0. Prologue. The Return
The House of Laskail stood among the oldest, wealthiest noble lineages in the empire.
The Duke and Duchess shared genuine devotion, and their children were as gentle as they were bright. To the outside world, they were the very model of a joyful family.
Then, without warning, their youngest daughter, Lilietta, disappeared.
***
Tucked away in a quiet fold of the ducal gardens was a small, circular flowerbed. At its center rested a freshly carved headstone of immaculate white marble, the inscription sharp and clear.
Lilietta del Nissa Laskail
1751 – 1760
It was now the year 1770. A full decade had passed since House Laskail’s only daughter went missing. Over those ten years, the family had turned every stone, combing the breadth of the continent, yet not a whisper of a lead ever surfaced.
The only trace had been found the very night she vanished: a scrap of bloodied fabric and a few strands of pale gold hair near the border of the estate's woods. People muttered that a beast must have dragged her off, urging the family to let her go. But the Laskails refused. For ten relentless years, the search never stopped.
Only recently had they finally surrendered to the inevitable, calling off the hunt and marking her death. The gravestone had been set mere days ago—over an empty coffin.
When the small casket was lowered into the soil, the Duke broke down in tears. The Duchess collapsed on the spot. Their second son, Richard, did not show up at all.
The next morning, word arrived from a local tavern that Richard had drunk himself into a stupor. Leonhart, the eldest, went to fetch him himself. The entire ride home, his younger brother rambled like a man lost in a fever.
“They keep telling me she's dead, Leon. They tell me to accept it. It’s been ten years, they say; let it go. But did you forget her, Leon?
I haven’t. I never could. We never found a body. Do you truly believe that sweet, frail little girl snuck off into the dark woods all by herself? Do you? Because I don't.
Leon… that evening, right before she vanished, do you remember what she told me? She had a terrible dream. She was terrified. She begged me to sit by her bed just until she fell asleep again.
And I didn't. Why didn't I? It's on me, Leon. It's all my fault. If I had just stayed beside her that night…”
Leonhart had heard those words countless times. No matter how many times he told his brother otherwise, Richard remained imprisoned in his own guilt.
After hauling his drunken brother to bed, Leonhart took over the urgent household matters in his father's stead. The Duke was still bedside, consumed by concern for his collapsed wife.
Three days had slipped past since the funeral, and Leonhart had not managed a single wink of sleep. There had been no time to untangle his thoughts, let alone soothe his grief. He was nowhere near ready to accept his sister's absence, much less bid her farewell.
That unsettled ache drew him to her grave in the pale quiet of dawn.
Yet someone had already beaten him there.
The Duchess sat motionless before the stone. Clasped in her hands was a framed likeness of her daughter, her thumb tracing the angelic smile captured in the portrait.
She, too, was unable to let go. And perhaps, Leonhart mused, she never truly would.
If only they knew what had befallen her. If only they had found her remains.
It was a tormenting loop he had revisited hundreds of times. Leonhart watched his mother’s fragile back in silence, then quietly stepped away.
The gap in years between them had been wide. Leonhart was already eight when Lilietta was born; Richard had been six.
Both brothers inherited the tall, broad-shouldered Laskail frame. Lilietta had been entirely different.
Delivered early after a harrowing labor, she had been frail from the start. Sickness plagued her throughout childhood, keeping her confined to her bed, yet a word of complaint never crossed her lips.
Even when swallowing bitter tonics, she would beam and declare,
“If I finish it, I get a sweet afterward, so it’s fine! I’ll just call it sweet time from now on!”
She was sheer warmth and light. The entire household had revolved around her.
Leaving the gravestone behind, Leonhart followed the garden path toward the rear grounds. Guarding the estate's edge stood an iron gate overgrown with tangled rose vines, bound shut by heavy, rusted chains.
Beyond it lay the birch woods. The gate had once stood perpetually open. Tended by the Laskails across generations, that forest had been a serene haven where deer and hares wandered without fear, and songbirds filled the leaves. A winding trail through the trees eventually led to a quiet lake.
He used to stroll down that path with Lilietta’s small hand nestled in his. The memory of her soft, fragile fingers remained vivid.
