“What? When did you get here? You don’t have Ethan’s stealth. How are you always sneaking up on people?”
Startled, Rita sprang to her feet and lunged for the stolen weapon.
“Give that back!”
“Where’s the output limiter? Was this your handiwork, Ollie?”
Scowling, the man knit his sharp brows and glared at the bespectacled woman. Ollie folded her arms and gestured with her chin toward Rita.
“What else were we supposed to do? Let her blow herself to bits along with the gun? Sarah checked her vitals and agreed we might as well take the limiter off.”
“…You people are going to drive me to an early grave.”
Letting out a heavy sigh, the man handed the weapon back to Rita with a grim expression.
“Rita, you do know I lose ten years off my life every time you pull a stunt like that, right? Try thinking about your own neck for once.”
“Coming from the guy who charged in blind and only made it out because I bailed him out.”
“That wasn’t charging blind; it was a tactical breach.”
“Sure. Then answer me this, Captain Gide Pascal. If I hadn’t cut loose back there, would you be breathing right now or rotting in the dirt?”
Rita grinned, sliding the gun back into its hip holster. Gide clenched his jaw and muttered under his breath,
“Fine, fine. You saved my skin. Happy now?”
“Very. So quit nagging me and go map out our next move.”
Rita steered him away from the rest of the squad, heading toward the only intact spire left in the fortress ruins. She dropped her voice as they walked.
“Is Senior Is back from his scout yet?”
“Just got in. That’s why I tracked you down.”
“Good news or bad?”
Gide raised three fingers on his right hand. Rita let out a dry laugh.
“Three bad ones? Brilliant. What are we dealing with?”
“We’ll talk inside,” he said, gallantly pushing open the spire door for her. “It’s not something I can brief the others on just yet. I need your eyes on it.”
“Aww, aren’t you leaning on me a little too hard, Captain? Whatever would you do without me?”
“Still haven’t figured that out, Rita?” Gide chuckled softly at her teasing. “I can’t survive without you.”
***
She dreamed of the day she died.
Rita’s eyes snapped open. The instant she broke surface from the nightmare, every muscle in her body locked tight.
The room was completely foreign. There wasn’t a trace of the comrades whose familiar presence usually anchored her. How had she managed to fall dead asleep in a place like this?
On pure reflex, she reached for her hip, but the reassuring weight of her magic gun was gone. Her fingers caught only something long and silky. She lifted it before her eyes.
In the morning sunlight spilling through the window, the strands shone like woven gold. It wasn’t the familiar reddish-brown of her own hair, but an unmistakable, radiant blonde.
This isn’t my body.
Staying on guard, Rita slid out of bed. The mattress was absurdly plush, unsettlingly so for someone who had spent years sleeping on packed dirt or worse.
Drawn forward as if pulled by an invisible thread, she approached the sunlit pane. A manicured garden stretched out below, overflowing with flowers in vibrant bloom. Past a perimeter fence smothered in budding climbing roses, a birch grove shimmered with the tender, pale-green wash of early spring.
It was a panorama she had only ever seen in oil paintings, worlds apart from the gray, desolate wastes she knew, where not even a stray weed dared to sprout.
Arching high above it all was a sky of impossible blue—not choked with soot, not bruised by suffocating, monstrous storm clouds.
It’s so blue…
Dazed, Rita pushed the window latch open. Instead of the acrid sting of smoke and blood, a breeze drenched in floral fragrance rushed over her. Birdsong trilled in the air. Overhead hung a sun so brilliant she couldn’t look at it straight, nothing like the pale, dying ember she remembered.
The truth hit her with unvarnished clarity.
Yesterday wasn’t a delusion. This isn’t my world. Everything here… is utterly different.
The memories came piecing themselves together. She had certainly died. Yet instead of cold nothingness, she had opened her eyes submerged in water. Then a stranger had appeared, claiming she was his younger sister who went missing a decade ago.
I told him he was wrong. That I was someone else entirely. But he refused to listen.
What had unsettled her even more was the effortless way he turned his back on her. In her world, dropping your guard before a stranger was a death sentence. Yet somehow, she had chosen to trust him.
