The Laskails settled in, cups of tea and coffee steaming in their hands. The Duchess took her customary seat by the window, flanked by her husband. Leonhart leaned against the doorframe, while Richard rested his shoulder against the wall beside the fireplace.
Lilietta sat centered before the hearth, holding the room’s undivided attention. The family had assembled at last, ready to hear what had become of her missing years.
She lifted her cup and drank slowly. In the ash-choked realm where she had been trapped, real coffee had been an impossible luxury.
Setting it down, she began.
“It started that night… like an uncommonly strange dream.”
Sip by bitter sip, she pieced together the tale, tracing her path from the evening the world had slipped out from under her to the hour she finally woke back in her bed.
***
When Lilietta opened her eyes as Rita, she was inside a cavernous stone dormitory. Rows of cots filled the hall, each frame carved with arcane circles. Roughly a dozen other orphans, all between ten and fourteen, were housed alongside her.
Unconsciousness took up most of their hours. Whenever the bell clanged, they lay down. The second their heads hit the pillows, a heavy, unnatural stupor dragged them under, and into that manufactured sleep, foreign knowledge was violently pumped.
The next ring pulled them awake to blinding headaches. Some convulsed and retched; occasionally, a child spat blood. Pascal carried away anyone who bled, and those children were never seen again.
Aside from meals, washing, and a brief regimen of physical conditioning, the routine dragged on for months, until gradually, the forced slumber grew shorter.
“It is time for the Oath.”
Pascal summoned each child in private, running them through odd tests before unlocking their Od. He dictated the exact terms of every pledge by criteria known only to him.
“You… are an exception.”
When Rita stepped before him, Pascal remained quiet for a long while.
“…Simply swear to slaughter every demonic beast that crosses your path. That ought to suffice.”
Rita took the pledge, joining the others as an Awakened Oathbearer. That was when their true torment began.
The chime no longer sent them to bed. Instead, they were herded underground into a maze of tight, stone-walled cells arranged like a honeycomb. They called them training rooms.
A fresh demonic beast materialized in every chamber, accompanied by a shifting landscape. Though conjured as illusions, their fangs and claws bit with excruciatingly real agony.
Pascal handed each child a specific weapon before sending them past the threshold. None of them understood his reasoning, yet every weapon felt tailor-made to its owner.
Except for Rita’s. She was assigned a slender dagger. The memories forced into her mind were built around thrown blades, shadows, and ambush strikes—none of which, though she was slow to realize it, suited her frame or instincts.
The other children claimed that the instant a monster leaped at them, their bodies moved on pure reflex. They instinctively grasped how to swing their weapons, how to drive their Od, and how to survive.
Yet theory in the mind was a far cry from flesh and blood execution.
At first, every single one of them “died.” The deaths were phantoms, but the agony was undeniable. Most lost the stomach for food. Some collapsed in shivering fits and refused to rise, while others shrieked and fought to flee.
Their terror mattered little. When the bell tolled, everyone had to enter. Pascal had no pity for children soiling themselves in fright or cowering under their cots. His shadowed gaze merely lingered as an invisible force dragged them across the floor and hurled them into the cells. The iron doors stayed sealed until either the child or the beast had perished.
And so life marched on.
In time, the children began casually trading combat stories over their rations: the horrors they had faced, the terrain they had fought through. They shared survival tricks, practiced together during their sparse free hours, and traded blows in mock duels.
They grew comfortable with both the foreign knowledge lodged in their heads and the steel in their hands, as if merely shaking off the rust from skills they had possessed long before.
Before long, walking into the training cells became second nature. They would butcher their quarry, emerge untouched, and tear into their daily bread while swapping gory details.
“Took its leg clean off today.”
“Finally managed to gouge out an eye.”
Rita alone remained completely lost.
