***
Beneath the moonlight, with the dying embers of the campfire beside her, Adaria watched the night sky and wondered how everything had come to this. She couldn’t quite put a finger on when everything had gone horribly wrong, or how she had ended up here, lying in the dirt and wondering if a certain magical sword was in her future or not.
In that moment, she desperately missed her parents. Fresh tears brimmed to her eyes, and she wiped them quickly, not wanting to look weak even to herself. But she missed their guidance, and a part of her wished that she was the one who had left and not them. This aching pain which gnawed at her insides was more than she could possibly bear.
She remembered the early days of her childhood, when she would stroll through the garden with her parents on
