After a hearty breakfast and without a drop of alcohol in it, Tristessa left her room dressed in the clothes the maid in charge of that wing on the first floor had returned to her, mended, without a trace of blood, and smelling of a rose-like perfume.

  Her three companions had assumed she was going back to sleep and left her alone. In other circumstances, she wouldn't hesitate for a moment to spend another whole day in dreamland, after so many sleepless nights, but she had an urgent need to speak with Aurelia Eramisaptor.

  With the information Auron had given her and a bit of direction a heavily armed guard had been kind enough to provide, Tristessa went straight to the hallway at the far end of the second floor on the right-hand side.

  A dimly lit, cold place with a certain air of neglect.

  “Is this really where the Lady of the Dominion rests?” Tristessa thought, shivering as she walked, forced to button the top two buttons of her trench coat, her gaze fixed at the door at the end of the hallway. “Humility or indifference from the staff? Perhaps Auron wasn’t exaggerating.”

  Besides, the girl felt someone watching her from the shadows. There weren’t many places to hide in a straight corridor with beams on the ceiling and framed antique paintings hanging on the walls. Still, the presence was imposing, enough to make her skin crawl.

  “Sylas… Protecting your lady nonstop, after having failed her.” Tristessa didn’t want to turn around, but she felt as if that assassin was standing behind her. And surely that was the case; his hand tied, unable to harm her. Resigned to the fact that the situation that had blown up in his face had never been under his control, and that was something that raised doubts and questions about oneself. “It’s not your fault that in this timeline I had the upper hand.”

  The door to Aurelia’s room was made of wood carved with traditional Nekromian fauna; old, worn, and dull. The soft surface echoed, reflecting its deplorable state, as Tristessa tapped it three times, eliciting a response from the other side, marked by annoyance.

  “I told you he didn’t need your pity, you vagab…” Aurelia fell silent in an instant, holding it for a few seconds before continuing with a hint of hatred. “The last person I want to see right now is you, you stinking, lying vermin. Get lost.”

  “Ah, my Discord betrayed me…” That caused the image of a certain masked woman to form in her mind. Perhaps her second visit, after the one she was about to make, regardless of whether the woman inside that room wanted it or not. Tristessa turned the knob and opened the door wide, finding herself confronted with a sight that crushed her chest. “No, Auron wasn’t exaggerating.”

  The room's interior was an iceberg, air heavy and freezing around. Only ashes remained in the fireplace, the carpet covering the floor was dirty from days of accumulated dust, only a power crystal retained enough energy to function, and the right door of the antique wardrobe hung by its hinges.

  “Didn't you hear me?! I told you to get out!”

  In bed, Aurelia lay on her back, immobilized by a metal contraption that moved from one side of the bed to the other, passing over the patient and shifting slowly under a mechanism of gears and thaumaturgy. The machine's function was to move panels engraved with healing glyphs and complex mathematical figures around the half-naked chest of the angry woman, at a fixed frequency.

  All to treat the wound Tristessa had inflicted; the damage was so extensive that the broken bones prevented the unrestrained edge of Dullahan's black sword from piercing deeper, especially into her heart.

  Then there was the rest of the She-Dragoon's body: weary bones and micro-torn flesh from bullet impacts and elemental-gravity thaumaturgy. And her face, radiating rage from the almost intact side, while the other was darkened, swollen, and bandaged. The spot where Dullahan had struck her had not only shattered her cheekbone but also broken several teeth and damaged her eyeball. Half her head had been shaved, revealing her scalp covered in black and blue hair roots.

  In short, Aurelia Eramisaptor was the very face of defeat. Alone, seething with anger, and too physically exhausted to move a single finger.

  “We need to talk,” Tristessa said after closing the door behind her.

  There was only a chair by the closed and tarnished window that looked out onto the back of the castle, where the labyrinthine courtyard of pale flowers, only now beginning to bloom, stretched out. She hadn't yet had the chance to visit that beautiful garden—not with time running out in all the previous loops—but hopefully, maybe that very day she'd finally get the chance.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Aurelia spat, watching her grab the chair and move it next to the bed. “Don't your little friends know you're here?”

  “They think I'm resting.”

  “Then go rest, before I throw you out the window!”

  “Ha, don't make me laugh!” Tristessa didn't sit down yet but went straight to the fireplace. “I'll do you a favor and heat this place up. If Auron isn't here, no one will do it for you?”

  “...”

  There was no reply.

