How can one action lead to something so devastating? One action that wasn't chosen willingly? Asuna looks around the crowd of people of her tribe with cautious tribulations as her parents had presented her to their leaders as the next offering. What kind of offering? Glad you asked! Despite this being a modern day and age, Asuna's tribe held on to the same traditions made by their ancestors. Sacrificial lambs to the slaughter of you will. This sacrifice was to the Towns local mountain god, Torelis Hun. Taking the shape of a great lion with a mane made of sunlight, body of moonlight, and predatory eyes made out of the stars. For hundreds of years, the first born daughters of a chosen family, by receiving the mark of the lion branded on their front door, would be selected to hike to the peak of the tallest mountain range and present herself as the new bride of the lion Mountain god. Those who were rejected were eaten and remains found at the bottom of the mountain three days later. So far in six hundred years, no maiden has been accepted.
When a trembling frame, Asuna looks back at her parents. A pleading gaze to stand up for her one last time, which of course they didn't. Her parents, Kenneth and Martha Swanson, never truly cared for their firstborn daughter. Having wanted a son and was denied their wish they discarded her to fend for herself and kept trying for a son. For nineteen years, Asuna raised her siblings, four sisters- Anya, Sylvie, Calla, and Fiona- until her parents finally had a boy, Caspian. While her brother and sisters look like their parents, blonde with green eyes and tanned skin, Asuna was a stark contrast to their appearance, being a curvy figured woman with hourglass figure, fair skin, cerulean blue eyes and long black hair that fades to silver tips at the end of each strand. Also having a star and moon birthmark in between the shoulder blades of her back to set her further apart from her family, who has no distinctive markings whatsoever. When the Lion appeared on the Swanson home, Kenneth and Martha were ecstatic, finally they would be rid of their odd-one-out daughter and focus on the children who meet their image.
Now standing at the base of the Mountain of the God of this land, Asuna is being read her ritual blessings and marriage vows before being sent to the Celestial Lion and possibly… her demise.