*Adela*

"Hello, is anyone home?" I said, knocking on the wooden door.

"Master!" a girl with black hair said as the door slid open. She was one of the students who had left Nine Petal thanks to the intimidation of Mayu's group the previous year.

I smiled at her. "Nice to see you, Changying."

"Almost feared that this place had become a ghost town," Iah said as he walked in.

"Yeah, it was so quiet," Ms. Key said as she removed her shoes by the front door, trading them for some guest slippers.

Changying studied Iah and me. "Lady, this young man is your former fiancée, isn't he? Did you renew your marriage contract? Or did you two fall in love on your own terms?" Her eyes glowed. "Ah, sorry young master. I'm Changying. I'm one of the young Lady's caretakers."

Nyima's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Wait, you two were engaged?"

Iah's face turned bright red. "Yes. And no, we're not in love. Nor are we engaged anew. I'm her classmate at Nine Petal Academy."

Changying's face became pale as soon as he mentioned the academy. "Oh... P-please follow me. Lady Grace should be here." She opened the screen door only to let a little black blur run out of the room.

"Adela, you're back!" my cousin Celeste yelled, jumping at me.

I hugged her and ruffled her straight black hair, messing it up in the process. "You've gotten bigger!"

Celeste grinned. "Have I? Yay, I can be as big as my cus one day." She glanced at the others, especially Iah. "Who are you?"

"You don't remember me? We saw each other several months ago. I'm Iah Wudi, next in line for the throne of Mina."

She clapped her hands. "Oh right! You're the cousin of Azuazu."

I snickered. "Azuazu? Do you mean Azure?"

"Azure?" Celeste said, tiling her head. "His real name is Tian lan se, but I call him Azuazu for short."

Iah ruffled her hair too. "What a cute little girl you are. You kind of remind me of Azuazu himself."

She puffed her cheeks. "I'm not like him, I don't worship my cousin!"

Iah covered a smile. "No, I'm pretty sure that you do, right Adela?"

Smiling, I glanced at my cousin. "Yeah, you do. You're always clinging onto me."

Celeste puffed her cheeks more. "I do not. Ah, are you two dating?"

Iah shook his head. "Nope, not at all. What about Azuazu and you?" he said, giving her a wink.

Celeste glared at him. "I'm five!"

He held his hands up and backed away. "Right, right. Don't look at me like that." He shifted his golden eyes at me. "This girl is a lot like her cousin."

I covered up my mouth and continued on my way. Now wasn't the time for idle chat and joking around. There was a mission to fulfill.

Celeste turned her back to us and ran deeper into the house. "Anyway, Mom said to meet her in the main room. Follow me!"

We followed Celeste into a room with a red screen door. I opened the door and walked in with Celeste. The place was filled with priestesses and their young male helpers who were dressed in female garb.

"You're finally here," Grace said. She sat on a gold and silver throne with a sun-moon motif. She rose from her seat and walked over to me. She prostrated herself before me. "Welcome back High Priestess of our Divine Goddess. We're humbled by your presence." She raised her head, her brow furrowed with concern. "I have divined dire news. The darkness foretold in our holy book has appeared. We must put this to an end, at least delay it until our Goddess has had a chance to take on a bodily form."

I nodded. "I'll try my best to push the darkness back but the day of the prophecy nears. Twelve years from now, we shall wage the final war against the forces of Darkness, as foretold in our Holy book," I said closing my eyes.

"Only twelve years?" Iah said, entering the room.

Grace glared at him. "Child, what do you think you're doing here? You know very well that no member of your clan is to step in this chamber."

I opened my eyes and saw Iah shrug at my aunt. "Enough, I don't need you to speak to me about that ancient civil war again," he said. "You're forgetting that your ancestor during the event gave our founder her blessing. Plus another one did the same thing several generations later. Well actually she was also my ancestor, but never mind that. What did you mean by 'twelve years from now'?"

My aunt shook her head at him. 

"You would know if you followed the religion of the ancients, child. This world will be shallowed by darkness soon. Prophecy foretells of a great calamity. The darkness will appear in this country's lands less than a decade and a half prior to the Ultimate War. A war in which the leader of the Abyss, the God of Darkness, shall battle our Goddess of Light. The prophecy foretells that at that point sixteen heroes shall gather and fight by the side of either the Goddess or the dark god in the final war. Whichever one gathers the most will win. Adela is one of those foretold sixteen."

Iah looked at me in surprise.

I tried to smile. "It's true. My mother foretold it. She also foretold that you will play a role in that war."

My former betrothed gasped. "Me?"

I nodded. "Yes, as will Lei. That's one of the reasons that she had me meet you two at so young an age. I also assume that Nyima is one of the sixteen. Of course, mother did warn that the destined ones aren't set in stone. The gods have given us free will, so we may choose to break free of this fate."

"I see," Nyima said as she walked in. The Kyuu Seishinians and Ms. Key were nowhere to be seen. They likely overhead how my aunt treated Iah. Stepping in here would have gone worse for them.

"It's impossible," Grace said, shaking her head. "What has been foretold will occur. We are now firmly in the end times. Soon the apocalypse shall be upon us. All we can do is struggle to prolong the inevitable, but that's it. Five brave heroes and their allies already tried to stop Abyssia nearly a decade ago. Yet here we are, with history repeating itself."

I turned around. "Aunt, I'll prove you wrong. I'll change our fate. I won't allow this world to be shallowed whole. In these next few years I will layout the ground work to prevent the end. I'll make this world a peaceful one for our Goddess to visit."

Grace grinned. "You've changed, priestess. Your former glow has begun to return."

