Always were there gazes full of hate, disdain and disgust.

Of what she had done, she didn\'t know-she was never told.

And it was so from birth.

But on this day, it reached the tipping point.

Aligned in front her mother, with their purple clothes shimmering as their accessories glittered.

Amongst them were those giggling at her from behind their mother\'s clothes, happy at her misfortune and making no effort to keep it hidden.

The announcement that blew it all up then began.

"Under the discretion of the house guardians, from this day forth, you are stripped of the name Henderson. The family sever all ties with you!"

Though, delivered in a soft tone, in the ears of child Valentine, it was louder than thunder.

She immediately became weaker, falling on her back.

__________

"No!" Valentine barked, snapping awake.

A look around restores her to reality.

All she had seen was a dream, or rather, a nightmare.

\'This dream again\'

A nightmare recurring daily.

A touch of her forehead reveals its high temperature. "My head"

Standing up, she avoided hitting her blade sheathed at the side of her bed.

Into the washroom she washes her face, weary it was with heavy eyelids.

She sighs. \'This isn\'t funny\'

Her encounter with Ezra had awoken hidden memories, bad ones. Now, they didn\'t want to go back into hiding.

No matter what she tried, she was unable to put the memories at the back of her mind.

They were adamant about being at the forefront.

With her mother already heavily burdened, she didn\'t want to add to it and so, she kept to herself.

After a week of unsuccessful testing, she decided to go into indoor training to find a solution and most importantly, grow stronger.

But…

*Bam*

She punched the wall.

\'I haven\'t been able to train a single time since I got here!\'

So far she\'d been unable to do that either.

Simply unsheathing her blade would have her bad memories automatically begin flashbacks, forcing her to hurriedly sheath the blade.

She sat on her bed, holding her head in frustration.

\'Why is this happening?\'

Her eyes became teary, once again, she was thrusted into her hidden memories.

_________

In a butter coloured room, child Valentine walks in to see her mother reading a book with a red cover, hefty it was, with pages stacked.

Child Valentine, in her yellow gown, had her eyes spilling water as she pulled her mother\'s dress.

"Mom, why does everyone hate me?"

Her mother looked away from the book to her, placing Valentine on her lap.

Elisa tapped Valentine\'s nose. "Everyone doesn\'t hate you-I love you"

"I know," Valentine replied. "But why do all the others hate me?"

Her mother paused for a long time.

"Is it because I don\'t have a father?"

Elisa was shocked. "Sweetie don\'t ever say that! Of course you have a father"

"But where is he? Why won\'t he see me? Doesn\'t he know I miss him?"

"Of course he does…but he can\'t see you right now"

"Why?"

The mother paused again. Saying,"I promise to tell you-

-when I\'m older" 

Valentine repeated after her, glaring at her mother as she jumped off her lap.

"That\'s what you always say!" She said, running to the door. "Tell me something else!"

Slamming it shut as she runs away, tears spilling all the way.

_________

Born in 1698, Valentine was ushered into a family of nobles.

The Hendersons.

But what should have been a dream was a nightmare.

After the first years of friendliness with her siblings, she was suddenly branded an outcast, used, betrayed and then exempt by all her peers, friendless.

Relegated to being used as a bag for insults for years.

How would one ever know she was the oldest amongst them?

And it didn\'t stop there. No, Lest her mother, the adults treated the same, in some ways even worse.

Their gazes were always leaking scorn and disdain.

Her mother did well to protect, but a mother can only do so much.

Anything and everything she did was criticized, she could never get it right.

The way she walked was wrong.

The way she smiled was wrong.

The way she stared was wrong.

She was forever inferior, disgusting and inadequate.

Under such circumstances, her face of jolly quickly became hollow, mirroring her dead spirit.

Her self-esteem had evaporated.

At the same time, her brain aged faster, bringing forth uncommon maturity from a young age.

