Tragedy

The wind blew with a touch of fierceness, sweeping through the streets of Sumeru like an invisible river carrying whispers from distant lands. The sound of children playing in the distance mingled with the low murmur of adults conducting their business, traders haggling over goods, scholars discussing their latest findings, parents calling out to their wandering little ones. It was a peaceful scene, the kind of tranquil afternoon that made everything feel right with the world. Everything was moving smoothly, harmoniously, as if the universe itself had exhaled a long, contented sigh.

Among those enjoying this calm and comforting day in Sumeru was a young girl named Aleva. Her small feet stepped joyfully against the direction of the wind. Laughter spilled freely from her tiny lips, a sound that seemed to make the very air around her shimmer with happiness. Her breath came in short, quick gasps as she finally arrived in front of her home. It was not a large house, nor a particularly grand one, but it was filled with the warmth of her parents' love, and that made it the most beautiful place in all of Sumeru.

“Dad! Mom!” Aleva called out enthusiastically, her voice ringing through the doorway even before she had opened it. She could barely contain herself. She could not wait to tell them what had happened, how she had just won the game against all her friends, how she had been the fastest. She imagined her mother's proud smile, her father's hearty laugh, the way they would wrap their arms around her and tell her that she was their greatest treasure.

Her small hand reached for the doorknob, twisting it with familiar ease. But the moment the door swung open and she stepped inside, her brow furrowed in confusion. The rooms of her house were shrouded in darkness. That was strange. Her father and mother never closed the windows during the day. In fact, her mother would always scold them—both Aleva and her father—if they ever forgot to let the sunlight pour into their home. The morning light, her mother would say, was a blessing that should never be wasted. So why, then, was everything so dark?

“Dad? Mom?” Aleva called out again, though her voice had lost some of its earlier brightness. She ran further inside, her small feet padding softly against the floor. Perhaps her parents were planning a surprise for her. Perhaps they had hidden something special behind the darkness, something that would make her eyes light up with joy. She held onto that hope as she rounded the corner toward the kitchen.

“A... Dad...” The words died in her throat. Her eyes widened, growing round and enormous in her small face. Her parents were lying on the kitchen floor, their bodies crumpled and motionless. But that was not the worst part. The worst part was the aura—a dark, purplish-black mist that oozed from their bodies like smoke from dying embers. It curled upward into the air.

“DAD! MOM!” Aleva screamed, her voice tearing through the silence as she rushed toward her parents' bodies. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks, tracing wet paths across her skin before dripping onto the floor below. She reached out her hands, desperate to touch them.

“Ale...va...” Her mother's eyes fluttered open, just barely. Her hand lifted with enormous effort, trembling violently, and positioned itself between Aleva's reaching fingers and her own body. She was blocking her daughter to touch them.

“Run,” her mother whispered, using the very last fragments of her strength.

Aleva shook her head, tears flying from her cheeks. No. No, she could not leave them. She could not abandon her parents here, in this tragedy, while she ran away to save herself.

“Hm? A child?” The voice came from behind her, dripping with an aura so malevolent that it seemed to suck the warmth from the very air. Aleva's entire body went rigid. Every muscle locked into place. Her blood turned to ice in her veins. Slowly, she turned her head to look over her shoulder.

It was not human. The figure standing behind her was tall—taller than any person she had ever seen—and from its body radiated that same dark purple aura, but magnified a hundredfold, a thousandfold. It pulsed and writhed like living shadows, like smoke given form and intent. Aleva could not move. Her legs would not obey her. Her voice would not come out. She could only stand there, frozen like a statue, tears still flowing endlessly down her cheeks.

The figure approached her slowly, savoring her fear. One of its fingers reached toward her face. Aleva tried to move, tried to run, but her body had betrayed her completely. Her legs felt like water, like melted wax, incapable of holding her weight or carrying her anywhere. She could only watch, helpless and horrified, as that finger drew closer and closer to her left eye.

“ARGH!” The finger plunged into her eye socket without mercy, quick and brutal. Aleva screamed—a raw, primal shriek of agony that tore through the quiet afternoon. The pain was beyond anything she had ever imagined, a white-hot explosion that consumed every corner of her mind. Cold sweat poured from her skin, mixing with the blood that was already beginning to flow.

