Content Warning:Graphic violence, gore, trauma, child endangerment, and intense emotional scenes.
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Horses screamed in terror before silence took them.
A heartbeat later, the carriage lurched violently.
Steel rang against steel outside in a chaotic storm of metal and death. The night air split open with the screams of dying men. The metallic scent of blood reached us before we could even see it — thick, copper, wrong.
A voice cut through the chaos — desperate, yet straining for calm.
"Madam Marianne! Stay in the carriage! We're under atta—"
Slash.
The words died in a heavy thud against the carriage door.
Silence followed for half a second.
Then—
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Open up." The voice beyond was soft. That was the terrifying part. "Or we break it down."
Inside, Ruby moved instantly.
She placed herself between the door and Marianne — who clutched me tightly against her chest.
Ruby's hand found the dagger strapped to her thigh with the ease of long memory, fingers curling around the hilt like greeting an old friend.
"Stay behind me, Madam," she said, voice low and steady amid the slaughter. "I'll protect you. Both of you."
Bang.
The doorframe groaned.
Bang.
Wood splintered.
A final strike shattered the door inward.
A knight lunged through the breach, blade already drawn.
He never finished his step.
Ruby was already moving.
Power erupted from her body — the air inside the carriage changed. Colour bled into the space around her, wild and pressurised.
Aura.
Setting her dagger aglow as wind whipped through the narrow compartment. It sharpened the weapon beyond steel; her irises had a faint bright glow. Each time she moved, energy ribboned behind her blade like a wake behind a ship — and what that edge touched, it opened.
She looked like a butcher in a temple of flesh.
She didn't let him take a second step.
Her dagger had already opened his throat.
A sharp inhale—
Then a wet, drowning sound.
He staggered back, crimson jetting between his fingers, rising toward his opened throat as if he could put it back together.
He collapsed backward, lifeless before he hit the floor.
Another followed immediately.
She ducked beneath his strike, pivoted, and thrust her dagger upward with all her strength. The blade punched through steel, tore into his ribs, and cracked bone. His body jerked once, then went still.
She used his collapsing body as a shield against the man behind him to protect herself from his blade, absorbing the blow meant for her.
In the same motion, she wrenched her dagger free and drove it into the attacker's chest, tearing her blade free in a spray of red.
Three more poured through the ruined doorway.
Too many.
She fought anyway.
Ruby used the choke point ruthlessly. She parried the first strike with a ringing clash, twisted away from the second, slipped between armor gaps and lashed out in a precise arc that severed tendons and pierced lungs. Before the man could scream, she pivoted and buried her dagger in his chest before the scream had finished forming in his throat.
It wasn't a battle anymore.
It was a dance of death.
But it wasn't enough.
Numbers told. A sword slipped past her guard and caught her arm.
Flesh tore.
Ruby gasped and staggered, blood running freely down her elbow, and a brutal kick to her stomach sent her crashing into the carriage wall.
She forced herself up, dagger trembling in her blood-slick grip.
Then she saw him.
A hooded figure wrapped in a black cloak of quiet elegance filled the doorway. Twin leather straps with silver buckles gleamed across the chest, while beneath the hood, the mage wore a grin that refused to hide in the darkness.
Ruby pulled every thread of Aura she had left and infused it into her dagger.
The glow intensified — compressing, sharpening, distorting the air around it until the blade looked less like metal and more like condensed light.
At the same moment, the mage raised a slender ebony wand, its polished shaft ending in a small ivory skull whose hollow sockets gave it an eerie, lifeless stare. He slowly licked the skull before his lips curled around dark incantations. The skull's empty eyes flared with a ghostly glow as the wand illuminated, and a malevolent magic circle bloomed in midair, crackling with sinister energy like a storm on the verge of breaking.
Ruby moved first.
She swung.
A vertical wave of compressed force erupted from her blade, tearing through the carriage and surging toward the mage like a pillar of judgment.
He watched it come.
He didn't move.
Instead, he reached out and shoved the nearest knight into its path.
The beam hit.
Splitting the armored man in two as cleanly as butter under a hot knife.
One half toppled left. The other lurched right. In the gap between the falling halves, the mage stood untouched, still grinning.
"Too late," he said.
The words rolled out like poison:
"Ἀπηγορευμένη Τέχνη: Βασιλικὴ Κατάρα, Ἀφανισμὸς Ψυχοβόρου."
(Forbidden Art: King's Curse — Soul-Eater's Annihilation.)
The energy that bled from his wand was a color that had no business existing. Too cold. Too absent. It poured through the gap between the severed corpse and swallowed Ruby whole before she could recover her stance.
Her eyes widened in horror as deathly chill raced through her veins, freezing her from within.
Her breath caught. Her limbs locked. Blood bubbled at her lips.
The mage approached, savoring the moment. I saw the symbol on the back of his cloak — a red emblem glared: a screaming skull cradled inside a crescent moon, as if the moon itself were consuming it.
I knew that symbol. I'd drawn it on the back of a notebook page in class, thinking it looked cool. Thinking it would make a good faction crest.
I'd written all of them. And now I had to watch.
He dropped to one knee, tangled his fingers in Ruby's hair, and lifted her face to meet his.
With what must have been her last real effort, Ruby turned her head just far enough. She found Marianne's face, found mine, and something in her expression tried to apologize before her body would let her.
