Whenever it was that across from you watched a pair of golden eyes that stared back at you in a battlefield, it was best understood you would not return home alive. A once-fallen noble household overlooked and ignored—its status was immediately elevated by one man. Known for his amber-like gaze and his moniker: The Omnipresent Sun, he was one of the Seven Walking Disasters of the Aegus Continent. The name Alveric was either spoken in reverence or horrid dread. The House of Velhauran, headed by Alveric Lorenth Velhauran and his wife Cassia Lorenth Velhauran, was a powerhouse revered and respected by many who came across it. Its patriarch, The Omnipresent Sun, was viewed by the world as a transcendent being with unimaginable foresight that guided House Velhauran into prominence.
This was all true—and yet a tall, dark-haired, golden-eyed woman sat on the patriarch's seat, bleeding profusely, embers all around her. Lotte coughed up blood, her mind doused in regret, shame, and hatred. She wanted more than anything to gut the man that placed her in this position. After everything she had done, all that she tried—it wasn't enough. It was never enough.
Smiling bitterly to herself, tears forming at the corner of her eyes, she hated herself. After all she had been through, this was her "reward"—a pat on the back for all the years of pain, misery, and suffering she had crawled through. Gripping her hand firmly on the patriarch's throne, she pushed herself up, limping away toward the end of the throne room. At the doors, she turned around, spotting a picture that hung above the throne: a man clad in red and gold-edged armor, a stoic look on his face, his eyes bearing an intense, empty gaze.
Lotte smiled, then frowned. There wasn't an emotion she never felt whenever she looked up at him—even when she stood in his presence. Loathing, longing, fear, awe, pride—she felt it all whenever she saw him. But everything always left her in tears.
The nights she would kneel with her mom, praying he returned home safely from war.
The moments she would chase after her mom, excited to witness his safe return.
The solemn look she'd see on her mom's face when some woman greeted him with a kiss on his lips—happy that he was safe and finally home.
Her mother would walk away, a smile on her face, going back to her duties while taking care of Lotte until the evening, when she would tell her stories about the man and how someday she would be at his side forever—with her beautiful daughter.
All but to see her mother lying on a dirt road in tattered clothes, surrounded by endless trees of the forest. She laid there bleeding out, yet she had wanted to see the love of her life once more—while holding a crying baby Lotte's hand, eventually letting go.
Lotte saw those eyes that oversaw everything that night. The same eyes that watched baby Lotte nestle with her dead mother as she exhausted herself from crying. It was the pair of eyes that watched wild wolves feast on her mother's lifeless body while she tried fighting them off—a baby who barely knew anything about the world around her, who simply thought her mother was asleep. The same baby who had the same set of eyes as the man did.
Lotte, now stricken with grief, began to shout in agony—screaming in pain, hitting her fists on the floor over and over again until her knuckles bled. She was alone. She was in pain. She was afraid. And yet, most of all, she hated that she wished that same man was there to hold her.
Finally stopping, she heard armored heavy footsteps behind her. She turned around, her face in anguish. She saw the pair of eyes that she saw all those years ago—the pair of eyes from the picture that hung above the throne. The pair of eyes that made her feel all different types of emotions. She smiled at him, then took the little dagger she had at her side. She was tired. She had had enough. She could no longer stare into those eyes anymore—not after all those many years that she saw them each time she looked around her or when she looked into the mirror and saw herself.
She positioned the dagger, taking one last look at the man in the portrait, before stabbing it into her left eye.
She screamed in agony.
Looking once again at the man, she pulled out the dagger embedded in her left eye and stabbed it into her right.
The two now gouged out, she crawled to where she last spotted the man. Feeling the metal soles of his feet, she bowed her head before looking up at him and offered both her eyes up to him. A smile on her face—riddled with tears that now bled red—she said,
"Welcome home, Father."
She felt something drop on her face. Her smile now gone, a look of surprise. The man knelt before her, wrapping his arms around her, crying—his voice filled with intense sadness. A shocked look on her face as she breathed her last in his arms.
"Lotte has gone to join Mommy now," her voice rang in his ears.
He turned around to see the little baby girl looking back at him, her hand being held by a middle-aged, brown-haired woman in tattered clothes. Then they turned and walked away, vanishing—leaving a dead Lotte in the hands of her father.