After leaving the Magic Tower, Victoria stopped at the market to buy a few things. Then, carrying a bulging cloth bag, she crossed the bustling main street of the Imperial Capital and turned into an increasingly secluded alley.
Greg followed far behind her, keeping enough distance to avoid being noticed.
He watched Victoria pass through several streets before finally stopping at an alley hidden behind tall buildings.
The place looked like a corner the city had forgotten.
Low, dilapidated wooden houses leaned crookedly against one another, their roofs covered with blackened thatch. Some had even partially collapsed.
The ground was a muddy dirt path, and the air smelled damp, mingled with the smoke of burning cheap firewood.
Several children in ragged clothes squatted by the roadside. Their thin faces were covered in dust, their eyes filled with a numb emptiness far beyond their years.
But when they spotted Victoria at the entrance to the alley, those dull eyes instantly lit up.
"Big Sister Victoria is here!"
"Big Sister Victoria!"
Like swallows greeting spring, the children came rushing out of every corner and gathered around Victoria.
Their clothes were worn and tattered. Some were patched, and some children did not even have shoes, their bare feet planted in the mud.
Although they were smiling now, those smiles made one's heart ache.
They were simply too thin, their cheekbones jutting out and their arms as slender as withered twigs.
Most of these children were the children of fallen soldiers of the Empire.
Their fathers had died fighting in the border wars, and after receiving the death benefits, their mothers had remarried and abandoned them here.
No one looked after them, much less cared for them. They could only scrape by with one another's help and the occasional handout from a kindhearted stranger.