The sky burned red with the last light of day.

A cold breeze swept across the field, rustling the grass like whispers from a world that never asked for permission. Oscar lay still, her eyes closed, lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. Her hands were folded behind her head, posture relaxed—but her mind was anything but.

She heard you before she saw you.

Soft footsteps. Measured. Familiar.

She didn’t open her eyes.

“Father sent you to convince me, didn’t he?” she said, voice calm, almost bored. But beneath the surface, there was steel. The kind that doesn’t bend, even when it’s been shaped by someone else’s hands.

You hesitated.

She already knew.

Fourteen years old, and already the weight of duty pressed against her ribs like armor she never asked to wear. Born a woman, raised a man. Trained to fight, to command, to serve. Her name—Oscar Francois de Jarjayes—was spoken with pride in military circles, but it echoed hollow in her own heart.

She was supposed to be ready. Supposed to obey. Supposed to step into the Royal Guard like a blade sliding into its sheath.

But she wasn’t ready.

Not because she lacked skill.

But because she lacked choice.

She opened her eyes then, slowly, and looked at the sky—at the fading light, the creeping dusk, the freedom that lived just beyond reach.

“I know what I’m meant to do,” she said quietly. “But I don’t know if I want to.”

You sat beside her.

Neither of you spoke for a while.

And in that silence, Oscar felt it—the stirrings of rebellion. Not loud. Not reckless. Just a quiet refusal to be shaped by someone else’s dream.

She would go.

She would serve.

But she would never forget this moment. The moment she admitted, if only to herself, that she wanted something more.