“AAAA!” She was still screaming when her left eyeball was ripped from its socket, still screaming when she saw it clutched in the figure's hand, still screaming as she pressed her palm against the now-empty cavity where her eye used to be. Blood gushed between her fingers, warm and slick and endless. Her voice cracked and gave out, reduced to hoarse, broken sobs.

The figure gazed at the eyeball in its hand with satisfaction, turning it this way and that as if admiring a precious gem. Then it reached for Aleva again.

But before its fingers could touch her, something collided with the figure from the side. It was Aleva's mother. With the very last dregs of her strength, she threw herself against the monstrous figure, wrapping her arms around it, holding it back.

“ALEVRA, RUN!” her mother screamed. She did not have much time. She did not have much strength. Every second she held on drained more of her remaining life.

“Ah... ah...” Aleva, confused and blinded by pain, finally obeyed. She stumbled toward the door, her small legs pumping as fast as they could carry her. Blood still streamed from her empty eye socket, painting crimson streaks down her face and clothes. She was going to find help. She was going to bring someone back to save her parents. That was the thought that drove her forward, that kept her feet moving even as her body screamed for her to stop.

“Aleva... live.” Her mother watched the small retreating back of her daughter, her gaze filled with infinite tenderness, infinite love. She was sad—not because she was about to die, but because she would not get to see Aleva grow up. She would not get to stand beside her daughter through the years, to watch her bloom into the wonderful person she was destined to become. That was the only regret that weighed upon her heart as she faced the end.

“Disgusting human.” A smile was the last expression painted upon Aleva mother's face just as the figure's hand sliced through her body and everything went dark.

“HELP! HELP!” Aleva ran toward the center of the city, toward the place where people gathered, where voices were loud and life was abundant. She burst into the crowded square, blood-soaked and screaming, and everyone turned to stare. Confusion and panic rippled through the crowd. How could a little girl be running like this, covered in so much blood? What horror had befallen her?

Someone stepped forward, a kind-faced stranger, and reached out to calm the trembling child.

“PLEASE! MY DAD AND MY MOM—THEY ARE AT HOME! SOMEONE IS ATTACKING THEM!” Aleva grabbed the stranger's clothes with desperate, bloodied fingers, her voice rising into a frantic scream. She poured every ounce of her remaining strength into that cry for help, that desperate plea for someone to save the two people she loved most in the entire world.

“Dad... Mom...” But her small body had reached its limit. The pain, the shock, the terror—it was all too much. The world began to blur. Her knees buckled. Her grip on the stranger's clothes loosened. And then she fell, collapsing into the stranger's arms, her one remaining eye fluttering closed as unconsciousness claimed her at last.

Aleva's remaining eye flew open with a jolt, as if pulled awake by an invisible hand yanking her from the depths of a nightmare. Her breath came in ragged, desperate gasps. Cold sweat traced slow, cold paths down her temples, dripping onto the pillow beneath her head. Her small body trembled uncontrollably, still trapped somewhere between the horror of her memories and the fragile safety of waking consciousness.

“Da..Dad...Mom...” Her voice came out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper, raw and broken, barely escaping her throat no matter how much she wanted to scream. The words scraped against her vocal cords like shards of glass.

Her eye slowly focused on the ceiling above her—a familiar ceiling, yet one that did not belong to her home. The wooden beams, the gentle curve of the architecture, the way the light filtered through the windows. She had seen this ceiling before, many times, though she could not immediately place it. She turned her head to the side, the movement sending a dull ache radiating through her skull, and found a familiar figure sitting nearby. A man with hair as bright as the sun itself, whose presence radiated a warmth like the summer wind—comforting and gentle.

“Kaveh?” Aleva murmured, her voice still thick with sleep and pain and confusion.

“You are awake,” Kaveh said, rising from his chair and approaching her bedside. His blackish red avian eyes scanned her face, her bandaged eye socket, the pallor of her skin. He was checking her condition, though he was careful not to touch her. He was afraid that any contact, any sudden movement, might cause the little girl even more pain than she was already enduring.

“Does anything hurt?” he asked softly, his voice gentle.

“Dad... mom...” Aleva's weak voice echoed through the modest room, bouncing off the walls like a ghost searching for somewhere to rest.