Those woods sat entirely within the Laskail domain. They were the very reason the manor bore the name The Birch Castle. Danger had never lived there.
Yet it was precisely there that her blood-spattered fabric had been discovered, fueling rumors that some stray beast had devoured her.
A sickly nine-year-old slipping out into the dead of night unnoticed? A child who lost her breath from a brief sprint, making it all the way out here?
Absurd. Impossible.
Someone had taken her.
Leonhart’s fists clenched tight, his knuckles whitening under the strain. Whenever his thoughts drifted toward what might have transpired that dark night, an icy fury coiled tight within his chest. He felt ready to rip the culprit apart with his bare hands.
Drawing a slow breath, he willed his fingers to unclench. Only then did he catch sight of a solitary figure beyond the chained gate.
The Duke of Laskail stood partway down the birch trail, his hands clasped behind his back, staring into the trees.
He looked as if he were waiting for a child with light, skipping steps to emerge from the grove.
Leonhart took hold of the iron bars, found footing on the rusted chains, and smoothly hoisted himself over before walking toward his father.
The Duke turned at the approach of his steps.
“Leon.”
“Father.”
Leonhart did not ask what kept his father out here, nor did the Duke ask what had drawn his son. Together, they stood side by side, their gazes fixed down the empty trail.
No one appeared.
Following a prolonged silence, the Duke finally turned, resting a weary hand upon his son’s shoulder.
“You managed everything over these past three days without a single fault. You have done well.”
“It was nothing, Father.”
“Go back inside and rest. You haven’t slept.”
“I will. In just a little while.”
The Duke turned back toward the manor. Leonhart remained where he was, watching his father recede before quietly following the forest path alone.
Through the slender, pale trunks of the birches, the surface of the lake began to glint. The evening sun was dipping low, painting the gentle ripples with streaks of molten gold.
“Look, Leon! See that? The sun must have dropped its golden shawl on the way to sleep. Isn't it wonderful?”
Her sweet, childlike voice echoed in his memory. Leonhart stared at the water, recalling Lilietta’s rosy cheeks, the violet gleam of her smiling eyes, and the golden hair catching the wind…
Suddenly—
The surface erupted into a violent plume of spray. A cascade of wet, gleaming gold tore through the water in an arch, scattering droplets like shards of glass. Even soaked, that hair shone with unmistakable brilliance.
Exactly like hers.
Pale, alabaster skin. Tresses so long they appeared never to have met a blade. And through the damp, clinging strands, a pair of eyes the exact shade of violets.
A girl—no, a grown woman—rose from the depths of the lake, an impossible vision straight out of myth.
She bore an uncanny resemblance to Lilietta. It was as though she had never disappeared, as though she had simply grown into a twenty-year-old woman without harm.
Leonhart’s mind ground to a halt.
They had dragged that lake dozens of times and found nothing.
While he stood paralyzed, the woman faltered for a moment in the water, quickly righted herself, and waded briskly toward the shallows.
A sharp, thoroughly irritated murmur broke the quiet.
“…What kind of nonsense is this? I open my eyes and I’m drowning?”
With an aggrieved scoff, she shoved her dripping hair back from her forehead. In that movement, her gaze collided directly with his.
Her posture snapped into an immediate combat stance, dropping low as one foot slid back. Her hand whipped toward her hip as if seeking a hilt.
Her fingers caught only air. There was no blade, no scabbard, not even a belt around her waist. A flicker of genuine bewilderment crossed her face, and she glanced down at her own frame.
“…What in the world am I wearing?”
She was clad in a lace-trimmed white nightgown. The very garment Lilietta had worn the night she went missing.
Back then, the nightgown had swallowed the child whole, trailing down to her ankles. On this grown body, it barely reached her mid-thigh. A jagged tear marred one side of the hem, matching the exact shape of the bloodstained scrap they had recovered ten years before.
She pinched the dripping fabric between two fingers, lifting it with an expression of utter revulsion.
“…What kind of frilly garbage is this? What pervert dressed me in—?!”
Air deserted Leonhart’s lungs. The rest of her outraged mutterings washed over him unheard, his head spinning as his heart hammered violently against his ribs.
With trembling effort, he parted his lips.
“…Lili?”