Blue eyes locked onto the bodies that littered the floor in Isaac Aksakov's study, traveling to find him sitting upright in his chair with the fire still roaring in front of him. His glass of whisky had fallen to the floor, breaking upon impact and scattering amber liquid and ice. The shaking in the young woman's hands increased ten fold as she stepped forward, hoping that this was all some terrible dream, hoping that she would wake up any second now in her hospital bed to find her father sitting next to her waiting. She stepped closer, slowly, so slowly that she thought that maybe time had slowed down with her, but when she came around to face the corpse of the man that meant more to her than anyone else in the world, she couldn't stop the blood curdling scream that ripped from her throat.

"Father?!" Her already pale skin grew paler as she stared at the lifeless body, bracing herself on a nearby end table and pushing it with enough force to knock over and break the ceramic vase that sat atop it. Ragged breaths escaped her lips as she tried to register what she was looking at, who she was looking at. It wasn't only him that caused her brain to entirely malfunction either, two of their maids lay dead on the floor just in front of his study's entryway. Tears streaked down her cheeks in rivers, not wanting to believe what she had just come home to. The massacre that spread across her house where there should have been her family and their employees alive and well waiting for her, but instead this. This nightmare.

After several moments of hoping and praying that maybe this was some cruel joke, and that he would wake up any second, she realized that such hopes were in vain. Nothing was changing, and by this point she could feel the spiral setting in. That crazed feeling that sinks into your soul when something dreadful happens that you can't explain, talk about, or even think about. The only solution she could come up with was to scamper out of the room and try to find her mother, who was hopefully alive and hiding somewhere. All over the house she looked, searching and calling out for the last person she could really hope, or want, to help her.

In the kind of life that Valeriya Aksakov lead, turning to her mother for help on any matter was far less preferred than if it was her father, or even her boyfriend, Petrov. She didn't see eye to eye with her mother on damn near anything, but at a time like this she couldn't be picky, especially with the chance that her mother could have suffered the same awful fate. Even if they didn't get along all the time, she was still her family, and that was enough to try and do what she could to make sure she was alive.

She traveled through the main entrance and up the stairs, seeing a trail of what looked like dotted burn marks in the wooden floors that covered the layout of the mansion both up and downstairs. The only rooms that they weren't present in were the bathrooms and basement. Valeriya followed the trail slowly, tip toeing through the house . She looked back and forth, peaking through the rooms, trying to see if anything popped out and grabbed her attention. The sob that lingered in the back of her throat stayed there in a pulling kind of way, wanting to be released the deeper she went into the house. Coming home to find her father and their two maids like that was enough to garner traumatization for life, but what she found upstairs was just as bad, if not worse. Her mother lay face up towards the ceiling, a large gash ripped into the side of her neck. It had looked like someone took a knife, lunged it into her flesh, and yanked it forwards. Everything was exposed, the torn muscles and the pooling of blood underneath her. It even showed the white of the old woman's bone, the blade apparently having been driven that deep.

The sob in the back of Valeriya's throat quickly transformed into a sickness as she lurched over just outside of the bedroom and emptied her stomach onto the floor. The stench of bile rose up and surrounded her, making it that much worse to endure. Tears continued flowing down her face as she attempted to pull her mentality together, but it was quickly fading into violent hysterics. It reached such a point that she almost didn't hear the bang coming from downstairs, and then the slam of a door.

"No... No, no, no!" She gritted, rushing forward towards the window and looking out to try and catch a glimpse of who was trying to escape. It was early in the morning, the sun sitting high in the sky to illuminate everything going on below. Valeriya was thankful for that, because she could make out a figure slipping out from the back and into the woods at the side of the house. She couldn't make out a face, or really any specific features. The person had been covered from head to toe in black. Black pants, long sleeved shirt, what looked to be a thin hooded jacket that they had pulled over their head, and black gloves. What made it difficult was only seeing their back as they left the premises, but enough adrenaline fueled rage drove Valeriya to push away from the window and barrel into her parent's bedroom where she knew her father kept a gun locked up.

She had never shot a gun before in her life, but she figured that you have to start somewhere. There were a lot of things that she was proud of, and this wouldn't be one of them, but at the moment it felt right. It felt like the thing she needed to do, avenging her families deaths and making sure that whoever did this wouldn't be able to do it to anyone else ever again.

Valeriya felt like she could take on the world with that heavy chunk of metal in her hands. It made her feel dangerous and powerful, and at the rate she felt like she was going she hoped that the one responsible for all of this was ready for her. It was a long way back down to her car as she stepped carefully through the house and downstairs towards the front door. A lingering, dull ache creeped into her right hip, radiating down her leg. It caused her to recoil a little and take a sharp breath. The car accident she had been involved in wasn't that serious, but it left her more than a little banged up. She had landed in the hospital for a little over a week during her recovery. Luckily, she made it out with only a split lower lip and a heavily strained right leg.