Kaveh did not respond to her murmured words. He could not. Instead, he avoided her gaze, turning his attention to the clay pitcher resting on the small table beside the bed. He busied his hands with pouring water into a cup, focusing on the simple mechanical motion—the tilt of the pitcher, the steady stream of liquid, the way the cup slowly filled to the brim. Anything to keep from having to meet that single, searching eye.

“They are dead, aren't they?” Aleva's question cut through the room.

Kaveh's hands stilled. The stream of water faltered and stopped. He stood there, frozen, the pitcher suspended in mid-air, utterly incapable of forming an answer. How could he answer? How could he possibly put into words the truth that would shatter whatever remained of this child's world?

“You need to rest more,” Kaveh said finally, the only response he could manage. He finished pouring the water with slightly trembling hands and brought the cup to Aleva's side. “Here, drink this.”

He helped her drink, his strong arm carefully supporting her small, fragile body as she lifted her head from the pillow. She sipped the water slowly, each swallow accompanied by a small wince of pain as the liquid traveled down her dry, inflamed throat. Kaveh watched every movement she made with a heavy heart.

This was the same girl who always argued with him, who always sought out opportunities to pick fights, who seemed to take a strange delight in getting on his nerves. And now she lay here, powerless and broken. The little girl who constantly drove him to exasperation now seemed so terribly fragile, so terribly small. Kaveh had never imagined that cruel fate would find its way to this child when she had only just turned eight years old. Eight springs. Eight summers. That was all the world had given her before it decided to tear everything away.

“Thank you,” the girl whispered, her voice hoarse and raw, and Kaveh gently helped her lie back down against the pillow.

“Have... have my dad and mom already been buried?” The question once again rendered Kaveh speechless. He did not know how to answer. He did not know if there was any answer that would not cause her more pain. But in the end, he responded with a single, short word.

“Yes.”

The room fell silent once more. This was the second time the space they occupied together had been filled with such heavy, suffocating silence. Normally, whenever they met, the girl would find some reason to start an argument with him, or he would inadvertently do something to annoy her—never intentionally, but it always seemed to happen anyway. Their relationship had always been built on bickering and teasing and the comfortable friction of two people who cared about each other but would never admit it.

This silence was different. It was the same silence that had filled this very room years ago, when news had arrived that Kaveh's own father had died. The same silence—suffocating, sorrowful, drowning in grief that had nowhere to go. Back then, Kaveh had sat in this same house, surrounded by the same walls, and felt the world collapse around him. Now history was repeating itself, and the weight of that memory pressed down on him like a physical force.

“Do not worry,” Kaveh said finally, breaking the silence with an offer he hoped might give her something to hold onto. “You can stay with us.” His voice was soft but steady, carrying a certainty he hoped she could feel.

After all, his family and Aleva's family had been close friends for as long as anyone could remember. They had known each other since childhood. Kaveh could still recall the day Aleva was born—a tiny, red, wrinkled thing wrapped in soft cloth, screaming at the top of her tiny lungs. He had been a small boy then, and he had been the first person after her parents to hold her tiny foot in his hands, marveling at how something so small could exist in the world. Despite how irritating he often found her, despite how she drove him to frustration, she was a dear friend to him. And at a moment like this, he could not possibly abandon her.

“Mhm. Thank you,” Aleva murmured, her voice barely audible. There was no emotion in it.

Kaveh fell silent again, unsure how to interpret the feelings swirling within the girl lying before him. She was not screaming. She was not crying. She simply lay there, staring at his ceiling with a hollow, vacant gaze. No waves of sadness rippled across her face, no visible cracks in her composure. It was as if she had retreated somewhere deep inside herself, somewhere no one could reach.

Kaveh did not want to overwhelm her with forced comfort or empty platitudes. He understood this feeling, this same numbness that had visited him years ago, the strange silence that followed devastating loss. The words of others had felt like noise then, meaningless and intrusive. What he had needed most was simply to be left alone with his grief, to process it in his own way, in his own time.

So he decided to do the same for Aleva. He would let her mourn in her own way, in her own silence. He would be nearby if she needed him, but he would not force her to speak, to cry, to emote in the way others might expect. Grief was a private thing, a solitary journey, and the only gift he could offer her now was the space to walk that path alone, with the quiet knowledge that she was not entirely abandoned in the dark.