In the town of MoonLight stood a tall and spacious house, home to a mother and her child. It was a place toward which every man in the town gravitated, drawn by admiration and infatuation. The mother was a beautiful and elegant woman. Her beauty did not come solely from her appearance, but also from the bearing and presence she exuded.

  Lady Rosana had long been renowned as the very standard of beauty in MoonLight. All women took her as their model, yet none ever reached her level.

  She was not only beautiful, but also powerful. As an ice element mage, IceStorm was no different from her second home, a place where elemental ice flooded the air without end, where even a basic ice spell could stir a snowstorm. Beautiful and aloof, Lady Rosana was like the hazy moon high in the sky, something one could only gaze upon, never touch.

  In contrast to Lady, her adopted daughter was utterly innocent and adorable. The little girl’s eyes sparkled like precious gems, her smile pure and childlike. Lady had named her Rose, a beautiful flower often described by poets, a flower said to exist only in another world. This Rose was portrayed as a small, flickering flame of exquisite beauty, yet filled with sharp thorns that kept others at bay. Lady had found Rose in a house buried beneath a blizzard, beneath the bodies of a young couple. Clearly, before their deaths, they had used their own bodies and their last warmth to shelter the child. Rose’s survival was nothing short of a miracle, a blessing that Lady believed Enesur himself had bestowed upon her.

  Rose puffed out her cheeks in displeasure. She was an energetic child, one who hated having to sit before the vanity every day to be groomed and adorned, to wear tight dresses that made it difficult for her to run, climb, and play.

  “Mother, how much longer will it take?” Rose asked, swinging her legs back and forth.

  Lady Rosana stood patiently behind her, smoothing the girl’s unruly hair, even though she knew it would soon return to its former state. She rather enjoyed the moment, the feeling of caring for someone was truly wonderful. She bent down and gently kissed Rose’s rosy cheek, smiling softly as she spoke.

  “Now, now. A proper lady must learn patience. Mother is helping my lovely Rose become beautiful, you see. It is a long process.”

  “Beautiful?” Rose’s eyes lit up. She always heard the children in town say that Lady was the most beautiful woman of all. The adults spoke of her with deep respect, and every woman longed to become like Lady. Rose thought of something and giggled to herself. Perhaps if she became beautiful, the boys would gather around her, and she would never have to worry about sweets again.

  “Mother, Rose wants to become beautiful just like you.” Rose said solemnly, with no small measure of determination.

  “Beautiful like me? That will be very difficult. Are you confident, Rose?” Lady smiled knowingly. She was well aware of the innocent thoughts in the child’s mind, but chose not to voice them.

  “Yes. Rose wants to be beautiful like Mother. Or at least, almost as beautiful as Mother,” the girl said, raising her small fist and waving it before her.

  Lady finished braiding Rose’s hair neatly. She gazed at the adorable reflection in the mirror with great satisfaction, then spoke slowly.

  “Becoming as beautiful as me is not easy. You must listen to what I teach you. Let us see. Mother will teach you a few lessons so that you may become like me. First, you must understand the definition of ‘beauty’, of course as I understands and perceives it, not as it is written in books.”

  “A lesson about beauty.”

  When Lady was still young, she belonged to the private mage legion of the SpellSpeaker. They were a gathering of talented young mages, most of them prodigies selected from the Great Will. Lady and her comrades received a mission to ambush a group of Trolls in the Sanguis range, a frozen mountain chain on the continent of Macarnis. Though Sanguis was known for its harsh and frigid climate, it was also a place where countless beautiful flowers existed, their fragrances rich and intoxicating. These flowers grew in extremely perilous locations, places that only highly skilled Trolls could reach, sometimes at the cost of their very lives.

  Along the long and grueling march, Lady and her companions, in order to preserve the secrecy of the ambush, slaughtered an untold number of innocent nomadic Trolls. There were Troll children whose bodies lay cold and red, dying in the arms of their parents despite having committed no wrong at all.

  Lady was left numb by the brutality of war. It was nothing like what she had been taught, nothing like what had been drilled into her mind, that Trolls were merely savage and cruel beasts. When she pierced a Troll’s body with an ice spear, she could see sorrow and resentment in the woman’s eyes. For the first time, Lady questioned whether what she was doing was truly right. Was it for Greaton? Or for something utterly meaningless? While she was lost in torment and uncertainty, she saw it.

  A beautiful Flos flower blooming high upon the steep cliffs of the mountains. It was unlike ordinary flowers, its bud large and brilliantly colored. It appeared as a striking point within the vast white canvas of Sanguis, solitary yet resilient, faintly visible within the hazy mist.

  It was not the first time Lady had seen a Flos flower. As one who loved beauty, she had cultivated many kinds of flowers within her own estate. Even along secret marching routes, she and her comrades had trampled countless Flos flowers growing scattered along the path. Compared to the crushed flowers beneath their feet and the proud flower standing far away before her eyes, Lady suddenly realized that the lone Flos in the distance was infinitely more beautiful.

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  She felt a sudden urge to pluck it, to breathe in its fragrance, yet she could not. Yes. She could not pluck it, because the distance was too great and the danger too extreme, something even a seasoned Troll would not dare risk. “It cannot be picked,” Lady murmured to herself like a mantra. Each repetition felt as though she were uncovering something, a concept she had never before recognized.

  “Beauty is distance.”

  The Flos flower could bloom so vividly precisely because it stood high upon an unreachable cliff, beyond the grasp of ordinary beings. It was unique, isolated even from other flowers, alone between heaven and earth. No one could touch it. No one could trample it. All could only admire it from afar.

  “That is why, Rose. To become a noble and beautiful woman, the first thing you must do is maintain distance. Do not grow too close to anyone, do not cherish anyone too deeply, and do not trust anyone too much. Of course, with me as the sole exception.”

