Chapter 7: Shadows of the Past

The morning sun bathes Whitespire’s marketplace in golden light as Aya and Monique play a game tossing small sacks of seed from distance into holes cut in a box, their laughter and playful taunts carrying across the bustling square. The two girls, from such different backgrounds united in the joy of games.

“Watch this!” Monique calls out, spinning around and attempting to toss a sack back over her head. Her blue eyes sparkle with excitement as she turns back to follow the sacks path. Aya howls with laughter as it lands nowhere near the box she was aiming for.

As a minstrel passes through, Aya’s own brown eyes light. “Let’s dance!” Aya suggests, hands and bodies moving in fluid, synchronized motions to the passing music before they’re overcome with giggles.

They dance through the morning, lost in their own world of games. For these precious moments, Aya is just a girl playing with her friend, the weight of her training and past temporarily forgotten.

“I should go,” Aya says finally, noting the sun’s position. “Giroud will be expecting me.”

“Tomorrow?” Monique asks hopefully, smoothing her expensive dress.

“If I can,” Aya promises, already turning toward home.

The marketplace bustles around her as she weaves through the crowd, merchants calling their wares and cart wheels clattering against cobblestones. Then a figure steps out from the shifting sea of bodies, blocking her path. Recognition flashes in her wide brown eyes as they meet an accusatory glare. It is a young man with worn clothes, his face etched by hardship - a ghost from her village, someone who shouldn’t be standing before her in the heart of Whitespire.

“Abandoner,” he hisses, his voice cutting through the marketplace hum like a blade. The word is loaded with venom, meant to wound. “Others died while you lived.”

Aya’s chest constricts, her breath caught in the snare of his contempt. The market around them blurs into irrelevance as memories of fire and screams threaten to overwhelm her. “I did not abandon anyone,” she asserts, voice quivering with a cocktail of fear and defiance. Her eyes, wide and resolute, lock onto his. “They took me ... put me in a cage.”

The villager scoffs, his bitter laughter cutting deeper than any blade. “Sounds convenient. You slipped away when others lay bleeding?”

“I tried to fight,” she insists, memories of that terrible night flooding back. The clash of steel, the screams of the dying, the heat of flames consuming everything she’d ever known. She was not nearly as prepared then as she is now. “I survived. Just like you did.”

“So what makes you special, Aya?” he spits, jabbing an accusatory finger at her. “What makes you worthy of living while others died?”

“You lived, didn’t you!? We both carry scars,” she replies, her voice turning cold as mountain ice. “You wear yours on the inside; angry.”