The world did not simply stop for Adelheid; it shattered.
Her hand, still resting on the door, went numb. The air fled her lungs, leaving a vacuum of pure, soundless shock. The scene before her—her stepmother seated at her dresser, and the man on the bed, laughing at some unheard joke—was not just impossible. It was a blasphemy against memory, against grief, against the very fabric of her reality.
First, there was the silent, internal scream.
The burial. The closed casket. The weight of the crown they said was now hers, but was never truly given. The five years of mourning a ghost who was warm and breathing in this very room.
Every memory of the past half-decade was suddenly exposed as a grotesque lie. The foundation of her life crumbled into dust.
Then, the pieces clicked together with a chilling, brutal clarity.
Boris's frantic confession in the courtyard—"It was your stepmother! She's a witch!"—was no longer just a desperate excuse. It was the key. The aura she felt at the coronation wasn't just power; it was the stench of a profound, life-stealing deception.
Her eyes, wide with horror, would fix on her father. She would search his face for a sign of the man she knew. Was he under a spell? His eyes… were they the warm, kind eyes she remembered, or were they glazed, vacant, possessed? Or worse—were they clear and aware, making him not a victim, but the chief architect of her torment?
The physical reaction would be a retreat, not by choice, but by primal instinct.
She would stumble back a step, her hand slipping from the door. The floor would feel unsteady beneath her feet. The urge to scream his name—"Father!"—would be a tidal wave in her chest, but it would be choked by a greater, survivalist fear. If they discovered she knew, her fate would be sealed immediately.
Her conclusion would be one of devastating isolation.
Her father was not dead. He was alive and complicit. Her stepmother was not just a usurper; she was a witch who had stolen a king. Boris and Tatianka were merely pawns in a game orchestrated from this very room.
In that single, frozen moment, Adelheid's mission transforms completely.
She is no longer a princess trying to clear her name of a false accusation. She is the only person who knows the kingdom is already under a silent, magical coup. The fight is no longer for her throne, but for the soul of the kingdom itself, and for the father who may be lost forever inside the puppet on the bed.
Her reaction would be to silently pull the door closed, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, and disappear into the shadows of the corridor. The spoiled princess is gone. In her place is a hunter, who has just discovered the true den of the beasts.
"Chai..." she would whisper into the darkness, a breath carrying the weight of a thousand betrayals. That single word would hold it all: the shock, the pity for her former self, the regret for not seeing it sooner, and the terrible, awe-inspiring resolve to burn it all down.