While prestigious Council members pondered of the unknown threats of the future a much smaller, and tragically overlooked tale was playing out in the harsh times of the present. On the cold streets of the beautiful city of Sovereign was a small child. The fifteen year old girl clung to her heating core like it were a precious doll. Ragged clothe covered her fragile frame, rat nested hair hung down to her shoulders, her skin was muddied, and her eyes were a dull white, absent of the innocence that should have filled a youth at her age.

[b]Darkness...[/b]

It was her world, her way of life. She lived with blindness for so long now that her memory of the splendors of sight were fading. She had lost all hope of salvation years ago. She was a husk, filled only with bitter hatred for any who approached her. Whether it was an offer of love, or the ruff leather of an abusers boot, she scorned it. Every single wrong that had ever been done to her she remembered. Every word of hate, every strike from another. She held it in her mind and let it brood, brood for the day she would finally strike back, the day she would laugh as the world burned.

A soft thump pulled her thoughts from the sea of hatred they had been adrift within. Her little hand reached out to feel what had fallen. 'Bread...' she thought to herself as she picked it up and brought it too her nose. She took a hurried bite, her teeth clamping down on something hard halfway through. Her tooth shattered and she tasted blood in her mouth. She dug through the loaf to try and determine what had caused this. After a few moments of searching her small hands produced five steel balls. She could not identify them as steel, but she knew they were not naturally occurring things in a loaf of bread.

She searched the rest of the loaf, being more careful with her next bites. Each time she chewed she winced in pain, blood ran down her chin and she heard the feint cackle of the one she now identified as the culprit. She said nothing, did nothing, no she simply sat and listened; imprinting the sound of that cackle in her mind for future reference. 'One day...' she thought to herself with a rage that chilled the air, 'one day you will feel regret in the form of a bloody knife....'

She made this promise to herself and slowly continued to eat her bread.