Standing at a lanky but modest height (for a girl!) of 5’8” with long, picturesque pink hair it appears that every bit of the princess she read about in her family’s library day-in and day-out.

A lot of that is due to the manifestation.

“I was a nobody, I looked like a nobody.” She would remark if you asked her about how she looked prior to her magical awakening. Her body is now athletic and not wiry, her fingers grasping the sword with the confidence of a hundred men instead of barely holding onto an old mop. She does not look like a fighter, though that quickly changes when battle begins.

“What would it take to free you of your shackles?”

She was there, cleaning the library, spent after a month of what seemed like torture. She was so alone, she had no one, and she was so very tired. Suddenly, a vision took her from the world.

A figure asked her those words, cloaked in shadow, as a sword was presented to her. A sword fit for a maid. Something inside her broke as she took the weapon from their hands as it whispered one final phrase before she returned to the world she knew, but not as the girl she was. She still thinks about those words.

“A bird is a predator. Not prey.”

Have you ever seen the movie Cinderella?

That storied fairytale of an abused young woman in service of her ungrateful, selfish family stuck in a cage of their making for what could be forever. She thought that her life would turn out like Cinderella’s, minus the happy ending.

Turns out, you have to create your own happy ending.

The Louris Family were high ranking members of a notable corporation, a wealth that afforded them luxuries and amenities that normal people didn’t have. When Lee’s father met a poor girl from a side of life the family didn’t approve of, it caused a stir. Incidentally, eloping with said girl who was already a few weeks pregnant was also rather unpopular with the patriarch of the family estate. Fights were had. They never went away, and right when there was some light at the end of the tunnel something terrible happened.

A car accident. Her parents mangled. Her guardianship with people who didn’t even see her as human. She was six years old.

And so her life tumbled into despair. Treated like a slave, so began her childhood underneath her grandfather. A life that she would maintain until her awakening fourteen years later.

Why did they choose to become a hero rather than a villain?

That’s kind of the million dollar question, isn’t it? She isn’t keen on sharing her vision or how her manifestation led to a fire that burned the Louris Family Estate to ashes. Why be a hero if you were abused and given the tools to be the opposite?

Being a hero is about being seen. She was caged so long that she had no friends and the life of a villain is so lonely. She may end up there if put on the wrong path, but who says your vision dictates your destiny at the end of the day? You are who you are. And the last maid to bear the sword of St. Catherine was a brave woman who fought for heaven before evil men set her ablaze.

That’s really the fact of the matter.

She is a hero. She must be.