Section 1: The World Within Sight

Chapter 1: Leaving.

She woke from her sleep. A repetitive noise had pulled her from her dreams. Perhaps someone was hammering wood. Except. there was no one to hammer wood here, not where she lived. So, she sat up, stretched, and came to the realization that the noise was that of a fist knocking on a wooden door, the front door to her house.

A familiar voice shouted from outside.
"Lyna! Mira!" It exclaimed, wanting to gather the attention of the two named people.
Lyna walked out of her room, and turned to the right, towards a corridor, where there stood the front door. She unlocked and pulled open this door. Her sight was met with the familiar faces of two people she considered friends, Kate and Emilia, as she knew them.
"Lyna! Did I wake you up?" Kate, the purple-haired, orange-eyed lady with cat ears atop her head, lacking Human ears asked.

"Mira is dead." Lyna answered.
There was a silence, as the two girls, who stood before Lyna, outside, on the gravel road, looked back at her in disbelief. In the reflection of their eyes, she could see the dreary expression on her own face. That emotionless appearance.
"No. When did- When did Mira pass?" Kate asked her, an increasing note of sadness in her voice.

"After my birth hour, she called me to her bedside. She slowly. Slowly and quietly. let go of life." Lyna answered, not able to bring back the details of what happened.
Again there was silence. A breeze rustled the leaves of distant trees. Grass flowed and shone with the light of day. Birds flew in the distance. The world hadn't changed at all. It wouldn't recognize the death of a person, a grandmother who lived alone with her granddaughter.

Mira, Lyna's grandmother, lived a long life, nonetheless. Clearly, she did not regret anything as Lyna, who only recently turned four years old, did. How much more she could have done with her grandmother if she had known it would end so soon. She had so many chances, all the opportunities to do so, and did not. And now, here she stood.

"Is she still lying there?" The golden-haired and golden-eyed Human girl wearing rather expensive clothes, whose name is Emilia, asked Lyna.
"Yes. I'll leave her room permanently closed." She answered.
"I do not mean to insult Mira. however, it has been thirty hours. Her body will decay, and it will not be in your interest to witness that process." Emilia told her, implying she should do something with her body.

Lyna didn't have an answer. She knew bodies began decaying three periods or so after they died. Much faster if left in nature. It had been thirty hours, as Emilia said, which was surely enough time to begin the decay. Lyna did not want to be there when it happened.

"Come with us, let Mira rest here." Kate offered, standing aside so that Lyna might come with them.
She stared at Kate for a moment, pensively. In a sense. Lyna was free to do as she wanted now. There was a very weird sensation within her. She didn't know if it was good or bad.
"Yes. Okay. I'll come with you." She said to them with a sense of uncertainty in her voice.

But first, Lyna walked back into her house, into her room. Because if she was going to follow them out into the world, out of town, out of her life-long home. She would at least bring her soul weapon. She called it, the Harvest. It reminded her of how farmers used a sickle to harvest crops. Except, with a blade on both sides made for combat as opposed to crop cutting. Lyna had found this weapon as a child, in a ruin hidden in the forests that surround the town, a place where she has not returned to ever since Mira's first fall.

She picked it up from the floor, where it lay, and walked out of her room. Lyna glanced around once more, looking at the familiar and welcoming assembly of walls and furniture that made up her house, and towards a door at the far end of the main corridor that led to the room, in which Mira surely still lay. A part of her wanted to go inside and look, but she feared Emilia would be right. Lyna didn't even want to think about what state Mira might be in now.

"Thanks for everything." Lyna quietly pronounced, as she turned her back to the room Mira lay in, and with her weapon in hand, walked outside to stand with her friends.
She closed the front door, locked it with the house key, and placed the key under a stone next to the path. She'd likely never return, but it was her habit the few times she did leave, to place the key under a stone or rock nearby.

