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After spending so long confined in my quarters during my illness, I felt surprisingly weak, as if my muscles had forgotten how to carry me. My legs trembled after only a short walk, and my breathing came in shallow puffs. I reminded myself that, given the circumstances, it was impressive I could even move at all.
Because the King was with us, we couldn't travel by horse, so they prepared a carriage for us. The rhythmic jolting of the carriage over uneven roads was strangely soothing. As we traveled, the King explained that Scarlett, the knight I was supposed to meet, lived outside the castle town, beyond the safety of the walls. That sounded... ominous, though I couldn't quite understand why.
The carriage shuddered to a stop, pulling me from my thoughts. "Is something wrong?" I asked, glancing at the King. He looked out, unbothered. "Scarlett has arrived." "Oh." My heart skipped. It was finally time to meet this mysterious knight.
I stepped down from the carriage, expecting something rather ordinary, but what I saw made my stomach twist. We'd stopped on the edge of a barren landscape. What must have once been green grass was now scorched earth, littered with fragments of flesh and bones. The scene was... grotesque.
Scattered around the clearing were figures in ragged clothing, hunched and exhausted, hacking at meat and chipping away at bones with worn tools. They moved like automatons, clearly desensitized to their surroundings. Slaves, perhaps? It was difficult to tell.
A shadow swept over the ground, pulling my gaze upward. A figure descended from the sky with an eerie grace, her silver-white hair fanning behind her like a ghostly veil. In one hand, she clutched a severed dragon's head; in the other, its torn torso, her pale skin smeared with dark, glistening blood.
Against the blue sky, she looked both celestial and terrifying – a beautiful, dreadful reaper. I hadn't expected someone so... ethereal. She was close to my height, maybe a bit shorter, but her aura was anything but small. Her presence commanded the space, quiet and unsettling.
The King cleared his throat, breaking my trance. "Scarlett. Knight Scarlett." She turned at his voice, dropping the dragon carcass to the ground with a heavy thud. Blood streaked her face and clothes, but her expression was calm, unaffected. Her eyes met ours, cool and distant, before she knelt in a single, fluid motion.
"Your Majesty," she said, her voice low and steady. The King gestured to her to stand. "Scarlett, I brought my son, Roman, to meet you. He has recently recovered from his illness and expressed a desire to see you. This is your first time meeting, I believe?"
"Yes," she replied, her voice devoid of any hint of warmth or enthusiasm.
The King glanced at one of the guards and waved a hand. "Someone, offer her a cloth to clean herself up." A guard quickly removed his cloak, but Scarlett's blood-soaked hands merely brushed over it as she straightened, letting it fall to the ground without a second glance.
The King sighed but let it go. "Very well. Look up, Scarlett." She lifted her head, and for the first time, I saw her face fully. Beneath the blood, her features were startlingly delicate, almost otherworldly, her expression blank but... beautiful in a chilling way.
Her skin was pale as marble, her gaze intense and detached. Gathering my courage, I stepped forward, feeling the urge to say something, anything, to fill the silence. "Hello. I'm Roman. I... I've heard a lot about you."
Her response was unblinking, her face unreadable. "It's an honor to meet you, Prince Roman." Her voice was flat, hollow. Yet her gaze was piercing, as if she saw right through me.
The King chuckled softly, gesturing between us. "Scarlett, as you may have heard, Roman is to be your future husband." She tilted her head, frowning slightly. "Is he... intended as a breeding partner?"
The King choked slightly, thrown off by her bluntness. "Please... a bit more tact, Scarlett." Her mouth curled slightly, though her tone remained matter-of-fact. "Dragons don't care for pleasantries, Your Majesty."
The King seemed to give up on explaining, glancing at me helplessly. Despite her words, I couldn't help feeling a strange pity for her. I noticed streaks of blood still clung to her chin, and before I knew what I was doing, I reached into my sleeve, pulled out my handkerchief, and gently dabbed at the bloodstains.
She stared at me, her eyes widening slightly, as if surprised by the gesture. "What... what are you doing?" she asked, her voice laced with a hint of curiosity.
"I just thought—well, you have such a beautiful face. It seems a shame to leave it like that," I replied, feeling my cheeks heat.
Her gaze turned icier, but there was a flicker of something... almost human.
The King, on the other hand, looked at me as though I'd sprouted horns. "Roman, that's..." he trailed off, then cleared his throat. "It's, uh... thoughtful of you."
Feeling my cheeks heat, I stammered, "I just... well, she's beautiful, isn't she?"
The King studied me with a look I couldn't quite place. "Perhaps," he conceded. "But what lies within her, my son, is something beyond understanding."
As the King motioned for me to return to the carriage, I looked back to see the townsfolk kneeling in Scarlett's direction, their expressions a blend of awe and terror.
It dawned on me that I didn't fully grasp who—or what—I had just met.
The King's words echoed in my mind: "What lies within her is something beyond understanding." I wondered what secrets Scarlett held, and what lay beneath her ethereal beauty.
As we rode back to the castle, the silence between us was palpable. Scarlett's presence lingered in my thoughts, a haunting melody I couldn't shake.
Little did I know, our meeting was only the beginning of a tangled web of fate, magic, and ancient secrets.
....