The injury she sustained reared it's ugly head as she tried to move as quickly as she could through the front door and out into the cold towards her car. The pain went from a dull ache to a tight pulling sensation. She concluded with a hiss that her adrenaline must have been wearing off at that point, but she didn't care. Pain or not, she was going to hunt this killer down and bury a bullet into their head no matter what it took.

By the time she got into her car and revved it to life, the culprit had already disappeared. It took no less than a minute for her to roar down the road, speeding at over 80 miles per hour to try and catch up with the wisp of air that was this person she couldn't for the life of her find. A few cars here and there passed behind her on the road, and she didn't look past any of them. Her piercing blue eyes sent daggers into each one of those vehicles, trying to catch anything suspicious from the driver's and their passengers. She got more than one car honking at her as she barreled past signs and street lights, thankful that there were no police officers lingering around the area. There usually wasn't regardless, not out here, but even if there were the amount of unhinged emotion swirling inside her head wouldn't let her stop, even for them.

Given that it was as early in the day as it was, it was a good time to be out doing something as insane as this. There weren't too many people out and about, and that meant that it wouldn't, or shouldn't, be as hard as it was turning out to be to find the person that Valeriya was after. Being that she didn't have much to go on, except for the attire of all black, and what looked to be a female physique. That last part was still a little blurry, but she was almost sure that the person she saw was female. If that was the case, then this string of murders at the Aksakov estate was making less and less sense the farther she drove.

It was all mind blowing to consider, especially since she was the sole survivor in the whole ordeal. She would give anything to go back and undo what happened while she was gone, but unfortunately time didn't work that way, and life didn't cater to those it deemed unlucky. Apparently it was made true that day that Valeriya's luck started to run out, left alone and afraid to clean up this mess. The mess that she didn't even know the cause of, or even the person to look for. Her thoughts over rode a lot of her logic at the time, making it hard to distinguish whether she was really crazy or not, she still hoped deep inside that this was all a bad dream, but as the day stretched on she was beginning to realize that this was the real thing. There was no coming back from it, just moving forward in the dark.

Not five minutes later, she found herself parked on the side of the road trying to fight off the onset of a severe anxiety attack. A numbness creeped into her limbs, scaring her into leaning back and trying to stretch everything out appropriately, but with the confined space of the vehicle it only made the fear sink in worse. Her attempt to get the feeling back into her arms and legs resulted in feeling like she was breathing through the smallest straw that someone could get their hands on. She leaned her head back on the headrest of the seat and shut her eyes, taking in deep breaths to expand her stomach. It was a technique that she learned to do when she was a young teenager, which was around the time she was being treated the worst by her mother. It helped fight off any doubt inside of her mind, but now it could only help so much. The monster she was fighting wasn't doubt anymore, but fear. This type of fear wasn't one that would easily be extinguished, either, it was one that would linger and eat away at her until the mystery of what really happened was solved.

Valeriya tried to come up with some kind of answer that would give her insight into what happened, but nothing came. She couldn't figure out what on Earth happened, or why it happened. There was so much unknowns shrouding what was going on that she found herself constantly drawing a blank. As she sat there in the car, listening to it idle on the side of the road, she wound up thinking of the one person that could possibly help her out in all of this.

She held her cellphone up to her ear, listening to the dial tone ring on the other end once, twice, and then three times. It went to voicemail, and with an added frustrated sigh from her lips she did the only thing she could and left a message. Valeriya could feel the shake in her voice even before she began to speak. "Petrov it's me, Valeriya. Something happened... Something terrible, and I'm not sure what to do. I feel so lost, I need your help. Please. I'm going to come over, I'll see you soon."

The drive to his house was a little further away than she'd like to be, feeling somehow wrong for leaving her family in the state that they were in. Valeriya felt like there was more she needed to do, like there was more that had to be done to make this right. Calling the police would be the most logical option in this situation, but then she ran the risk of them taking her in and questioning her, as if she knew what happened there. Being held and questioned scared her even further, and given that no one had any suspects to go on, they would more than likely hold her at the precinct until something cleared. That could take days, even a couple of weeks. Of course, she figured they wouldn't hold her for more than a few days, but even that was enough to drive her up a wall. No, she didn't want to count on the local law enforcement, she wanted to handle this herself and do something worth more than where she was going in life for once.

It was quiet when she pulled up to his house, his car parked in the drive way. Nothing around the area gave away anything odd or suspicious, and she only hoped that he was awake. The windows gave away no light or indication that there was any alert person inside, so after taking a deep breath and parking in front of his walkway, she got out and took the short walk to his front door. Each step she took felt like it was being dragged on for hours. She couldn't tell why she felt so stiff in her legs, or why the feeling of dread that instilled itself in her heart sank further down. Valeriya tried to ignore the feeling as much as possible as she walked up the three steps of Petrov's front stoop and rapped on the thick wood of the door.

She waited there for what felt like an hour before it finally creaked open, and the man she loved appeared in the doorway, but something wasn't right. His deep brown eyes looked her over with utter shock, looking disheveled in the door frame, as if she were interrupting something. Her eyes trailed him, taking in his sloppy appearance and hurried looks, but she did everything she could to ignore it as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Valeriya, what... What are you doing here?" He asked timidly, peering off to his side briefly as if to check something.

