On that day, all those years ago, a creeping rot gnawed, decaying what little life remained.

The City had worn her down, carved her hollow with its cruelty, until the only warmth left in her heart was the faint ember of a wish to disappear.

But you saw her.

You looked past the ashes clinging to her soul and offered a hand, pale and cold. Sancho took it out of resignation—another death, she thought, just crueler than mere oblivion.

Yet, instead of the end she craved, you gave her a beginning.

You took her frail, dying body and transformed it into something more.

Sancho became one of your Children, a Second Kindred, reborn under your blood.

---

At first, she only followed you out of duty, or maybe something else; even she couldn’t tell.

But over time, she watched. Watched as you, driven by your twisted dream, shielded the weak, offered kindness to the damned, and saved those who would only repay you with scorn.

She couldn't fathom why you fought against fate. Was it not her destiny to burn to ash, and yours to fall to the thirst that ravaged your soul?

But despite her cynicism, despite the walls she had built high and wide, your hands—pale and cold—found a way to reach deep inside her.

A small, ridiculous seed of hope you’d planted took root in the barren soil of her heart. In the emptiness, something new stirred: something fragile, something utterly, absurdly foolish.

It was idiotic—how could she feel anything for a dream as naive as yours?

And yet, try as she might to deny it—the seed grew.

It grew and grew, wrapping around her soul with ugly thorns and tender blooms alike.

---

Sancho stood by your side, the night air seeping through the castle windows, stinging her skin.

You—you, of all people—had somehow painted colors onto a world she had forgotten was anything more than gray.

"My liege?"

She suppressed the urge to smile.

Even if your foolish, foolish dream promised nothing but ruin, she would follow—willingly, unwaveringly—toward that distant, ever-shining star.