  “I think... Yes, I remember. It's not like lighting a fireplace, but I've lit the fire a few times to have barbecues with...friends? My family?”

  The memory slipped through her fingers like mist on a damp morning. It was pointless to try to remember for a past that was buried so deep inside her chained consciousness.

  Crouching down, Tristessa removed most of the layer of ash and placed dry kindling, twigs, and newspaper in a pile, in that order.

  “No tinderbox?” she asked the woman, receiving only a silent, withering glare in return. “Zero aptitude for thaumaturgy here, you know?”

  “...Firan.”

  The elemental fire glyph that appeared above the pile was unstable, distorted, and only managed to generate a few sparks. But it was more than enough to ignite the kindling, and soon the pile was burning nicely enough for Tristessa to add a couple more logs and nod with satisfaction.

  “Good teamwork,” the girl said, returning to Aurelia and sitting down in the chair. She crossed her legs and didn't wait for a response she knew would never come from the woman who was looking sideways, her half-gaze revealing all the hatred she held for her. “How do you feel?”

  “I hope you break your neck when you fall from this second floor.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  That response would have made Tristessa feel at least a hint of concern before. Defeating Aurelia had shattered the majestic and unreachable image she had of her; now she saw a broken sovereign, vulnerable, and emotionally unstable—far more so than usual.

  “How will you throw me out the window? With your farting Divinity?” With that taunt, Tristessa smiled as she watched her face burn and tremble with such rage that it seemed her only visible eye might pop out of its sockets at any moment. “At least it doesn't smell bad.”

  “I won’t tolerate your disrespect for another second,” she warned with such unusual, bloody gentleness, foam starting to appear at the corners of her mouth. It was a miracle she hadn’t lunged at Tristessa to rip out a neck artery with her own teeth.

  “…you’re right, Lady Eramisaptor. That was discourteous of me, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t. Aurelia knew it, too. The enmity was mutual and always would be, from the moment their paths crossed and Tristessa delivered a tactical slap thanks to all the times she’d died. “I suppose your wounds are healing quickly, milady?”

  Silence.

  “Yes, I sound very dishonest. The gash on your chest looks better, though.”

  Silence.

  “And about the blow to your face… W-well, I didn’t know Dullahan was going to hit you so hard. I’m sorry about that too,” she apologized, massaging the back of her neck, so uncomfortable that she briefly averted her gaze from Aurelia’s murderous eye.

  “You named that phantom of steel?” she asked, finally, after another awkward minute of frostbitten silence. “What does that word mean?”

  “Dullahan? It’s the name of a mythological creature from my world. It doesn’t exist there, it never did… But it seems my Divinity made it real here, in Nekrom,” Tristessa explained.

  “Your Divinity… Your Divinity… Your fifth Divinity. Not four. Five.”

  The gray-eyed girl had never before heard anyone speak a number aloud with such venom, worse than the deadliest of snakes. Perhaps that was what made Aurelia so angry, to the point that her arms and legs trembled against the bed, against the machinery that was simple in form but complex at its core of technomancy.

  “How? How did you deceive me?” she asked, visibly tormented, having cultivated it within her for so few hours and having it spread like a cancer that gnawed at her spirit, her self-confidence, and her prodigious ability. “Me, who sees the lie amid the truth? How?!”

  Any strategist would have taken advantage of that moment of weakness, knowing that only her allies knew the truth about Dullahan.

  Anyone with the power to return to the past and keep crucial information to change the future instantly becomes a strategist in the eyes of others.

  “…”

  Tristessa was no strategist. She was just a girl with more flaws than virtues; more prone to losing than winning.

  Vulnerable, and weak.

  And she was conscious about it. From what little she knew about the real Tristessa Irandell, she had no doubt about it.

  “That Divinity awoke at the most opportune moment for me, and at the worst for you,” she replied with an honesty that one day, with luck, would be acknowledged by the astonished woman. She shook her head and shrugged, feeling a pang of pity for how fate had dealt Aurelia a cruel blow. A fate she herself had taken it upon herself to change through Death and Resurrection. “It was just…”

  “Luck.” The She-Dragoon breathed a sigh of relief, now able to begin healing the wound Tristessa had unintentionally inflicted on her psyche. “I told you, during our duel. All that defines you, Tristessa Irandell, is luck. And one day it will run out.”

  “One day… But for now, I rejoice in my victory and that of my allies,” she told her, feeling the warmth of the fireplace begin to fill the room. Or was it that tiny bit of pride she could afford to feel? “We beat you, Aurelia. And we beat you good.”

