady in waiting, quality staff member or luxury slave.

The contrast in their meager sentiments between the two siblings broke his heart, because out of everyone, Rannith loved his sister the most; by the way the house operated too, he was probably the only one. He couldn’t listen to the cruel and calloused ways his parents spoke about them on the floor in the hallway as the words floated out from under the door any longer. Climbing to his feet, he ran to his shared room, to his sister. Through the tears, he couldn’t tell her what he heard, through the tears she tried her best to comfort him even though she struggled to understand tears. Through the tears he began thinking, planning on ways so that no one could take his sister from him, from their home, oblivious that he only had days to do so.

-

Only a couple nights had passed as the rains still stormed. The quiet, cold and unfeeling dinners they shared at one table only felt more distant. While Rannith and Kahlia sat at one end of the table, side by side, their parents sat on the opposite end of the wooden tablescape. After dinner they were to study for 1 hour and 30 minutes at least before they were allowed to go to bed which was exactly what they did. It’s what they have always done, do what they’re told because all obedient children do what they’re told, but it’s not like it would ever be good enough. 

Kahlia had finished her studying before her brother. She stuck to her 1 and a half hour study hours in order to go to sleep sooner but he had stayed up a tad bit longer, just to finish his subject. Hardly more than 15 minutes but 15 minutes made all the difference. 

When Rannith entered their shared room, all the lights had been turned off and his sister was already fast asleep in a bundle of blankets, his bed remained untouched. Most of the house had quieted for the night as well, putting all tools and supplies away, turning off candles and only checking their work stations left. 

The boy was getting ready to sleep himself when sound began picking up again. The first sounds were subtle, down the hall or under the stairs. The second sound definitely came from the distant walkway in another room. A crash. One of the staff members had dropped or broken something in another room, an empty one, but all rooms are kept maintained. The next was someone closer saying something, quiet and strained before something heavier was dropped this time.

He wasn’t able to discern what was being said due to the weather. The rain crashed hard on the roof, the balcony and poured over the edges of the small windowsill garden; the one Kahlia made in a pottery class was turned into a trickling waterfall. The water drowned out most of the sounds, disturbing what could already have been heard through the white noise. 

Those moments that came after opening their door again is a memory Rannith would never be able to forget.

When the door opened, the hallway was as dark as he imagined but there was a different kind of scent in the air, something he’s not smelt before, stinging his nose. Someone was standing in the hallway. They looked wet but they stood still, their back facing the young boy as their clothes dripped onto the red carpets. 

“Umm, excuse me?” He asked tentatively, unsure what was going on, who he was or what anyone would do inside the house that late. But as he stepped forward, he stepped into the soaked carpets, hardly visible in the lower lighting but with the lights on, the way the two shades marbled together would be much more apparent to the discerning eye. 

Rannith looked at his feet, the look of terror in the nanny’s eyes as her head peered up at him, looking past in its mutilated condition. The sight turned his stomach upside down as all these feelings rushed towards him from horror, fear. He wanted to scream and cry out, throw up and sob while his small body trembled like a leaf, in the cold, in the rain, in the terror.

“Heeeeyyyy kid. You’re not supposed to beee here.” An unfamiliar raspy voice called out to him. The man in the hallways turned around now, noticing that neither of them was alone at that moment. The clay wire cutter was already stuffed into the man’s back pocket and under the cloak before he could turn around but that didn’t hide the blood stains down the front of his tunic, on his hands and on his pants where he attempted to clean them off. He held out his hands towards Rannith in a clumsy way, reeking of a bitter smell, the kind of smell his parents always called cheap and for the poor. “I’m a father too, you see. I’m not goooonnaa hurt ya. I have my own little boy back home too. I’m here to talk to mommy and daddy. Just. Don’t. Screa-” he approached slowly, hands raised, palms facing forward but his plea was interrupted by a high pitched scream. 

In the room next to him, another person disguised in a soaking wet cloak, held Kahlia around the neck as she cried and kicked pointlessly. It wasn’t clear right away at what was happening until a dagger in the free hand silhouetted against the rain only for a moment. 

Her brother didn’t even have time to think before he rushed forward, closing the distance as fast as he possibly could, lunching for the attacking arm. The shift of weight threw the man off balance so the initial knife plunge missed, only leaving a surface level cut down the small girl’s cheek.

