The pain hidden in the deepest recesses of her soul surfaced before Amuel's eyes once again, completely beyond her control.
A cage!
Amuel lay curled up inside a cage meant for a large dog!
The man she called her father, who had long since gone mad, kept drawing blood from her!
Why! Why!
Why don't I have a talent!
Why did a mudblood like you awaken a talent!
Every time he drank or injected her blood, the madman would fly into a rage and lash her viciously with a whip. At the same time, he would abuse her mother in even more brutal ways.
In the end, her mother, whose arms and legs had been chopped off and who had been kept in a jar, died.
The stench of decay filled the entire basement.
The man cursed it all.
Then he brought in a mass of insects to devour her mother's corpse.
Amuel watched with her own eyes as her mother's rotting flesh was reduced to bones.
She was terrified. She was afraid. She wanted to cry.
But she didn't dare.
She only dared to creep closer to her mother and call out softly.
Then she would lie in her mother's embrace.
But after the man caught her once, he smashed her mother's bones too.
The man cleared away most of the bones.
Amuel kept only a few.
She used those bones to make a tiny doll.
It was crude, with only the barest suggestion of a head, a torso, and limbs.
Yet it became what kept Amuel going.
She spoke to her mother every day.
Time passed, and Amuel spent her days being beaten and having her blood drawn.
Until-
You mudblood, you're ready to serve as a new breeding machine!
Now get on your knees!
The man roared.