Carried on his back, she had watched the woods and the lake bathe in the molten gold of twilight. The sheer, vibrant beauty of it all had left her breathless.
And then the estate had loomed before them. A fortress-like manor carved from cream stone, more magnificent and ornate than anything she had ever seen.
And after that…
Nothing. Her memory simply cut to black.
Did she really just lose consciousness in an unknown place?
No, I didn’t pass out. Going by my body, I wasn’t poisoned, and I’m not hurt. Did I really just drop off to sleep?
Rita Pascal—who slept with one eye open even among her closest brothers-in-arms—had gone entirely defenseless?
Someone stripped and redressed me while I was out cold, and I didn’t even twitch? Are you out of your mind? Just how long was I dead to the world?
A cold dread crawled up her spine. Right then—
Knock, knock.
Rita flinched. What alarmed her far more than the knock itself was that she hadn’t heard footsteps approaching the door at all.
My senses are dead. Is it because of this body?
It held no combat conditioning. She couldn’t even summon the slightest pulse of Od, the internal energy she once manipulated as naturally as drawing breath.
She couldn’t afford to face an outsider in this pathetic state. No matter how tranquil the scenery outside, no matter how opulent the chamber, she couldn’t let her guard slip twice. Her eyes swept the room, searching for anything she could use as a weapon.
“Milady Lilietta, are you awake? I’m coming in.”
Meeting only silence, the maid eased the door open. The bed was unoccupied. The young lady who had finally returned after ten long years was gone again.
“Milady Lili—mph!”
A gasp choked off in her throat before it could form.
“Be quiet.”
A frigid whisper brushed the maid’s ear as a jagged shard of broken mirror bit lightly into her throat like a blade.
“Make a sound and you’re dead. Nod if you get it.”
Trembling all over, the maid gave a hurried nod. Only then did Rita loosen her grip across the girl’s mouth, her gaze falling to the crown of her head.
Reddish-brown hair.
The exact hue Rita’s own hair used to be. The face and eyes, though, were entirely different. Keeping the glass leveled at the maid’s throat, Rita began her interrogation.
“Where am I?”
“Th-the Laskail ducal estate, m-milady…”
“Where is that, specifically?”
“P-pardon? The estate… in the Duke’s domain… D-do you really not remember, milady?”
“Give me geography. Details.”
“T-the ducal estate… is in the north of the K-Kairam Empire, out on the K-Kornu Plains, running along the Hindir R-River… with Birch Castle at its center…”
Just as she feared, not a single name rang a bell. Rita swallowed down a sigh and pressed on.
“Who are you?”
“I-I’m a maid in service to the ducal house… M-my name is Hannah. I was appointed to attend to you st-starting today…”
“A maid. Did you change my clothes?”
The tattered, waterlogged shift from last night was gone. Instead, she wore a clean, sweeping nightgown that draped all the way to her ankles.
“Y-yes! I dressed you last night, m-milady…”
Hannah nodded with frantic desperation. Clinging to a sliver of hope, Rita demanded,
“When you undressed me, did you find any of my things?”
“Y-your things?”
“A dagger, an identification tag, a belt with a small pouch. Maybe a pendant or a compass.”
“N-no, there was nothing like that on you…”
Deep down, Rita had already known. From the moment she woke up, it was clear she had been stripped bare of everything. Still, a foolish corner of her mind had clung to hope.
She bit her lower lip hard, then spoke again.
“Then what happened last night—”
“I can answer that.”
A man’s voice broke in. Rita spun around. When had he even entered the room? Standing in the doorway was the blond man who had carried her on his back yesterday.
Seeing him clearly in broad daylight, the family resemblance struck her hard. His hair was the same luminous gold as hers. His eyes matched the reflection she had glimpsed earlier in the broken glass. Even the line of his features looked unmistakably like her own.
She had suspected it when looking into the lake water, but now there was no denying it.
They really are brother and sister. This body and that man…
He took a step into the bedchamber and said in a gentle voice,
“Ask me instead, Rita. You can let the maid go. She’s done nothing wrong.”