Her eyes followed his, feeling her throat becoming dry. "S-something terrible happened... I need your help. I called you and left a voice message. Please... Let me in."

Petrov looked at her for a long moment, blinking once before clearing his throat. "I'm afraid I can't do that right now."

"What do you mean you can't? Why not?!" Her voice rose, and so did the urge to want to cry again. "Petrov, please! I need your help!"

In that moment, when she thought he would let her in and offer his aid, something entirely different showed it's ugly face on a day that she thought couldn't possibly get any worse. A shadow in the back of his house moved, and then came forward to materialize into a woman she'd never seen before in her life, one that apparently Petrov knew quite well. Valeriya gave the woman a once over, tears beginning to bubble at the corners of her eyes.

"Who is this woman, Petrov?" The stranger asked, attaching herself to his arm with a kind of smug smirk plastered onto her face.

"She's no one, someone from work." He looked between the two of them, swallowing hard and then breathing out what looked like a heavy amount of stress on his part. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you." Then the thick door that separated them before created a barrier yet again, and Valeriya was left outside alone.

It was entirely possible that this, of all days, would be the day that ended her. She couldn't fathom it getting any worse than it was now. Coming home from the hospital, she thought that she would be greeted with her loving father and semi-approachable mother welcoming her back into the house, Petrov waiting with them. Then, from then on she would've gone on with her normal daily life as she healed. She would have gone back to school, working towards her college degree that she'd been at for over two years. Instead, she was standing in front of her now ex-boyfriend's house, harboring a gun in her car, and wondering if it was all really worth it to move forward. Everything she knew in her life shattered in front of her.

The walk back to the driver's side of her vehicle felt like it took longer than any other waiting game that she'd played since she got back to her estate that morning. Feelings of dread, sadness, anger, and disbelief swirled around in her chest as she pulled the door open and slipped inside. Her eyes trailed down to the pistol that sat on the floor of her passenger's side, considering a lot of things about it. It looked to be a smaller caliber, one that she could do damage with, but maybe not with a single bullet. Valeriya could possibly hit a target once, but she didn't think she'd be able to do it successfully twice if she really had to. Then her thoughts began to take a darker turn. What if she decided to turn it on herself? If she ended it now then she wouldn't have to deal with the repercussions of the day's events ever again.

"No." She mumbled to herself, shaking her head. There were a lot of bad things in the world, and this was up there on the list, but she couldn't just call it quits with the murderer still on the loose. If she was destined to live a life that was surrounded with dark shrouds of bad luck, the least she could do was wipe an awful smear like the person who freely did these things off the map.

It was then that Valeriya decided that giving up was far from the right answer, starting up the car and peeling away from the man that she thought loved her. There were a lot of good things going for her in life, and it was hard to believe that something like this would shatter that into absolutely nothing. She didn't know where she would end up, or what she would do, but a small sting of an idea lingered in the back of her mind at everything that had gone on. Could this be the start of something new and better? It felt sickening that it began on the backs of the deaths of the people she loved so much, but could this have been some kind of sign that she needed to build up her bravery and be the kind of woman people would look up to in times of distress?

The thought was mighty, empowering, and a quite a bit intimidating, but it felt like the right course of action. The further Valeriya drove, the more her adrenaline began returning to her, making her blood feel like it was rushing at thousands of miles per hour in and out of her heart. The road passed her by, and knowing that she was on her way to avenge her family made a swell of pride rise up inside of her that couldn't be quelled by any sort of words of discouragement. Even seeing Petrov with another woman, effectively ending their relationship, didn't hold her back.

Valeriya had no idea what she was about to throw herself into, but the gun off to her left side screamed that she could do anything. Her foot slammed down on the gas, tearing down the road until she reached a nearby town. She glanced at the digital clock in the car, blinking once in thought. It seemed that a little over an hour had already passed of driving this way, and that. Stretches of open road gave her little to go on, that is until she pulled up here. The town was a good size, but it looked suited for poor people. Buildings were shabby, there were potholes in the streets, some street signs were over turned, or bent at the poles, and there were people lingering here and there on the sides of the roads, begging.

Her face twisted as she saw the state of things here, feeling it an unfit place for her to be on a normal basis, but perhaps this was just the type of place to find who she was looking for. Being that this town looked fairly tight knit, she decided to pull over and park. There was a good chance that she could find who she was looking for on foot in a place like this, hiding in the alleyways, hunkered down in a bar, or even attempting to kill someone else. The thought of stopping another murder before it happened made her heart swell further as she shut off the car and discreetly grabbed the pistol from the floor, hiding it in the only thing she could find in the car, being an old purse that her mother hadn't thrown out yet. It looked hideous, but it would work.

With her bag in hand, she walked down the sidewalk, leaving her car behind with the keys neatly tucked away next to the pistol. A slight shaking in her hands gave away how truly unnerved she was by toting around a gun in secret, and the fact