Aurora's mind had sunk in a secluded place within her soul. It was an empty place, devoid of any color, where her voice echoed a dozen times before fading away. The girl yelled for help. How could she have been so useless? She had not helped at all; she had not even run away. The sight of seeing her foster mum bleeding didn’t leave her head. It kept repeating, and now she shouted, sometimes even stretching her hand, believing that if she had been stronger, she could have stopped everything. Deep down, believing that she could still do.

But, the truth was, she wasn't. She had never been. She had no strength or experience. She was just a mere peasant girl, and she had to settle for that. That was all that she had.

Unable to cope with what was happening outside, she sat on the transparent crystal floor within herself and placed herself in a fetal position, covering her eyes with both hands, as if she did not want to be seen crying, for she was ashamed to be seen as weak.

Bardolph's harsh voice was still ringing in her ears. Their deaths had been in vain. She couldn't forgive herself for how useless she had been.

She had to retaliate. She had to show Bardolph that she had paid attention to his fighting teachings. No longer would she be a victim of her destiny. It was time to take charge of her own body. For herself and for those who had been killed.

The tears stopped and she wiped the rest of her face. Her cheeks were now reddish, and her lips damp. She got up and shouted loud enough to raise all the corpses in the village. As they stood up, the crystal under her feet also broke into hundreds of shrapnel and Aurora fell into darkness, this time with bloody eyes and clenched fists, awakening in her body.

She looked around, trying to understand what was happening and how everything had developed up to that very moment.

Dead people were throwing themselves at the soldiers, tearing their clothes, and ripping off their body limbs before biting their faces or sticking small knives and hooks in their bodies. The screams were loud, crazy even. The soldiers were begging for forgiveness but there was none as they vanished among the crowd of decayed dead bodies who consumed and defiled them.

Aurora had no idea what was happening. Her hands were wrapped in black goo and the landscape had been bleached in black and white. The pain was appeased and now there remained only a peaceful desire to end everything, leaving none of the soldiers alive.

She tried to move forward, but her body didn't obey her. A secondary voice, more acute than hers, ordered her to watch the bloody developments within meters of her.

"See, this is your true power," a female voice said, echoing in the young girl's mind.

The girl did not answer. She didn't even know what to say.

Aurora's tongue tasted like rusty metal. She fell to her knees. Her body unable to withstand the pressure of power itself. Black lines spreading through her body; starting in her hands and moving up to her neck.

They acted as chains, fastening her to the floor, preventing her from even closing her fist or screaming without feeling metal slithering down her throat.

From afar, the undead had almost finished. The soldiers' bodies lay on the ground unrecognizable. Torn and bruised skin as if they were mere plastic that had been slashed. The blood clotted over the surface of the teeth and nail marks, sliding to the floor and into the clothes, staining everything along the way. The sour smell of blood mixed with the sweat of bodies and armor gave rise to a rotten odor—even worse than outdated eggs or even the smell of decaying zombies, their bodies gradually falling apart. The color of their skin turned gray; fragments of their flesh loosening from the body.

Their eyes were now just two balls, the skin around liquefied and swallowing the rest of the face. The black chi they were feeding on was running out. The environment no longer had mana to offer them.

Color was a thing of the past. A cloudy shroud still lingered around the city. The girl was nothing more than a puppet at the hands of a power she didn't even know she had.

Luminous flames rose near the wooden house where Aurora had lived her whole life. Only the commander was still standing, his hand already quivering and sweat dripping from his forehead to his fingers. He slashed the approaching, limping, undead, already with wrinkles around their cracked lips. All the zombies who could still walk marched toward him, roaring incomprehensible monosyllables, their eyes uncolored and lifeless.

"Kaji soldiers surrender to no one!" he shouted, stepping forward and maneuvering his sword brilliantly.

Heads rolled across the floor, arms and legs adorning it. But no matter how good he was, he was no match for the dozens of zombies who knocked themselves down to get a piece of him.

It didn't take long before he was drowned among the crowd, the flame dazzled, and the body torn apart. Aurora watched everything. She had never seen a scene so bloody, so painful. She had long accepted the fact that she had been abandoned, but this was a different feeling. This time, her family had been taken away right in front of her. The pity she used to feel for his parents, for having been forced to abandon his daughter, as Bardolph had told her, was nothing compared to the mixture of anger and sadness that still plagued the portion of her soul that now was apathy-free.

"Stop!" Aurora finally spoke, the voice like a nightly whisper.

All the zombies stopped and looked back at her. The chi that floated around her hands traveled across the air, reaching the bodies and sucking the semblance of Aurora's soul that each of them possessed. One by one, like towers that knock down the next when they fall, the corpses landed on the ground. Little by little, the crystalline sky reappeared here and there.

An unknown force ravaged Aurora's body once again. Her now heavy eyes gradually closed. The girl still tried to get up, but she did have no more strength. She had gone beyond what a seventeen-year-old's body could bear. All her joints ached, and her head begged for a break.

She closed her eyes and her body collapsed on the ground, the surrounding leaves hovering in the air before fluttering down again.

And, as the crows flew away, the sun shone once again, brightening the blood on the soldiers' armor and on the autumn’s yellow leaves.