"Hey, Lyna. Believe me, it'll be better this way." Kate stated, implying a better life ahead of Lyna.
And. Kate was probably right. Lyna needed to accept it. Move on. She needed to leave the place she once thought of as home and go out into the world. It's what Mira wanted for Lyna. In fact, Mira had said so, on so many occasions, that Lyna should leave her to explore the world and enjoy what there was to experience.

Maybe Lyna should have listened. Maybe she should have gone out and discovered things. Maybe she'd have had stories to tell Mira. Maybe, if she had left when Mira fell, she'd be back now to tell her about all the wonderful things she discovered. And Mira would live longer, reinvigorated by this wonder she surely didn't know. But that's all gone now. Mira is dead. The one person who looked after Lyna lay to rest for the last time, never to awaken and see the light of day. Never again to call upon her name.

The Eye of Darkness, which is the source of the light of day, shone down as on any other day. The three Moons still drift beyond the sky. The soft white clouds still floated high above. The birds still flew below the clouds. The people of Drack, her hometown still seemed to emerge from their houses, ignorant of Mira's death.

None of them changed. Stones and gravel still covered the road. Grass still blew in waves while trees wobbled gently in the wind. Her friends, her two friends whom she walked with had plans to go to a city, some kind of territory much larger than a village. They too were mostly unaltered by the death of Mira. The world as a whole has not changed at all. Only she bore the memory of her grandmother, while the rest of the world went on.

"I'm going to become an Adventurer." Kate admitted to Lyna.
"Those people who fight to protect places with no armies, and who help people for rewards?" Lyna asked her, trying to remember what an Adventurer was.
"Sort of yeah!" Kate answered, hinting that there was more to it.
She didn't have much to say about it. Though she figured helping her friends might be worthwhile. Perhaps she should also become an Adventurer, to earn rewards for fighting dangerous creatures.

"Where are you two going?" Lyna asked them, knowing they did have plans to leave to a place, but forgetting the details.
"The Regno di Insebia. I want to enroll in their Accademia Reale, because if I do so, and pay the entry fee, I can legally change my family name." Emilia said, clearly having some well-lain plan to mess with her family, the Elsing family.

The story, for Emilia, was that her parents had betrothed her to a man from a noble family of Insebia, aiming to allow the Elsing estate to become part of the nation. However, due to how Insebia divides up land, the whole of Drack would become part of the Insebian territory, including everything that followed the road between the two territories.

Emilia, of course, didn't want to live life being a tool for her family. And so, taking on some private tutoring lessons, she learnt countless subjects Lyna couldn't even guess about, and honed her skills with magic. Since each nation has laws of their own, they could enforce their own rules. Insebia happened to be the most likely to both allow Emilia her current comforts, provided she could pay her tuition, and allowed her to choose a formal name for herself. This does cause the Academia Reale to be a slightly controversial point, though the academy stood within Insebia before the nation was called Insebia, so it has quite some influence.

Of course, Lyna didn't really understand what much of this meant, or why Emilia refused to be called Elsing, but she knew Emilia had personal reasons, and it was beyond her understanding to give assumptions. Perhaps, just like how Lyna's emotions weren't felt by either of her friends.

Kate had her own reasons to travel as well. Unlike Emilia, Kate was born as a commoner in the town. An Animan of an impure cat's breed. In her case, she was born with narrow pupils, cat-like ears and a tail about an arm in length. Kate's is part of a large family, in which every one of her siblings, including herself, has had to move out as soon as they could, or work hard to keep their place in the household, since they're a relatively impoverished family.

Until now, Kate had been illegitimately trading goods and completing commissions for people who didn't or couldn't post one to the Adventurers Guild. The commissions typically involved skills she was known to be good with, primarily those around defending a location or using her heightened senses to listen to or spot for things that seemed off in an area. Additionally, Kate, likely due to her nature, has a strong intuition.

Lyna could not boast of any past work. The only thing she had was unparalleled fighting skills with her soul weapon. The few times she got to use it around her friends she had proven her ability to hold her own against groups of Goblins. Perhaps her appearance also helped to further deter foes, as her bright red eyes and vibrant red hair, along with the dark grey hooded robe...