𝐍𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐚𝐧 : Heaven & Hell

Chapter 1

She was running quickly through the forest, holding her father's hand. Katherina, a girl no more than 17 years old, was trying to escape from the men trying to arrest her. This morning, the Tatars attacked the small island where she and her father lived, after she lost her mother two years ago. She knows that if she surrenders, her father will die and she will be sold as a slave. They both tried to run at their fastest pace, but in the end they found themselves surrounded by seven men...

"Dad, please do something," she said, clinging to his clothes tightly.

"My daughter, my beautiful, Katherina, if we part ways today, we will meet in heaven, where your mother will be waiting for us" he said, passing his hand over her cheek, kissing her on the forehead tenderly, knowing that this is their end and that they have no escape from this evil surrounding them.

"No, please, father, this cannot happen" Before she finished her sentence, the men pounced on them and took her by force while she was screaming and watching her father being stabbed by one of the men.

One stab, two stabs, three stabs.... Her father was lying on the ground after he died.

"Dad, please don't leave me alone, you promised me." She screamed loudly, crying until she received a strong slap from the man holding her tightly. That slap knocked her unconscious and she no longer felt anything around her.

|Katherina's POV|

Ten hours later, I began to regain consciousness and found myself in a wooden room next to many girls. I started crying as a natural reaction after I remembered the last thing that happened to me before I lost consciousness. One of the girls approached me and sat next to me on the floor.

"I'm Emilia, what happened to you? Why are you crying?" She said this in a language I could not understand.

"I don't know what you're talking about, stay away from me" I said, speaking in Greek.

"Oh, I understand. You don't understand my language. It's okay. I'm fluent in Greek because my mother was Greek and I learned her language" she said with a gentle smile on her face "Tell me what happened. Why were you unconscious for the past hours?" She spoke in a low voice while watching my eyes.

"They killed my father, kidnapped me and I don't even know what the hell is happening!! Should I be happy?" I said that out loud as I remembered all the events and my heart ached.

"Where are we, how did you get here, and who are you?" I added in a broken tone.

"My name is Emilia. I lost my father five years ago when I was eleven years old, and last week I lost my mother as well." She breathed deeply, trying to hold back her tears, then continued "With this, I became dependent on my uncle and his wife, so they sold me to a man who buys female slaves and sells them in the capital of the Ottomans.. this is his ship and we are now heading to the capital. Whoever kidnapped you must have sold you to that man."

"How! Something like this cannot happen. These people are cruel. We cannot be sold there!" I put my head in my hands as if I was trying to comprehend the events quickly... Two days ago, I was in my beautiful wooden house with a small garden full of different flowers, accompanied by my caring father who loves me more than anything else... And now I have lost everything: my father, my home, my homeland and my freedom, I'm a slave!