I returned the smile. "It's all thanks to the other chosen and my other friends."

"Ade," Celeste said, gripping my red skirt. She was shaking. "A light is burning out."

I squatted and patted her head. "What do you-" Suddenly a vision of Lei in a pit of darkness appeared, one in which he was falling deep and deep into. "NO!" I glanced over at Iah and Nyima. "We got to go back to mountain! Something has or will happen to Lei!"

Nyima's eyes widened. "No... Did the others not make it in time?"

I snapped my fingers and several of the priestesses stood up. "Aunt, there's a potion that I need you to make." I summoned the core of the Seven Star Snake and the herb that Mr. Suzuran had given Nyima and Lei. "I'll also be in need of some prana potions for all of us."

Several of the helpers present made their way toward us and handed us cases of potions.

"Thanks," I said, firmly griping the boxes of potions in my hands. I put them into my red hyper ring and turned around. "I'll return once I've settled something."

Standing in my path was Iah who had his eyes on the floor. "Listen..."

I raised my hand toward him but he moved out of my way as I prepared to shove him out of the way. 

"Hey, wait up!" he yelled.

"I can't wait," I yelled, running out of the castle as fast as I could. Not when Lei needed me.

***

"Lei," I said, moving as rapidly as I could. I slashed ten dark beings in quick succession and jerked to my right to fend off another.

'Adela," Iah yelled out. "Wait up."

"You're here?" Zelde said as she emerged from some bushes with a red core on hand.

I stabbed another shadow monster. "I have to go find Lei, he may be in trouble. I sense he's in big trouble. My cousin who doesn't really know him showed it to me in a vision."

"Yen and Kun also feel the same way, as do I. I'm also concerned about Wanikiya. I'll help out the group here clean up. Now go find them."

"Thanks," I said, nodding.

"Adela, Zelde," Wanikiya's rang out from deeper in the forest.

I turned around, Zelde had already gone to join the others.

"Let's go," Iah said. We followed the voice. After half an hour we came to the source. "Wanikiya?"

Wanikiya emerged from a cave. He staggered toward me, his left leg was covered in blood.

"What happened? Is Lei fine?"

Tears fell down his eyes. He looked at the blood in his hands. "Lei...he's dead..."

"Lei is not dead," I said.

Wanikiya looked up at me, tears covering his eyes. "What do you mean? I saw him get devoured by a beast."

"Did you see it digest him?"

He shook his head. "No but..."

"He has to be alive. Lei wouldn't allow these things to beat him. He's a man who doesn't give up," I said.

"You barely know him," Wanikiya said, tears of anger falling down his face. "There's no way he could've survived being devoured."

"Barely? You've known him longer than me yet you seem to be the one who barely knows him."

"How exactly do you know him?" he asked.

I nodded. I had forgotten that Wanikiya didn't know all about my past with Lei. "I met him once as I said before," I responded. "I'll tell you later. For now we need to locate him."

"Adela, Wanikiya," Zelde shouted as she ran toward us. She stopped running, her eyes looked at me from head to toe. My clothes were tattered and covered in dirt. "You look horrible. We managed to drive all of the monsters from this area, so take a rest, and change clothes."

"I can't do that," I said. "I need to find him."

"You still haven't found him?"

I shut my eyes. "No."

"He's gone," Wanikiya said. He slammed his head on the ground. "I allowed Lei take that thing on by himself and only came to help him when it was too late. I'm useless."

I slapped him hard enough that the sound caused the birds in the trees to fly out of their nests. "Get a grip, you're embarrassing yourself. We are in a state of war for the time being. We must act like it, allowing these emotions to take over will only result in more deaths."

"You just said more, you think Lei's gone too don't you?"

I covered my face. I formed a fist and punched the closest tree. "No, he's alive. He just has to be."

"Adela," Zelde said, embracing me. "It's fine to let it out, all the monsters are gone now."

I tried to hold them back but I couldn't. Tears rolled down my eyes before I could even stop them. "Lei."

"Come on," Lei said. He grabbed my hand as we fled into the forest.

I felt his hand, it was sticky from the blood of the woman and man he had just stabbed with a jian. "You...you killed them," I said.

He kept his eyes ahead. "I had to. They were going to take your life."

"Why, why did you save me?"

"Father told me that if I ever see anyone in trouble to help them however I can. Stabbing them was the simplest way to defend you. It's possible they're still alive, hopefully not as we're miles from civilization. I gave them what I thought would be the quickest death, so let's just hope that it was the most effective."

"That's still horrible," I said. "How will you-" We came to a stop when a gunshot shook the peacefulness of the forest anew. Birds flew over us, flying for their lives.

"Crap, the third one must be on our trail. He probably found his colleagues and is out for us. Come we have to take another path."

I looked at his back. He was the same age as me, and his back was so similar to mine, yet it looked stronger. His hands also felt tougher. I found myself asking if this boy really was ten years old like me. Maybe he was a child soldier?

We finally stopped in front of a cavern. "We'll hide here. Don't worry too much, I'll make sure that we get out to this alive."

Tears had fallen from my eyes. "My parents are both dead...what am I living for?"

The boy wiped away my tears and tried to smile. "Your parents died to save you. You can't die now. Don't allow their deaths to be in vain."

"Lei is definitely alive," I re-affirm, wiping away my tears. I glanced up at the forest in front of us, it was the same forest Lei had taken me to all those years ago. "Wait for us Lei, we're coming."

I was responded by a mighty roar deeper in the forest.

What was that?

"Should we continue going deeper?" Zelde asked.

"Yeah."

**Solar Note: What do you think of Lei and Adela's past? Any theories as to what the sound is?**