Within a passage of pure mana reflecting the vastness of the cosmos, Victoria was swept away by a violent current of light. The flow carried her forward, toward what appeared to be an illuminated gate suspended in the infinite.
A scream tore from her throat — not from pain, but from the terror of not knowing. Of not understanding what awaited her beyond that threshold.
Yet as she drifted deeper into the celestial corridor, her fear was quietly stolen.
Before her, woven into the firmament of the milky way itself, appeared two figures sculpted from starlight — her late father, the king, and his faithful right hand, Benedict Fanthome. Their images shimmered like constellations etched upon the heavens, gazing at her with gentle, unwavering smiles.
There was no reproach in their eyes. No regret. Only reassurance.
The sight unravelled the tightness in her chest.
Surrendering her fear to the serenity of their fading radiance, the princess slowly closed her eyes. She ceased resisting the current and entrusted herself to the tide of mana, allowing it to carry her forward.
For the first time since that fateful night, she accepted her fate without struggle.
***
Somewhere, beneath the shroud of night—
in a world unknown to the multitude—
a solitary light pierced the sky.
For a fleeting instant, it shimmered like a falling star before descending in silence. After crossing an immeasurable distance, the collapsing radiance concluded its course within the depths of a forest.
From afar, it resembled a vast orb of light cradled by fluttering butterflies. Yet upon closer inspection, a figure lay resting at its core.
It was the fallen Princess, Victoria Ave Strassfey.
When the spell's brilliance finally waned, she stirred. Her eyes opened to a world she had never imagined.
The trees towered with ancient unfamiliarity. The insects hummed in strange cadences. Even the air felt untouched by the histories she knew. Everything around her mirrored the mythic realms she had once encountered only in books.
As she rose to her feet, the creatures of the forest scattered. To them, her arrival was no miracle—it was catastrophe. The earth bore the scar of her impact, and they fled as though from a calamity.
Their retreat unearthed a memory she had desperately wished to bury.
Helios.
The same helplessness. The same abandonment.
A chain of events that had led to her father's death… and to Benedict's sacrifice.
The thought sickened her.
Revulsion swelled within her chest—revulsion not toward fate, but toward herself. The useless one who had survived. The weak one left breathing.
Tears blurred her vision as her body convulsed, and she vomited onto the soil, as though she could expel the very fact of her existence.
That night, exploring this unfamiliar world never crossed her mind.
Instead, she crawled beneath a protruding rock, curling into its hollow like a wounded animal seeking shade. She claimed it as a resting place, though she lacked the will to truly care whether she would survive the night or not.
The gesture was not born of intention, nor of reason. It was instinct—raw and unbidden.
Somewhere beneath the ruins of her despair, her body remembered what her spirit had abandoned. Knowledge of the wild, long buried within her culture of books, surfaced quietly. Even as her mind unravelled, her flesh clung to life.
The next day, she wandered without direction, her steps aimless, her gaze unfocused. Roots caught her feet; stones turned beneath her soles. Again and again, she stumbled, collapsing onto the forest floor, too exhausted to steady herself. Bruises formed. Muscles stiffened. A dull ache spread through her limbs. Yet she did not react, as though the pain belonged to another body.
The days that followed proved harsher.
She became the hollow vessel of her own traumas. Appetite abandoned her, and she did not attempt to reclaim it. Refusing food without conviction, merely without care, she grew visibly lean. Flesh receded; her skin clung more tightly to bone. Dark crescents deepened beneath her eyes from sleepless nights and relentless fatigue. Dirt layered her skin; her hair tangled and dulled. A week passed in such decay.
Her mind drifted so far from the present that her existence felt incomplete—perceptible in body, absent in spirit. She moved like a fading imprint upon the world, as though reality acknowledged her only out of obligation.
Even the apex predators of the forest dismissed her.
Whether repelled by the faint aura that lingered around her or by the stench of despair itself, they did not claim her as prey. She was not worth the hunt. Not nourishment. Not threat.
To them, she was an intrusion—an ill omen fallen from the sky, her presence subtly staining the sanctity of their woodland home.
***
As the sun ascended, the world to which the Lord hand had sent the fallen princess was unveiled beneath a flood of golden radiance. What had been concealed by night now stood revealed—a realm fashioned as sanctuary.
High above, islands drifted lazily across the azure canopy, suspended as though gravity itself had been persuaded into gentleness. Living clouds shimmered with inner luminescence, their radiant forms weaving between the floating masses of land. Birds of unfamiliar species traced vast circles through the air, their cries dissolving into the boundless blue, while enchanted vessels—objects wrapped in spheres of mana—travelled silently from one horizon to another, bearing silent witness to the vitality of the celestial veil.
Beneath this celestial grandeur, vast continents stretched across firm lands, where thriving towns and winding roads anchored life, a place where people walked as naturally as in any realm of mortals. There, towns flourished in serene harmony. Humans walked the same streets as dwarfs, elves, gnomes, demi-humans, and fairies. Races once divided elsewhere coexisted without visible prejudice. And so, it had endured for millennia.
Even the beasts of this realm were varied beyond imagination—some bearing forms unknown, even unrecorded, in Victoria's former world. For over thousands of years, these paradisiacal lands had served as refuge to the displaced: those cast aside, oppressed, or hunted across other worlds.
