𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞

𝐍 𝐈 𝐍 𝐄

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫

Three Years Later

Blood runs hot.

The heart is a muscle that never rests.

Even in the darkest, deepest depths of winter, it works and burns to keep its host alive. Briéa's body is no exception. Her blood runs hot and her heart never stops.

But she turned cold long ago.

Once a fire blazed in her eyes but it has been suffocated by ice. Her remarks used to be playful once, now they have an edge like a knife and bite like a winter's chill. Her spirited laughter used to be able to fill a room with light. But now her laugh, whenever it does make an appearance, is nothing more than a siren's song of death. A warning of what's coming to those who hear it.

Now she rages and collects trophies of her work. Whether an outlandishly pretentious dress or an arrangement of gleaming diamonds she knows she'll never wear. It's been two years since she's even been bothered to try to get the bloodstains out of her clothes. The spots of red and the collection of trophies are only meant to escalate the fearsome reputation she has amongst the underground. They do not know her face, but they know her devilish grin will be the last thing you see. She comes in the bright of day or the dark of night. They do not know her name.

They only know the untraceable shadow that wanders, the one they call the Crimson Reaper.

---

Snow is cold and wet and nothing more than a maddening inconvenience.

Briéa hates it.

She's not used to the snow. Once as a child, when she still lived in the southern province of Yweth, it snowed. Her home was always warm, not even the winters grew too chill. But the day it snowed Briéa remembers people frantically praying to the gods to resolve whatever petty argument they were having because the only reason anyone could fathom why it would snow in Yweth was if the petty gods were fighting. When she was young, she believed them. Now Briéa knows it was just one of nature's many oddities. There are no gods anymore.

Then when she moved to Ketha, the province along the western coast, to live at Kelrose, she was met with much of the same conditions as Yweth. Blistering summers and pleasant winters, plenty of rain though. But never snow.

But it snows in Dhorston. During the, now two, winters Briéa's has spent in the province, she spends the cold months huddled under coats to keep the icy air out.

Fuck the cold.

At her side, a leather pouch bounces against her left leg with each step. Inside is the confirmation she'll deliver to Ennell that her little trip was successful. She hears the faint clink of her trophy shifting in the bag. This time she chose a gaudy gold hairpin. Not close to Briéa's taste at all.

Secured tight to her right thigh by a black leather holster, is a unique, hand-crafted dagger. For the last three years, she hasn't gone anywhere without it, never keeping it farther than arms reach. Common folk, and all those who don't know better, call it the Reaper's Shiv. Briéa's gouged plenty of eyes and cut off countless fingers with the blade. The metal is clean despite all the blood it's drawn from throats. Embedded in the black hilt is her midnight moonstone charm, it glints as it catches the gleam of the starlight. Written on the blade itself, in Ywethese, are the precious words Aesira mutters to Briéa in the garden all those years ago.

If the stars are with you, then I am with you.

Briéa abandoned her ring, the one gifted to her by Daskel. When her sister died the sheath no longer fit her. So she designed a sheath of her own making and desires. Now her sheath is a legend itself. Nothing has ever been more fitting.