  “A victory without honoring my wish to die in that duel!” she roared, the bed legs creaking in protest under the woman’s rough movements.

  “No, what I dishonored was a caprice. You said I had to kill you so I could fulfill our dreams,” Tristessa retorted, making special emphasis on the our, and making Aurelia close her eyes for a few seconds, cursing herself. “Your dream isn’t to die, of that I’m quite sure. Your dream is to see your Dominion safe from the clutches of Moebius and his coven of witches.”

  “I don’t have dreams. That was just the heat of the moment, don’t think I…”

  “For someone who can tell the difference between truth and lies, you’re a terrible liar.” The girl’s casual remark shortened Aurelia’s fuse until it was about to explode.

  “I TOLD YOU I DON’T…! AGH!”

  Aurelia had already strained herself too much, overwhelmed by her rampant emotions. This time it wasn't without consequences: she had tried to bend her torso sideways to confront that impertinent brat, causing the long gash in her chest to suffer axial pressure and, consequently, fresh blood to flow from newly made cuts.

  “Hey, hey, don't do anything stupid. You'll only hinder your recovery.” Tristessa stood up from her chair right away and took a bundle of absorbent cloth and a jar of medicinal ointment from the glass table covered with alchemical elements. Aurelia didn't have the energy to continue protesting and resigned herself to accepting her painful help. “How is it possible that the Lady of the Dominion doesn't always have healers by her side? And this room is so old and neglected... I refuse to believe you sleep here.”

  “So what if I do? I don't use the Lord of the Domain's chambers: they're far too big, designed for a consort and young children, both of which I don't have,” the woman spat out, grunting under her breath to resist the sharp pains. “And no one asked you to defend me. I don’t need your help.”

  Tristessa might be naive, but not so naive as to miss the hidden message in his deceitful words.

  “Yes, you do need it. And you want it… Why are you refusing? Are you afraid of the Emperor’s retaliation if you accept my help? Jonas doesn’t seem so worried about that, as long as you all keep my nature a secret.”

  “Since you mentioned that meddling old man…” Radiating fury, her pride as wounded as her chest, she seized Tristessa by the wrist of the same hand she was using to apply medicinal ointment to the swollen, bloody sides of the hole in her chest. The grip was weak and easily broken, but the girl wanted to see where her old—and perhaps still present—enemy was going with this. “Don’t think that Lord Youngblood’s pardon to the Mercer-Archeos for violating their imposed exile will make me sit idly by. I will make sure they remain prisoners within these walls and never know freedom.”

  “What?!” Tristessa tried to pull her hand away, offended, but Aurelia held on tight, suffering in the process. “If you dare…!”

  “Do you want them to be truly free?” The She-Dragoon was sweating a lot; the effort she was making was demanding every cell of her weakened body. “That I personally bow my head and beg forgiveness for the harm I've caused them?”

  But she smiled and laughed despite her extreme weariness, mocking the seriousness of the situation and issuing a veiled challenge to the girl that not even the bravest and most powerful lords and knights in the entire Empire would dare accept:

  “That will only happen the day you destroy the Coven, go to [Merzul, the Nation of Dark Thaumaturgy], and kill Moebius.”

  In five hundred years, it was almost certain that no one would have been mad enough to consider such a mission possible. It was suicide. Madness. There was no way to fight someone who always, without exception, held the upper hand and indulged in tormenting End-World from the shadows.

  At least that's how it was until Tristessa arrived. The same girl standing beside the ruler of that very Dominion, to whom she had already promised someone she would slay one of the Shadow Queen's servants.

  “She's doing this on purpose… She knows our goals are aligned: the Mercer-Archeos will never have peace as long as Daiana and Moebius live," she thought, fixing her gray gaze on the violet eye not covered by a painful, purple swelling and bandages. “Fine. If your pride won't let you be honest, so be it.”

  "What do you think of that, Stranger?"

  It was so obvious and sad that this woman was putting on this charade of strength when her broken gaze was pleading. Begging for help.

  “I know you don't believe the Empire can survive the Shadow Queen's evil. You've lost hope…” Tristessa pulled away from the wounded woman's grasp to take her hand and shake it. With firmness and the absurd, naive determination of someone who had already made promises impossible to keep, she said: “But you will change your mind when I fulfill your dream, Aurelia. That's my promise to you.”