Her grip on the dagger finished loosening. The weapon hit the floor.
"I'm sorry, Madam," she breathed. Each word cost something. "I couldn't keep my promi—"
The sentence never ended.
Her eyes went empty. She folded.
Marianne's scream tore through the carriage like something breaking that can't be repaired.
"Ruby—!"
The mage stood up and looked back at one of the knights with delight, like a boy who'd pulled the wings off something and wanted a witness.
"Did you see that?" He pointed at Ruby's face, still wearing its last expression. "Did you see it? The exact moment—" He turned back, studying her with the fascination of an entomologist. "Right there. Her eyes just went."
Again, I'm sorry, Ruby. The thought tore through my infant mind like broken glass.
Calm.
As if that word meant anything here.
I had written this scene once, safe behind a keyboard. Watching it now — smelling the blood, dead bodies, hearing the wet sounds, witnessing Ruby's light die from her eyes — was something no screen could prepare me for.
"Hand over the child." One of the armoured men stepped forward, sword easy in his hand, voice almost bored. "Cooperate, and I'll make it quick."
Marianne shook her head, clutching me tighter, her whole body quaking. She tried to retreat, but the carriage wall was already against her spine.
"You're knights of House Wolfhard," she said, voice fracturing. "Why — why are you doing this?"
The knight exhaled. Something almost like regret crossed his face. "You're the lord's concubine. I have no quarrel with you." He took one slow step. "But the child—"
"Kill me instead." Her voice dropped to a thread. "Please. Just — please don't touch my child."
A flicker of hesitation crossed the knight's face. Then it vanished.
His sword flashed toward me.
Marianne moved first.
She shielded me with her body.
The blade pierced her back.
Blood spilled onto my skin.
Her arms didn't let go.
Even as her body failed her.
Even as life drained out.
She held on.
This body is an infant, I thought, panic cracking through the numbness. You can't be serious.
In the web novel, the knights would depart believing that the dark mage had killed both Marianne and Arthur. However, divine magic from the temple had subtly weakened the corruption of the spell, meaning they were not truly dead, but instead left in a coma-like, catatonic state.
Due to the limited medical knowledge of this world, such deep unconsciousness was easily mistaken for death.
When the Patriarch discovered the carriage, he initially assumed it was the work of bandits. This misunderstanding remained until Marianne eventually regained consciousness and recounted everything that had happened in detail.
The true perpetrators were never found. The mage and the knights vanished from the story without trace, serving only as minor figures to add tension and conflict to the narrative.
During the period of unconsciousness, they had already cleaned up their tracks, removing the armor from their fallen comrades to ensure House Wolfhard would not recognize that the attackers were one of their own.
This time, I needed him to arrive and catch those monsters in the act. They had to pay for what they did — it was the only way to honor Ruby's sacrifice. Pandora's plan would make that possible, and through it, justice would finally be delivered.
"What do I do, Pandora?"
I obeyed.
A slow breath in.
A slow breath out.
Again.
The panic clawing at my chest gradually loosened its grip.
I closed my eyes amid the horror and reached inward until the world narrowed to the frantic drum beating inside my tiny chest.
Around me, the screams faded.
The mage's laughter faded.
Even Marianne's ragged breathing disappeared.
Suspended within the darkness of my inner world was my heart.
The only sound that remained was its relentless rhythm.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
With every beat, crimson ripples spread through the surrounding void, as though life itself echoed with each contraction.
Then...
A tiny blue light appeared.
No larger than a firefly, it drifted lazily through the darkness before circling my heart. It moved without wings, leaving behind a delicate ribbon of azure light that lingered for a heartbeat before fading away.
With every orbit, it grew brighter.
The crimson pulse of my heart intertwined with the soft azure radiance until the two colors beat together in perfect harmony.
Thump.
I didn't understand how.
Yet somehow... I did.
My awareness sank deeper and deeper into my heartbeat until nothing remained except darkness and that relentless rhythm.
A faint ring appeared around my heart, its glow almost imperceptible.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I didn't merely find the rhythm.
I became it.
For one suspended moment, there was no difference between my heartbeat and myself.
We were one.
I had plenty.
It began deep within my chest.
Mana surged from my core, building unbearable pressure inside a body far too small to contain it. My blood roared through my veins. My heart pounded like a war drum.
Fear.
Ruby's corpse.
Marianne's blood.
The mage's laughter.
The sword piercing Marianne's back.
Rage erupted within me.
My heartbeat accelerated beyond anything a human heart should survive.
Once.
Twice.
Ten times.
Twenty.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster.
Cracks spread through my immature mana channels.
Agony tore through every nerve as the glowing neon-blue ring surrounding my heart finally awakened.
The circle closed.
For a single moment, it remained perfectly still, illuminating the endless darkness.
Then it began its first true rotation.
As though it had finally returned to where it had always belonged.
My vision turned white.
"I DON'T CARE!"
For the first time since arriving in this world, I screamed.
Not with my voice.
With my soul.
Something inside me shattered.
Fear.
Rage.
Adrenaline.
Every restraint.
Gone.
Power flooded through me.
Pressure mounted.
Expanded.
As though something imprisoned within my flesh was finally breaking free.
Then—
BOOM.