Insults became like water, sprinkled on her at any given time, and Valentine learnt to treat it as such.d

Essentially, as she would realize, her existence in itself was a source of irritation to these so called \'family members\'

Once this was clear, she simply stopped trying.

Then, it finally happened.

On a day like any other, they were exiled!

Valentine was dreadful, fainting in the face of such horrible news.

But looking at it now, that was the best thing that ever happened to her.

From there, she found herself living in the royal academy, where her mother had begun working.

It would be so for the years to come.

Everyday became great days as the sun always seemed to shine brighter.

With knowledge at her disposal, Valentine dug in, staying away from other people.

The word \'friend\' became a blasphemous statement to her, for obvious reasons.ssss

She later understood from her mother what had actually transpired leading to their exile.

To save her daughter from total mental breakdown, Elisa had made preparations to leave.

In the advent of this, they were quick to exile them to save themselves shame.

Even that was thanks to her mother\'s being a space mage, else they might have not been allowed to leave.

But it was more than that.

The heir to the Handerson family, Nelsen Handerson was her father.

Unfortunately, just after getting her mother pregnant, he died of poison.

So the whole family had been riding on the result of Elisa\'s birth.

They all wished for a boy who would directly stand as heir.

Instead, Valentine was born, and that sowed hatred in their hearts.

So every time they saw her, they were reminded of their inability to get a boy.

With her questions answered, her heart was at peace, Valentine could now move forward in her life.

With a little nudging from her mother, she began to interact with students,  trying to understand them, who were by all means, vastly different from her.

As she learned things, her psyche began to change.

As it did, a second personality was created, one placed on the surface.

Unwilling to experience her dark memories again, she swore to grow in strength.

Her mother adviced her to become a knight-as that was her father\'s path.

Then, to overcome her fear of friends, surrounding herself with admirers helped, and then came the joy of owning attention.

And as she would find, attention was easy to get when one was strong.

The stronger she got, the less she could be ignored.

For someone ignored through most of her childhood, the attention and praise was intoxicating, to say the least.

The boys simply loved her.

As did most of the girls.

Inadvertently, getting attention became a way for her to evaluate herself.

Which was why she fought Ezra, because he was taking away all the attention.

After taking a beating though, she calmed.

Then, something else happened.

For the whatever reason, Valentine found herself admiring someone else for the first time in her life

A very weird feeling…but, as she would realize, wasn\'t too bad.

Her curiosity was sparked.

She sought to know more about this person who was able to evoke feelings from her.

Apparently, her mother had the same idea.

So she joined Ezra\'s team.

Unfortunately, because Ezra didn\'t spar with girls, she didn\'t get to see her often.

But she found out about him from siblings, who were more accommodating than she was expecting.

For one, his life seemed similar to hers in a few ways.

Then, from the stories heard, he seemed more obsessed with strength than she thought she could ever be.

\'Why though?\' she wondered.

He\'d never seem to notice her, at least, not like others did, his gaze only lasted a few seconds.

A bruise to her ego that one.

But it helped that he didn\'t seem to notice other girls either…

…Or maybe not? Could it be something else?

She needed to be sure, but she could never see through him.

Those black eyes of his always looked to suck her in, like an ocean, too much was hidden within.

Heeding her mother\'s advice, her first objective was to get him to notice her while observing him.

Easier said than done.

For one, he seemed interested in nothing other than strength.

So her thoughts were, \'If I\'m strong enough, he\'ll naturally notice me\'

Since (she thought) Ezra was in Expert rank, it didn\'t seem too hard to get to his level.

Couldn\'t have been more wrong.

Getting serious with Roxanne and Velora in their spars, she was shocked to find them above her.

Heck, they were on par with Umeron, the former number one.

Worse, when Roxanne said the boys were either stronger or equal with her in strength, her heart almost jumped out!

She thought Ezra was the only monster.

\'I was mistaken\'

\'They\'re all monsters!\'

Again her worldview shattered, reforming once more.

