Two months passed.
Not abruptly—no clear line where panic ended and acceptance began—but slowly, like learning how to breathe underwater without drowning.
Niana learned the rhythms of the estate. The way mornings began with reports and sealed letters. The weight of wax and signatures. The sound of her name spoken with reverence instead of familiarity.
Duchess.
The title still felt strange on her tongue, but she wore it well.
She learned that she was not merely a noble by blood, but by function.
A Keeper of the Divine Word.
At first, the phrase meant nothing to her—just another grand title in a world obsessed with ceremony. But through documents, whispers from elders, and books that seemed to recognize her, she began to understand.
The Divine Word was not a prophecy.
It was knowledge—records of the world as it truly was. Its origins. Its fractures. Its future branches. Written in a language that could not be read by just anyone. Not scholars. Not priests. Not kings.
Only her family.
Only the Keepers.
The book responded to blood and mind, not ink and paper. To open it without the right lineage meant madness—or death. That was why her family had been hunted. That was why the household was guarded like a fortress.
And that was why she had been labeled a threat.
Still.
Some things were… oddly familiar.
The way councils debated power while pretending it was about order. The way people smiled while measuring what they could take from you. The way history was written by those who survived.
Why does this smell familiar… she wondered more than once, fingers pausing over parchment.
One afternoon, when her head ached from reports and trade agreements, she leaned back in her chair and sighed.
"Lucien."
He appeared almost immediately, as if he had been waiting just beyond the door. "Yes, mistress."
"…Could you make moon-cream torte?"
His eyes softened—just a fraction. "At once."
Moon-cream torte was her favorite. A delicate dessert made of whipped night-milk, honeyed sponge, and a thin glaze infused with starlight sugar. Others could make it.
But only Lucien made it right.
When he returned, he placed the plate before her with practiced precision.
She took one bite.
And smiled.
"Thank you," she said, genuinely. "It's perfect."
Lucien bowed. "I am pleased it suits your taste."
But as he straightened, something tightened in his chest.
He remembered.
After the ambush. After the estate had gone silent. After she returned as the sole survivor—thin, hollow-eyed, untouched food cooling beside her untouched hands.
For months.
She had not smiled.
Not once.
Now—every time he brought her food, there it was. Small, unguarded. As if for just a moment, the weight of the world eased off her shoulders.
…So this is what you look like when you're alive, he thought.
He kept his expression neutral, as a butler should.
But something in him shifted.
If his role was to serve—
Then he would serve this version of her.
This smiling one.
Even if it meant standing between her and the entire world.
---
Niana had grown used to the quiet rhythm of the manor.
Not completely at ease—not yet—but there were moments that made her chest feel lighter.
Mornings spent walking through the gardens, the dew still clinging to petals, light spilling over the lake like liquid gold. She had wandered there alone at first, clutching a notebook, sketching the flowers, tracing the intricate patterns of the trees. She didn't understand why she was allowed such freedom, but she took it, inhaling the scent of wet earth and lilies, thinking maybe this world isn't all bad.
Afternoons were for books. Niana had access to the manor's private library. Hundreds of tomes, leather-bound, spines gilded with symbols she couldn't yet read but recognized instinctively. Some were historical accounts, some were accounts of her own family's actions. She read in long stretches, tracing her fingers over the pages, wondering if this life had been hers to inherit—or if she had simply stolen it.
And then there was Lucien. Always near, always watching, but not hovering. His presence was both protective and unnerving. Sometimes, while she sketched or experimented with recipes in the kitchen, he would quietly stand in the doorway, hands folded, eyes alert. She often caught him observing her more than the room, as if measuring how she moved, how she smiled, how she breathed.
She began to wonder the questions no one dared ask:
Am I… isekai? Transmigrated? Reincarnated?
Isekai: She had clearly been pulled into another world—but she remembered her death in her world differently. Or did she?
Transmigration: She wasn't inhabiting a stranger's body from her past life. This body had its own history, its own memories. She could feel it.
Reincarnation: That would mean she was dead. Truly dead. And if that were the case… there was no way back.
Her thoughts twisted and coiled in on themselves as she walked the corridors, flipping through old ledgers and sketches, learning the life of the girl she now inhabited. She tried to reconcile the laughter she read in the diary with the screams she imagined from the ambush.
Some days, she let herself indulge. Baking with ingredients she could barely pronounce. Walking along the lake at night and tossing pebbles into the water just to watch ripples spread. Reading in the sunlight until her fingers were sore. These were small pleasures, fleeting, but they reminded her she was alive—somehow.
Other days, she returned to the cold, heavy realization: she could be trapped forever, in a world that wasn't hers, in a body that wasn't hers, with threats she didn't yet understand. And Lucien—sweet, silent, infuriatingly competent Lucien—was here to protect her. Or monitor her. She didn't know which.
One evening, after a particularly long day of studying the Divine Word, Niana returned to her room, exhausted but content. The torte she'd eaten earlier had left a sweet warmth in her stomach. She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling, imagining her old room, her desk cluttered with notes, the world she left behind.
"…Maybe there isn't a way back," she whispered to herself. "Maybe… I just have to make it here."
The thought didn't comfort her, but it wasn't entirely sad either. She closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the manor seep into her—wind through the trees, distant clatter of dishes, the soft hum of Lucien's footsteps somewhere in the halls.
She didn't hear the door open.
Or the soft click of boots against polished stone.
From the window, she saw him. Lucien. Not in his usual quiet stance by the doorway. He was moving with purpose, shoulders tense, hands gloved, disappearing into the night as if he were going somewhere he wasn't supposed to.
Niana's fingers tightened around the diary she still carried.
"…Where are you going?" she whispered into the empty room.
The wind outside answered.
No one replied.
And for the first time in months, Niana realized—her life, her survival, and perhaps even this world, might depend on following him.