Chapter 1.

"And strike!" My stick cut through the air aimlessly at my papa's command.

Though I could feel his satisfaction at the way he clapped his hands together at a slow rhythm. I wasn't quite convinced. I kept waiting until this training got fun. Where I went to war and fought.

"Papa, when am I going to fight real monsters?" I said with my eyes blindfolded

"When you learn to fight with both your heart and brain."

My face couldn't help but fall into a frown. Papa had to be kidding me. I had been training day and night and yet still I couldn't fight with my heart and brain.

What did papa mean by it?

His soft fingers slowly untied my blindfold, my eyes went from being in complete darkness to another type of darkness present in my papa's eyes. The scar just below his left eye always told me stories he would never confirm or maybe yet tell me. I steadied my crown... The tiara weighed a ton for crying out loud, but without it. Papa would never allow me to fight.

"It was very dark back then. I couldn't see." Papa smiled at what I said before slowly cupping my cheeks with his strong manly hands. His smile fell quicker than I expected.

"Even in darkness my dear. There's always something present there. Sometimes it requires not to see, but to feel. That is why you have to learn to fight with both your heart and brain." His eyes always had softened when he spoke to me. He took my tiny hand in his and walked me towards the end of the balcony. His now stretched tall figure which towered over mine looked up silently at the dark sky falling over the Imanu kingdom.

"There was a time in the history of our land, where our people knew peace. Where war was never considered until the reason was proven deadly to our gods. That was the time where our people were one. One soul, heart, living in one body. Our motherland." Papa always told me stories with pride. For the first time, I could sense the fear in his deep voice as he lowered it to tell the second part of his story. I listened attentively to what he said.

"When our gods were proven false, our unity scrambled down at us. In the last attempt to remain the empire that we once were, we tried uniting in the name of the one and only God that existed, all was in vain." Even I wasn't proud of the story this time around. But I still held my head up high as my papa did.

"We can still one day become one again. Papa." He looked down at me, with his lips stretched into a thin, weak smile.

"Trust me, I want to believe in it. But I can't. On the bright side, I believe in you. And if you believe in yourself, and believe in our unity. Then put-"

"Two and two together, and it's the same thing." He nodded as I completed his saying. His eyes held pride when he looked at me and I wanted that to always last for the rest of his life. I wanted to grow up fast and make my papa proud all the way.

Papa had picked me up from the ground and carried me in his arms as he walked towards the stairs that led to the inside of the castle.

"You spend too much with her for your own sake. You have sons to train. Kamaria is by no means going to take over the kingdom when you are gone. They will." Mother's eyes were lowered as she spoke to Papa, for many reasons she never looked him in the eye.

"I'll put her to sleep," Papa said calmly walking past her, outside his cabinet to the hallway that led towards my room.

Guards greeted him as he passed and I could feel the pride flowing through my papa's veins as he nodded at them. There was something in the way their shadows moved against the wall. A vision moved at a fast clip before my eyes. I was carried away by a flush of terror that made me cling to my papa's chest. I didn't know if it was just me being a kid, letting my brain play tricks on me, or if there was something minacious lurking in the dark.

When the door to my room creaked open as we entered, I buried my head in his shoulder.

"I don't want to sleep, please papa." His one hand gently patted my back, making me lie on the bed as he gently placed me on it.

"It's way past your sleeping time. " Papa and I always trained upstairs without no one knowing. It was our secret. Mother never knew it. I loved it, I wasn't like the other girls my age playing with dolls or the older girls waiting for a suitor. I was a warrior.

I might have only been six then but I have been continuously tormented by ominous dark clouds gathering above my kingdom. Every time that I laid my head on the soft pillow and allowed for my body to relax as I slowly fell into darkness, I would see those clouds, the minute I would stand up the dream would vanish into thin air.

I was awakened by screams and thick smoke from the fire. People rushed in and out and there were pools of blood everywhere in the corridors. It wasn't a dream. I was awake.

I rushed towards my papa's cabinet only to find blood everywhere. Bodies lying down, and none of them were of my papa. A hand reached out to me from behind the curtain, for a split of a second I considered shouting and running away but after seeing who it was I could as well just fall into the ground with relief.

My brother Kya and I hid behind the curtains, holding our breathes as the door creaked opened. Whoever it was, was for sure an enemy as the person took their time placing their foot on the ground slowly. We both had our eyes closed but I decided to open mine and peep through the double curtains.