The Girl Called "L"
It started with ash.
Not real ash—but the scent of it. The kind that lived only in memory: smoke clinging to scorched flesh, burning walls, synthetic oil. Faint. But sharp enough to tear through her ribs like a splinter.
Leoriness stopped mid-step. The cold wind brushing against her cheek felt exactly like it had the night she escaped.
She stood still.
The cave behind her was quiet. Elarion was sharpening his blade, saying nothing.
But he looked up when her breathing changed.
Leoriness's fingers curled slowly into fists.
She remembered.
The lab. The cuffs. The glass tube they used to lower her into freezing liquid. The needles. The room with no sound except humming. The day she ran—face half-burned, eyes bloodied, barefoot through a field of shattered glass.
She had survived.
But she had forgotten who she was.
No, not quite. She hadn't lost the name entirely.
She had only buried it.
Back then, when the old mercenary asked what she was called, she hadn't said "Leoriness."
She had only said:
"Just call me L."
She never offered more. Never corrected him.
And for years, that's who she became—L, a girl who killed for coin, who wore others' armor, who smiled without meaning it. A shadow in someone else's war.
Until now.
Until Elarion.
She had told him her name, the full one, once—casually, weeks ago, before the memories returned. Just "Leoriness," tossed out like it meant nothing.
He hadn't questioned it.
But he remembered it.
And now, as she stood by the rocks, the wind tangling her hair, she remembered what it meant too.
Her eyes narrowed. Her voice came quietly.
"I was supposed to be erased."
She didn't turn. She simply looked out into the mist and said it like a sentence passed down by time.
"They called me Subject L-47. My name was a risk. So I gave it up. But I never forgot it. I just stopped using it."
A pause.
Her breath caught.
"…But I gave it to you."
Elarion said nothing.
She turned toward him. Her eyes weren't confused anymore. They were sharp. Focused. Awake.
"I want to reclaim it," she said. "Not because it's noble. Not because it belongs to someone important. But because it's mine."
Her voice didn't waver.
"I am Leoriness. Not just L."
She walked past him and picked up the blade he'd set down.
"I've lived in other people's wars. Served under names that meant nothing to me. I'm done with that."
She met his eyes.
"I'm not going to run anymore."
Then—unexpectedly—she added:
"And if someone tries to take you away from me, I'll burn down whatever's left of this world to stop them."
Elarion's gaze held hers. Unshaken.
But behind his silence, he noticed something else.
The air around her was shifting.
Her fingers—barely—glowed. Not gold, not fire, not magic.
But something older. Inherited. Royal.
Not yet fully awakened.
But stirring.
She didn't notice.
She didn't need to. Not yet.
He did.
Leoriness Everhart.
Princess of the Central Kingdom.
Declared dead years ago in a rebellion.
He wouldn't tell her. Not until she stood strong enough to decide what she wanted from that truth.
For now, she was reclaiming her name.
And her war had just begun.
-----
The memory didn't come like a flood.
It came like a knife.
A smell—smoke, ash, scorched cloth—caught her as she turned near the cave entrance. Her body reacted first: muscles tightening, breath catching. The wind blew cold across her neck, and suddenly, she was back there.
Not in a cage.
Not under chains.
But running.
Running barefoot through a burning hallway, the skin of her face bubbling from heat, blood in her mouth, men shouting behind her—"Subject L-47 is loose!"
She collapsed against the cave wall, hands splayed, chest heaving.
She had thought those memories were buried. She had survived long after that night. Fought in bloodied fields. Learned to lie, to kill, to serve.
But she had never stopped running.
Not really.
She had taken the name L afterward. It wasn't hers—but she kept it. It was the name a half-blind old mercenary had called her after pulling her from the wreckage, too broken to speak.
"You look like someone who bit the sun and lived," he'd said.
She hadn't corrected him.
She had let the name become her shield. Fought for mercenary captains. Killed for causes she didn't believe in. Always moving. Never returning.
Because if she went back—if she ever went to the Central Kingdom—they'd either lock her away again, or worse… bow.
And she didn't want either.
But now…
Now that she had met him—that boy with mismatched eyes and a voice like tempered steel—something in her had cracked.
Not broken. Shifted.
Elarion said little. He didn't pry.
But she knew he had guessed.
He knew she wasn't just a girl named Lurine. And still—he hadn't looked at her with pity.
He looked at her like she mattered.
That terrified her more than any war.
---
She stood outside the cave now, gripping the cold hilt of a blade Elarion had sharpened the night before. Her breath formed mist in the dawn air. The sky was pale and endless.
Behind her, Elarion moved with quiet purpose. But his gaze was on her.
She didn't turn. Just said:
"I'm tired of hiding."
He didn't answer.
"I used to think running was survival. That forgetting would keep me alive. That if I just fought long enough under someone else's flag, I'd lose what they made me into."
She exhaled.
"But I was wrong. It's still there. All of it. And if I don't control it—if I don't use it—someone else will."
Her eyes narrowed.
"I want to make this body mine again."
She swung the blade—once, twice. Her footwork was rough, but not weak. She was remembering.
"I don't care who I was born as," she added. "I don't care if I was a princess. I never needed a crown. But if I find out someone tried to erase me—completely—I'll burn them out of the world."
Elarion watched her, his face unreadable.
But inwardly, he remembered a name spoken only in the old records—Leoriness Everhart, daughter of the Central Queen. Declared dead during a fire at age six.
They said she vanished during a rebellion. Her body was never recovered.
She didn't know who she was. Not fully. Not yet.
But she will,soon.
But that soon never came.
Before she could live for herself, reclaim what she lost, she died in a battle. And I couldn't protect her but she did, she protected me- till the end.
She kept her promise. I couldn't.
---- End of Flashback
{ The Leoriness arc ends soon}