A haven for the broken; Utopia.
So pristine in its design that one might dismiss it as legend—until standing upon its earthly expanse.
Upon a gentle hill bordering a forest tinted faintly with magenta hues, three riders cloaked in black slowed their pace before drawing to a halt.
"How much longer until we reach Goss?" one of the women asked, her tone edged with impatience, a small, unconscious pout betraying her mounting frustration.
"No idea," another replied with an exaggerated sigh. "I'm completely drained."
"Then spare us empty answers," the third voice intervened—measured, composed, carrying quiet authority. "If you lack certainty, silence is preferable."
The riders stilled.
"Goss is a day's ride from here," he continued. "But we will pass through the Magenta Woods. The shortcut will hasten our arrival. Our mission cannot tolerate delay."
A pause followed.
"But the Magenta Woods are said to harbour dangerous creatures," one of the women protested, unease threading her voice.
The man's gaze sharpened beneath the shadow of his hood.
"I stand among you," he said calmly. "There is nothing to fear. After all…"
A faint aura pulsed from him, and the birds in the trees burst into startled flight, scattering into the heavens.
"I am your Patriarch."
***
As all these days passed, the feeling that wretched the fallen princess' heart was not only born of the despair inflicted by the man she loved, nor solely of the deaths of those she held dear. As she wandered, scarcely conscious of her surroundings, she was also searching—desperately—for an answer to questions that tormented her fractured mind.
"Why me? Why is this happening to me? Where did I go wrong? Whom did I offend? Which god did I sin against?" she asked herself in anguish.
Victoria stood in an open clearing within the forest, surrounded by carcasses and the remnants left behind by scavengers. As the sun finally set, rain claimed the woodland—pouring down as a blessing to some and a curse to others. For Victoria, in that moment, even the aurora borealis would have felt like mockery. The mere fact that she still lived, while figures as eminent as the King and the Lord Hand had died for her sake, disgusted her.
"I'm a mistake. Mother died giving birth to me—I killed her. I am the reason Father was robbed of the love of his life. He refused to eat for days; he could not endure her absence. And yet he ruled magnificently. Until he fell ill… weak enough to fall into another's hands. And all this time, what was I doing? Idling away, waiting a decade for a man who does not even love me!"
She screamed and collapsed to her knees, sobbing without restraint.
"I'm useless. I'm foolish. I'm weak. Why do they expect anything from someone like me? I'm not worthy."
She repeated those cruel verdicts to herself while striking her head against a rock, hoping to end her life.
But to her astonishment, glittering, multi-coloured butterflies shielded her. No harm befell her. Her eyes widened—caught between shock and guilt—as she remembered their origin.
"This is my clan's treasure. I entrust my final will to you."
Those had been the words of the late Lord Hand, when he entrusted the future of Auronis to the one he believed to be its rightful queen.
"You won't even allow me to die…" Victoria whispered as the rain and her tears streamed down her face.
Indeed, under ordinary circumstances, the princess would have perished on any of those desolate days—were it not for the protective spell emanating from Benedict's clan treasure.
"Just let me be. It's all my fault. I'm not worthy of your sacrifice… nor of Father's love… nor of Mother's life. I am the cause of this chaos. If only I had never been born…"
She continued to crush herself beneath her own words.
Yet as Victoria finally resolved to make that very spot her eternal resting place, a violent tide surged through her chest. In the shadowed woods, a lone wolf stood at a distance, its dark fur blending with the undergrowth, eyes glinting with cold calculation. In its jaws hung a lifeless lamb, blood staining the fallen leaves like spilled rubies. The wolf's gaze, sharp and unflinching, struck her as a silent taunt, daring her even from afar. The sight pressed upon her with the icy weight of injustice, igniting a wildfire of rage too fierce to suppress, scorching every corner of her being.
"No! It wasn't my fault. It was his. The true culprit is Helios."
The thought burned through her like lightning beneath the rain-soaked sky.
"He betrayed Father. He betrayed me. He betrayed our motherland. He is a traitor—and traitors must pay."
Though her body trembled with weakness, Victoria forced herself upright, sustained by sheer resolve. What she declared next would once have been unthinkable for her.
"I will kill that rotting traitor. I will kill him."
Her voice was cold, almost unrecognizable. Veins surfaced along her face; her eyes reddened; tears streamed down unchecked. She panted, shaking—not from fragility, but from a rage that had finally eclipsed despair.
All the creatures of the forest, sheltered beneath trees and rocky alcoves to escape the rain, bore witness to her fury. But they were not the only ones.
A few meters away, the three horsemen who had chosen the Magenta Woods as a shortcut also noticed her. For the first time in her life, the fallen princess exuded bloodlust. It was not something visible to ordinary eyes—yet every beast in the woodland felt it. And so did the sole man among the riders.
"Look—a child, alone in the rain. She might be lost," the first woman remarked.
"Leave her. We are searching for candidates to aid in our goddess return. Everything else is secondary," the second replied coldly.
"No… she may be broken, yet our goddess might bestow her grace upon her," the first insisted as they guided their horses toward the clearing.