The ‘Eyeless Serpent.’
It was an epithet used for a certain girl. After all, she was the person whose eyes had been extracted by the Dark Order, an organization that had remained hidden in the shadows of history for thousands of years before beginning to extend its murderous hand.
It had been a shocking incident.
The nation holding hegemony over the continent was the Empire. And within it, was the Imperial Family not revered above all else? The fact that one of its treasured children had been ambushed inevitably caused repercussions that could never be summarized in a single sentence.
For example, ‘the Imperial Princess running away from home.’
The girl who had lost her sight set out upon an aimless road.
She had already distrusted humanity, only to discover that the lady-in-waiting she trusted had been under the enemy’s control. Moreover, had she not been a child who allowed no one to remain beside her without first reading their emotions?
It would hardly have been strange for her to wish simply to escape.
She stole an artifact from the Imperial treasury that distorted perception, then wandered the continent and suffered every manner of hardship for…