  “Wow. But Mother, that flower is also rather tragic. If you had not seen it, no one else would have. It would wither in solitude, and no one but you would ever know it had existed.”

  “That is precisely the second thing Mother wishes to tell you in this lesson,” Lady said with a soft smile.

  When Lady and her companions completed the mission and retraced their steps along the same path, she looked back once more to search for that flower. It was indeed still there, still alone upon the steep mountain and half hidden within the mist. Yet it was no longer as radiant and full of life as when she first saw it. It was slowly withering, its colors fading with time.

  “Beauty is a moment.”

  The Flos flower was most beautiful in the moment she first laid eyes upon it. It existed only for a limited time, and the longer one gazed at it, the more ordinary it seemed. Her impression of it changed. She wished she had not searched for it, had not seen it in this moment. Yet curiosity relentlessly urged her to keep looking. Lady lifted her head again, only to witness a single petal tear away from the flower and drift along the cold wind. The more she watched, the more the flower withered and grew unsightly.

  “There are moments that can be seen only once in a lifetime. There are things that, once lost, can never be found again. The shorter they are, the more precious they become. Beauty is sometimes nothing more than a glance, a melody, something fleeting that passes by and vanishes.”

  Rose pursed her lips and scratched her head. It was far too profound for her innocent mind. She seemed to understand, yet also not understand at all. Perhaps with time she would realize it, but now was not the moment. Lady smiled indulgently. She liked the sight of Rose ruffling her hair while thinking. The lesson, however, was not yet complete. Still, this was enough for now. She would not torment Rose any further. Perhaps she would tell the rest on another occasion.

  When Lady returned to Greaton, she could never forget the image of the Flos flower blooming so brilliantly back then. It became an obsession that clung to her day after day, hour after hour, existing within her mind. Lady tried to grow the flower again as it appeared in her memory. She experimented with countless methods, even replicating the altitude and climate of that region, yet she never succeeded. The Flos flowers she cultivated were beautiful, but they could never compare to the one from that moment.

  “Beauty is emptiness.”

  Lady wondered whether the flower would have existed had she never noticed it. Of course, it would still have existed, grown, bloomed, and withered in its natural cycle. Even without anyone to perceive it, the flower’s beauty would still be there, only instead of existing within her mind, it would exist within the void. When Lady told others that she had encountered the most beautiful flower in the world, not a single person believed her, nor could she prove it. She only knew that it truly existed, within her mind and within the emptiness itself.

  In summary, to Lady:

  “Beauty is distance.”

  “Beauty is a moment.”

  “Beauty is emptiness.”

  Lady Lust stood upon the lofty peak of IceMount, where frigid winds howled through a world drowned in white snow. She resembled the solitary yet proud Flos flower of the past. Unlike it, however, she did not age, nor was she eroded by time. She would remain eternally youthful and beautiful until the moment of her death.

  Beauty was meant to be admired, not to be indulged in. Those who violated her rule would become slaves to desire, their minds imprisoned, collapsing beneath her beauty.

  Lady Lust became an obsession for all who lived in the frozen lands of Greaton, even among the non human races of the Sanguis mountains. Those taken by her never returned. People passed down a nursery rhyme as a warning, a reminder to respect the rules she had set.

  “Do not come too close to her. Keep your distance, or you will be enchanted.”

  “Do not stare at her, or your soul will be dragged away and you will become a mindless puppet.”

  “Do not remember her. Cut those images from your mind, for if you remember her, from the emptiness, she will come to take you.”

  Two young Troll children were joyfully hopping about on the white snowfields of Sanguis. Warrior blood flowed through their veins, and their childish games naturally included sharp knives and spears. The older boy swung hard, striking the other child and knocking him to the ground, wounded. Strangely, the child felt neither pain nor fear. Instead, he grew excited, pointing at the wound on his chest.

  “Wow. Look, Hug. It will be a really beautiful scar.”

  “I knew it, right. Ha ha ha. My strike was perfect.” Hug picked at his oversized nose with a smug expression. Every child in the village came to him for this. It was an art. The force had to be just right, the strike precise. A single mistake could put the "customer"’s life in danger. His father would kill him if that happened. Just thinking about it made Hug shiver.

  “Hey. Who is that?” Suddenly, the other boy pointed toward a distant figure upon the steep snowy mountain.

  Hug turned in surprise, his blood running cold when he recognized her. It was Lady Lust. Some called her the White Woman. He immediately lunged forward, covering the child’s eyes, and began muttering the name of Razh’Koth, a great Troll warrior, the champion of the DarkGod era.

  “Close your eyes, damn it. She is the White Woman. She will take you away. Think of something else. Think of our people’s hero. Razh’Koth the champion. Razh’Koth the great.”

  The two children lay still, trembling as they whispered the iconic name of the Trolls, a name every child knew. After a long while, they opened their eyes again and collapsed onto the snow, shaken. Hug had once witnessed an entire village being taken. The man had walked like a soulless husk, slowly disappearing into the blizzard, his mouth endlessly muttering, “Beautiful. So beautiful.” Beautiful my ass. Different races, different standards of beauty. And yet that unlucky Troll had still been taken.

  “Hey. Do not try to remember what she looks like. Forget it. Treat it as an unfortunate incident.” Hug spat onto the white snow and muttered the nursery rhyme his people often recited.

  “If you see the White Woman in her white dress”

  “Do not come too close to her. Keep your distance, or you will be enchanted.”

  “Do not stare at her, or your soul will be dragged away and you will become a mindless puppet.”

  “Do not remember her. Cut those images from your mind, for if you remember her, from the emptiness, she will come to take you.”