Unlike the rest, she “died” at the claws of a beast day after day. The dagger remained an awkward weight in her palm, and the concepts in her mind refused to translate to her limbs. While everyone else adjusted to the carnage, she fell apart, regularly crawling out of the chamber on her knees, gagging.
She was not merely trailing behind; she was a complete failure. Not once did she walk out alive, a glaring defect on an otherwise flawless line. The other children didn't torment her, but they didn't welcome her either. A dead weight offered them nothing.
Pascal neither corrected nor berated them. He simply ran the schedule, feeding, drugging, and driving them into the cells like components in an indifferent machine.
Isolated by loneliness and simmering self-contempt, Rita found an unexpected presence beside her: Gide.
“You still haven’t managed to kill one, have you?”
Gide outshone everyone. Each day, he was the first to finish his kill and return to the hall. Sharp-witted, handsome, and remarkably gentle, he drew the others to him like a beacon. Whenever someone struggled against a beast, they sought Gide’s counsel, and he never refused. In short order, the entire hall leaned on his strength.
“Would you like some help?”
Now, he was extending that same hand to the most hopeless castoff of the lot. Yet instead of showing gratitude, Rita regarded him with a flat, cold stare.
“Save yourself the trouble. You don’t actually want to do this.”
“…What?”
“Stop playing the martyr. You hate it when they hound you for advice, don’t you? Pascal couldn't care less about what we do together, so there's no reason to put on a show for him. He doesn't even bother disciplining a failure like me.”
Sitting on the fringes gave one an exceptionally sharp vantage point.
She had seen the tiny twitch of his brow every time an orphan clung to his sleeve, and the hunger for validation that leaked into his eyes whenever he glanced in Pascal’s direction.
Rita had been the only one to see through the act: Gide wasn’t playing shepherd out of good nature, but to buy Pascal's favor.
He stood there, struck dumb. Rita merely turned her back and walked away.
The following day, after she had once again staggered out of her cell and dropped to her knees in violent heaves, Gide caught up with her.
“Doesn't it wear on you, dying like that every time?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then let me help you.”
“I already told you, you don't need to force it.”
“I’m not. As a matter of fact, I need something from you.”
“…From me? What could you possibly want?”
“You have an eye for things. And you don’t flinch around Pascal.”
He laid out what he had in mind. In tomorrow's bout, he would hold back, dodging his beast until Rita’s match had ended. That way, she could stand outside his cell and watch his movements from beginning to end. Something about his swordplay had been grating on him, but he couldn't put a finger on the flaw.
“Look over my form, and I’ll help you in return. A fair trade.”
Rita took the deal. When his bout ended the next day, she waited for him outside.
“You’re naturally left-handed. Why are you holding your sword with your right?”
“Left-handed?”
“You seriously didn’t know? It’s plain as day. Your left side moves far more fluidly.”
Gide looked down at his left hand, his face twisting in distaste. Rita cocked her head.
“Do you hate using it that much?”
“It looks crude. Clumsy. Unnatural.”
“Didn’t look clumsy to me.”
“It might not to you. But everyone else looks down on it.”
“Who cares what they think? The only thing that matters is whether it keeps you alive.”
He blinked at her as if she were speaking in tongues, then offered quietly,
“People call the left hand cursed.”
“Do they? First I've heard of it.”
“The left is crooked. The right is upright.”
Rita studied him for a silent beat, then held out her left palm.
“Then we’ll set our own rules.”
“What kind of rules?”
“Between us, left means good, right means bad. If something goes well, raise your left hand. If everything goes to hell, raise your right. How does that sound?”
Gide stared at her open palm for what felt like ages. Slowly, he reached out with his left hand and pressed it against hers.
“Fine.”
From that afternoon onward, quiet hand signals passed between them whenever their paths crossed in the halls.
On days they slew their beast, they flashed a finger with the left hand. On days the beast tore them apart, they flashed a finger with the right. If the kitchen served fresh white rolls, left hand. If it was rotten, watery mush, right.