It took her a while to set her sights straight, but she did.

The objective then changed from defeating Ezra, to defeating his vassals to reach his level.

Again, easier said than done.

Though, she improved in leaps and bounds.

Then, the beast tide hits and the sudden call to war disrupted things.

Ezra\'s effect on the battlefield was so strong it sidelined everyone else.

Valentine didn\'t try to compete.

Suicide was not the goal.

Then she saw him escape somewhere.

It\'d be the first time he\'d be alone, so she followed him, unwilling to miss the opportunity.

Alas, what she met was not in her expectations.

Standing in his way was a sure-fire way to catch his attention, and it did.

Unfortunately, he wasn\'t in a good mood and she almost had herself beheaded.

She could remember it vividly.

The fear of death gripped her senses like a beast\'s jaw.

Her brain froze when she looked into his eyes.

In that moment, it bore onto her figure as if to devour.

Whatever he had been looking for, goodness wasn\'t his intention.

Remembering it still sent shivers down her spine.

The intensity of it was so great she instinctively used the pendant-an artifact given by her mother in times of endangerment.

Thinking about it now…

\'That\'s when it started\'

The moment they locked eyes, her dark memories awakened.

And they\'d refuse to go back into dormancy ever since.

During the day after, she lost every emotion.

No appetite to do or eat anything.

Though, under her mother\'s constant complaints, she reluctantly took two spoons of food.

Throughout, her thoughts wounded on the issue of death.

With it as the ultimate truth, and  no emotion around to sway her perspective, many things became clear.

\'What role would all the amassed attention amount to once I die?\'

\'Nothing\'

\'Why exactly do I want to be strong so much?\'

\'Because I don\'t want to be treated like \'that\' again\'

\'But is that all there is to it?\'

\'No\' She shook her head.

\'Deep inside, I still want prove them wrong for exiling me and my mother and…I want to gain their approval\'

\'How does this help me?\'

\'It does not\'

\'Is being strong even worth it?\'

\'Yes, I can spend more time with mother that way and stop being a burden\'

\'Then, how strong should I aim for?\'

\'...As strong as possible\'

\'What exactly am I doing with my life?\'

\'Too many needless things\'

\'That needs to change\'

\'Where do I wish to end up?\'

\'...I have no answer for that…yet\'

\'Why did I…

For the whole day, she screened her existence like such.

Her brain aged even higher as a result.

It took three days for her emotions to set back in.

By then, a lot of things had changed.

Valentine was a whole other person.

For one, she told her mother she wasn\'t attending the academy anymore.

Spending her time-parts of life-to impress others was beyond stupid.

That phase had passed.

Instead, her priority was to reach master rank. At that point, she\'d be able to offload her burdens off the shoulders of her mother.

The earlier the better.

As for the matter of wedding Ezra, surprisingly, she was still undecided.

She leaned into not doing so, but she\'d ask her mother before making a final decision.

Every time her dark memories surfaced, so would his face, specifically, the beast like glare that prompted her transformation.

While thankful that their encounter helped her mature, it was irritating to have him in her head.

If nothing else, her top objective was to repay her mother\'s favour-something she hadn\'t properly understood before.

But…

_______

"Ugh!"

She was unable to even begin training, because no matter how much she convinced herself, those dark memories contained a sleeping fear.

One great enough to keep her from taking action.

It\'s been five weeks since she came indoors for training.

Yet had nothing to show for it lest shaking hands and dark circles underneath her eyes.

__________

A lot of time was wasted trying to bypass the fear or simply shut it out.

With that being unsuccessful, it became clear.

\'To advance in strength, or in anything at this rate, I need to face this, face it and win\'

She couldn\'t fake it nor bypass it-she had to face it!

Garbed in white armour with her hair tied to a point, she straps on her katana.

To defeat it, she thought it was best to take it from its root cause.

\'I have to go and see him\'

It was time to pay Ezra a visit.