The following is authored by Lubina, who wished to reflect on the portions of her life I missed until our meeting all those years ago.

  My father always said I was a resilient girl. I would often fall and scrape my knees, bump my head, run through thorned branches—any hazard that existed around me, I was sure to find. My brothers, of whom there were five, would claim I was cursed. And in their post-humorous defense, perhaps they were not wrong. I was often told that wherever I was, trouble found fertile fields to grow, that I was some sort of poison to the luck of the land and all who traversed it. I believe now that this fact of my existence truly brought me and the False Leper together all of those years ago. It was not his bad luck, nor mine, but a swirling, uncontrollable collision of the two.

  I grew up in the rugged pine-forest-covered hillocks of Vaastok, north of the Valley of the Vanbatar and thus far north of that old mining town where the False Leper grew up. Not just that, but far too was it from the dark and creeping whispers and crawling monsters of the ancient western forests. Even further from the dark shores beyond them, from which all manner of evil things spawn.

  When I was a girl, these things were more fairytales than truth, even if the old Delm'ri claimed otherwise. Their history of times beyond human understanding was our superstition in modernity. But none of this mattered much to our daily lives.

  My father was a carpenter, and my mother was a washwoman. Both were raised in the pine forests, the newest generation in a line stretching its roots deep into the Vaastok's glades. We loved our home, maybe more than any other folk ever have. When the Heretical Migration started, my parents told me they were welcomed with open arms. Arms were so open that with their aid, my father erected a suitable barrack on our property just for them to have a place while they tried to build a new life in the region. When I was born, many still lived with us, but their numbers fell as time passed, and they built their steads out in the wild. I grew my first girlhood crush on one of the Elder Gods' worshipping boys my age; I had my first kiss with him as well, the tiny and icky little thing that it was for kids our age. But he was a sweet boy, and our parents raised us righteously. I feared not him, and he feared not me; it was an understanding beyond tolerance.

  But many among the old kingdoms were not so tolerant as we. When strange rumors began traveling from the west, darkness and fear grew in the hearts of the weak-willed folk of Vaastok. One evening, Torda and I played in the forest—foraging mushrooms, picking up little creepy chitinous critters, and pretending to play warriors and sorcerers.

  "Do your people still do magick?" I asked him, much to his surprise. His tiny, round face squeezed together as he thought.

  "Well... sometimes. But you can't tell anyone, Lubina! You have to promise, okay?"

  So enamored with the wondrous possibility, I shook my head violently and profusely agreed, "I won't! I promise! Do you know someone who does it? Have you seen them do it?"

  He responded shyly, "My mama does. All mama's from our homeland do... but she doesn't like to do it in front of me. She says it isn't safe for children to see."

  I slapped my hands against my cheeks in surprise and awe before disappointment set in, and I looked to my make-believe wand fashioned from a duck's feathers and a stick, "So you don't think she would show me then, huh?"

  "I don't think so. I'm sorry." The boy replied earnestly. I was disappointed and disgruntled beyond measure, not at him, but at its unfairness.

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  Later that evening, as my father and I walked to the bathhouse, I told him about it quite loudly. I had been sworn to secrecy, and I took only a few hours to break that oath. My father quickly hushed me, pulled me near one of the great stone fences that lined the exterior road, and scolded me quietly.

  "I'm aware, Lubina. But you cannot tell anyone that. Torda should not have told you to begin with. Forget you even know it." I nodded, watching his eyes shift to the dimming village's homes, trees, and shadowy corners.

  On the night of the next new moon, when the Vanbatar was brightest in the sky, our household was awoken to echoing screams. My parents scrambled awake and told us to remain indoors. With their crossbows in hand, they left the home, and we, against their wishes, followed.

  Cries came from all directions, and great fires roared at the homesteads nearest us. Through the trees, shadowed figures lurked about, barking scared commands and sightings to each other, like bloodhounds barking to communicate the presence of their prey. My parents rushed to the barracks built on our property, where Torda and his parents lived, when they noticed the jar was left ajar and axed upon.

  My brothers hurried after them, and a young, frightened me followed. I heard my father's crossbow string thumping as he left my sight and heard him yelling—the second thumping of a crossbow muffled behind the doors just as I rounded them.

  Two folks from the village lay dead, two that I knew. That we all knew, their son, a grown man, was being held down by my brothers as my father reloaded his crossbow. As I looked around the horrid scene, I found Torda's father lying just a few feet from me with his skull split; clear that he had tried as well as he could to hold the door shut while the intruders pushed in.

  Further back, laid across a hale bale, was the decapitated body of my sweet, beautiful young friend. His arms are down by his sides, his body locked in place, his knees bent, and his feet crossed. His barely conscious mother coddled the head of her son, his eyes turned inward toward her bosom as she silently drowned the world in her tears.

  "Get him up," my father demanded with a fit of anger and power in his voice none of us had ever heard. My brothers obliged, lifting the intruder's son and pushing him against a support beam.

  "Why in the name of the Saintly have you done this? Have you gone mad?" He screamed, spittle and droplets of blood sprayed onto the young man.

  "You lot were harboring evil! We only came to cleanse the sorcerers from the—"

  Before he could finish, my father pinned the man's head to the beam with a bolt through the mouth. He turned around with determined eyes to find me while motioning for my brothers to follow their mother outside and ready the horses and wagons.

  I had wandered away, dropping to my knees before the grieving mother of Torda.

  "I'm so sorry—I, he told me not to tell anyone, and I told my dad, and someone must have—"

  "It's not your fault, girl. I promise." She wheezed, taking my hand, "They would have come for us eventually. We always knew that risk."

  I swore an oath to the dying woman, "I promise I won't let this stand... I won't let this happen ever again."

  "Stick out your tongue, girl. Let me give you something. Something that will let you protect others."

  I hesitated but did as she requested for her final wish. She dipped two of her fingers into her wound, spread the blood across my tongue like butter on bread, and then closed my mouth. The taste was repulsive, and I was shocked by the strangeness of the act.

  "Now give it time. And hope. And let it—grow." She sputtered out before her eyes closed. I did not speak for nearly two weeks. Not until the night my family was slaughtered and the False Leper and Brother Granvich became my guardians.

  My father pulled me from the woman, looked upon her with a depth of sadness surpassing that of any ocean, and silently wept in guilt, and as his tears touched my face and tender hands, his guilt became my own.

  We loaded into the wagons with another family, though it was only the mother and her daughter we could save as they poured out onto the forest road with the Saintly in pursuit like a pack of wild dogs.

  That night, I saw the worst humanity had to offer—the worst that the Saintly had to offer. Now, every night, I lay awake and wonder why the Vanbatar did nothing as the Saintess Fraust, their sister under the Dead God, exacted her final, trivial, meaningless revenge on innocents. But my faith in the martyrs never waivered because I knew that some of those bright stars above would dim with regret at their inability to act upon the world.