Clarina Duvall was born beneath a blood-orange sky that hung heavy over the Duvall estate, a na etched deep into the annals of the empire’s martial legacy.
Theirs was a house of steel and silence, of banners that never bowed and blades that never dulled.
The Duvalls did not raise children, they forged them.
She was the first daughter of Lord Viremont, a man with a stare as sharp as the swords he crafted and a voice rarely raised, for it never needed to be.
The halls of their manor echoed with discipline rather than laughter, lined with portraits of ancestors who had all died on battlefields — never in their beds.
From the mont Clarina could walk, she was placed among the squires, sparring with boys twice her size.
There were no lullabies, only the rhythmic strikes of wooden blades.
No praise, only silence or correction.
The warmth she craved was replaced with cold washbasins and frost-covered dawn drills.
Her mother had once been a knight as well, her na only spoken in hushed reverence, as if gentleness would betray her mory. Clarina didn’t rember her voice, only the pressure of trying to beco the ghost she left behind.
"Perfection," her father once said, "is not a goal. It is a debt we owe to the Viremont na."
She never cried. Not once.
In the Duvall household, tears were wasted water, and weakness was a luxury granted only to those who served no purpose.
Clarina’s siblings either fled from the family’s shadow or were broken beneath it. But not her. No, Clarina endured.
She had to.
"You must be perfect," her father told her, again and again. "You are a Duvall. You are the sword. You do not bend. You do not break. You endure."
So she endured.
She endured the bruises from training so harsh it left her fingers raw and knees bloodied.
She endured silent dinners where love was asured in discipline.
She endured long nights where she stood guard over nothing, just to prove she could remain awake, even when exhaustion begged her to sleep.
And still, she was not praised.
Not once.
And so Clarina bled in silence, bruised in solitude.
She never cried — not because she was strong, but because she was never taught how.
When she fell, she stood. When she failed, she trained harder.
Her hands, once small and soft, beca calloused and scarred, as if even her flesh wanted to obey the family creed: Duty above all.
By the ti she was twelve, Clarina had outpaced every boy her age.
At fifteen, she was sent to the front lines for her "temperance trial," an old tradition ant to sever the softness of youth.
She returned a year later — quieter, colder, and no longer quite sure where the line between person and weapon had blurred.
Her accomplishnts were never celebrated, only expected.
Her victories were logged in ledgers, not hearts.
The people praised her stoicism, the way she carried herself like a statue carved from marble.
They never saw the nights she collapsed from exhaustion in the training hall, forehead pressed against the stone, praying for a reason to be anything other than unbreakable.
Love? She didn’t have ti for such luxuries. Friends? They faltered where she could not. Emotions? They were weaknesses to be filed down like a blade’s edge.
But even marble cracks.
There were mont, rare and fleeting, when she watched the world from behind the fortress of her self-control and felt the weight of a life unlived pressing against her ribs.
When other girls danced, she observed. When they laughed, she listened.
She didn’t envy them. She didn’t dare, but a strange ache lingered nonetheless.
She once watched a squire cry over a lost pet and felt sha for not understanding how to comfort him.
What did sorrow look like when you were taught to wear armor on your soul?
Her greatest sha was not that she couldn’t love.
It was that she wanted to, desperately, secretly, but didn’t know how.
She watched others fall in love with the idea of knighthood—its glory, its honor.
But for her, it was duty. It was silence. It was sacrifice. It was knowing the world would not rember her na, but would sleep easier because she stood watch.
Her elder brother, Cael, had once said to her: "You don’t even know what makes you happy, do you?"
She had looked at him blankly, unsure how to respond.
He left the family estate that night and never returned.
Clarina never asked where he went. She never cried.
At fifteen, she led a vanguard into a border skirmish.
The enemy yielded. Her horse was struck. She limped back to the manor, leg fractured, eyes steady. Her mother said only, "Your posture is slipping."
She was knighted at seventeen, not because she was of age, but because there was no more to teach her. The sword obeyed her. Her body obeyed her. Her mind was a fortress.
But her heart? Her heart had grown quiet.
Sotis, she stood beneath the moonlight after drills, staring at the stars and wondering what they felt like—free, soft, distant. Untouchable.
The other squires used to whisper: "She’s too perfect. It’s unnatural."
But perfection was never her choice. It was forged into her.
Then ca the funeral.
Her mother had died in her sleep. No blood, no war, no final blaze of glory—just silence. A quiet death for a woman who lived by the sword.
Clarina stood at the pyre with her hand on the hilt of her blade, face blank, posture immaculate. She gave the eulogy herself—three lines, no more.
"She lived with purpose. She died in peace. We do not grieve—we honor."
And then, when no one was looking, she sat in the garden her mother used to tend. The flowers were overgrown now. Weeds among roses. Thorns among silence.
She placed her sword on the ground and just... sat. Not ditating. Not training. Just sitting.
The moon hung overhead like a pale witness. The wind didn’t blow that night.
For the first ti in years, she asked herself:What do I want?
And she had no answer.
By twenty, she had beco a knight of prestige.
Her na was known in noble circles, whispered by those who admired her composure and feared her precision. But the more people praised her, the more hollow it felt.
They admired the idea of Clarina, not the person.
No one asked what she liked to eat.
No one asked what music she favored.
No one noticed that she always stared too long at people laughing, like she was trying to understand the joke but didn’t know the language.
One day, a little girl at a noble gathering tugged on her cloak. Clarina turned, expecting a request or a question.
The girl simply smiled and said, "You look lonely."
It pierced more than any blade ever had.
So when Verena approached her, when she saw Clarina not as a perfect knight, but as soone flawed, human, and worth knowing, Clarina didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t believe in fate, but perhaps, for once, she wanted to.
She followed Verena’s whims, even the silly ones. She let herself be dragged into pointless sparring sessions, absurd errands, and conversations that had no tactical value. And still, she showed up. Again and again.
Maybe, just maybe, she didn’t want to be perfect anymore.
Maybe she wanted to be known.
And yet, the sword remained at her side. Her honor, her armor, her excuse.
She was still Clarina, the girl who never cried.
But sotis... in the quiet between dusk and duty... she allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to fall apart.
Just once.
And be held. Not for her title. Not for her strength. But just because she was Clarina.
And that would be enough.
Verena was a walking ss of ego, awkwardness, and unpredictability. Everything Clarina had been trained to reject. And yet...
Sothing shifted.
She didn’t bow before her. Didn’t fear her.
She challenged Clarina’s neat, emotionless world with chaos and color.
Clarina found herself thinking of her mother more.
Of the softness she had been denied.
She wondered what kind of woman she might’ve beco if she had been allowed to rest, to stumble, to speak without fear of disappointing the silent portraits on the wall.
The truth was, Clarina had never lived for herself.
Her choices had always been inherited, her ideals morized, not chosen.
She was a monunt sculpted by others.
But Verena... she was so unrefined, so alive. Perhaps that was what drew Clarina in. Not affection, not even admiration — but the terrifying, wondrous possibility of being seen not as a blade, but as a person.
And it scared her.
Because if she were not perfect, then what was she?
If she put down the sword, even for a mont, who would she be?
She didn’t know.
But perhaps, for the first ti in her life, she wanted to find out.
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