Kahlia was dropped almost immediately as the person flung their arm to shake off the boy who clung on for his sister’s and own life. His feet couldn’t grasp a good foot holding on the adult to stop himself from swinging  but he always had his tail. A long leathery black appendage he was naturally born with but also could have just as easily naturally hidden as well, but not this time. His tail whipped forward, the boney spade of the tail tip plunged blindly into the torso and injected as much lethal poison he could muster. With his hands slipping, the idea just came that he needed to just let go and he did. The moment that was given was by the person pulling back and their arm lifted, an opposite force of Rannith’s weight, so when they stood he lifted his hands against the arm and pushed against the floor. 

A sickening gurgling sound bubbled from above him and he didn’t dare look, not when he could see his sister wide eyed in shock and fear at what he just did. He stepped away ashamed, at what he had done and how his sister’s perception of him would forever change in that moment, he could never dare believe that she would see him the way she had before. Like the man in the hallway he too now had blood on his own hands, by the color of it, the blood certainly wasn’t his own. 

Just like his sister, he was scared too. The intruder fell to the ground, they didn’t move or say anything like the first person did. The first person had disappeared without a sound or a trace. He wanted to cry too, cry like he did when he heard that she was going to be taken from him the first time. She was almost taken again. Kahlia didn’t say anything or move away as he crawled on the ground to hug his sister. They both were trembling in the dark, in the cold that blew in from the billowing open window.

Next was footsteps. Again. But these ones were different, frantic, in a hurry and not alone. They were familiar but not in the same way they’ve been heard before.

Their parents' steps stopped for a moment, with only 1 knight to spare, for their own protection. The hallway hadn’t bothered them like it had for their children, they’ve seen and done far worse. But their surprise when seeing the children’s room was a face that neither child would ever see again nor would their parents ever make. 

As the lights flicked on, their father had a wide hysterical grin across his lips, fear and joy roared like a bonfire in his eyes. Fueled by relief he laughed out, not for the children but for himself, a broken and maniacal laugh. The only words he could get out were through wheezes as he announced to his wife “They really did try it, they tried to kill us after all”. He returned to his fit of madness in order to calm his nerves. 

Their mother was hardly different as she kept her stoic posture, hands folding one over the other, shoulders tight and feet together. She made no move to comfort either of her children but fear lined the creases of her mature complexion, just like a doe might feel when spotting a wolf creeping closer.

Just as quickly as the hysteria came, did it leave, like nothing happened. Looking not as scornfully as usual he turned to the two, trembling on the floor together, they both now stained with the traces of blood. “Who was it?” He asked cool, no sympathy, like when asking for report cards or progress on their studies. There wasn’t an answer right away though, as he would have expected. All sound and words had been stuck in the daughter’s throat while their son was utterly speechless. 

“What happened here?” he asked again. What did happen here? That’s what Rannith tried to understand. There were strangers, and people were hurt.. That’s where it started. “There were strangers… In the hall and in the room…” He began slowly. His father slowly nodded listening, in a businessman's composure but this made Rannith hesitate. He almost lost his sister… and he will lose his sister again… this was a couple who neither comforted them nor found much use in either of them, even more so for his sister that they may not even wait for her own debut. 

“Kahlia.” he blurted out and his sister stared at him even more horrified. “She was in our room… and I looked into the hallway.. that’s… when someone came in from the balcony and she… saved me.” That was it. That’s the story he would have to live with. He lied, his sister knew it, and there was no one else to object. 

While his sister grew more anxious about the trouble she believed he had put her into, she was just as shocked to be scooped up in their father’s arms. He never does that. She broke her silence with a quiet scream, having just been picked up moments prior and still terrified, but he hugged her. He held his daughter in his arms tightly, warm, embracing the wet and the stains and the warmth from his shivering daughter, he held her tight with love. Even the wife could see it, and she smiled.

They both were smiling. Rannith had wanted to see as much only days ago and he finally did but the cost was grave. Neither of them acknowledged he was even there in that moment, he could have been just as cold and dead as the corpse inches away from them all and they would have presided just the same. He reached out for the hem of his mother’s nightgown, still scared and desperately craving any part of their attention, to be noticed or held too but she pulled away. She left him crying on the ground as she joined her husband and their daughter. “Mom… please?” he pleaded, his voice trembling. It was the only thing he could manage to say. Her response was sharp and unforgiving: “And what exactly have you done for this family?”