Rucella turned golden.

How? Why?

It can’t be.

I spat out crimson blood as the sword’s pain pierced through my body. Even so, I looked at her, Lady Medeia.

Why are you doing this to me? We were friends.

“Oh my…”

The lady blinked her beautiful eyes sorrowfully.

“It must hurt so much, Bella. I’m sorry. I should have killed you in one strike, I’m sorry.”

I wanted to ask why, to ask what was suddenly happening. But my punctured lungs could only produce wheezing sounds.

“I used some poison. You’re a sword master after all, it would have been dangerous to try without it.”

Poison. The lady’s main weapon for killing her archnemeses.

“Bella, did you really believe I thought of you as a friend? You’re as foolish as the Emperor.”

She looked down at me quietly, with an expression of genuine sorrow for my foolishness.

I don’t know what expression I’m making right now. But my face reflected in her red eyes was contorted with pain. My heart felt like it was being torn apart.

Blood flowed ceaselessly, passing my hands and soaking my lower body. The white cape on my shoulders was becoming dyed red. As I barely lifted my unmoving head to look at her, she frowned gently.

“Bella, how cruel. How do you think it makes me feel when you look at me like that? After I’ve told you the truth, are you not grateful? The Emperor’s only blood granddaughter he’s been searching for his whole life – that’s you.”

Me, the Emperor Dimitus’ only blood relative?

The only daughter of the long-dead Crown Prince?

Me, the Emperor’s granddaughter?

Lady Medeia brought her face close to my ear. Then she whispered in a fragrant voice:

“This dagger with the blue handle, it’s a keepsake from the woman who was your mother. My father gave it to me to keep, but I’m specially placing it in your hands. Remember my last act of friendship.”

A dagger fell in front of my hand. Tears welled up.

I came here when I was five years old. I have no memories from before that. My first memory of life was the kind face of the six-year-old lady smiling at me.

Though we had a master-servant relationship, she called me her friend. She was the only warmth in my life, or rather, what I believed was warmth.

She spat out, as if grinding her words:

“So I was right. The sword turned golden. Royal bloodline, as if such blood matters.”

I looked down at the dagger she had thrown with all my strength.

I could feel my life fading away.

Still, I wanted to see it. The thing that belonged to my mother…

To think that I had a mother…

I heard Medeia’s voice:

“It was found when my father killed your mother. Ah, your father the Crown Prince was also killed by my father, Duke Lahert. To make me, Medeia, the Empress. Ah, that dream will come true tomorrow. Bella, die happily for me. Your blood won’t be in vain. It will be known that Rucella turned golden because of my blood, and then I’ll become the blood granddaughter, not just the adopted one. Thank you, Bella.”

My vision grew darker and darker. Finally, it turned black. I was so cold.

Is this what it feels like just before death?

My last breath escaped from where all the blood had drained from my body.

That’s how I died.

***

But then I opened my eyes again.

− Kuhurk

I let out a scream without realizing. My lungs and heart, which I thought had stopped, sputtered in confusion, exhaling a full breath.

Something dark and low spread out before my eyes. Only after staring blankly for a while could I tell it was a ceiling.

Above the low space that felt like being inside a coffin, something passed by with a scurrying sound. Acrid, dirty dust entered my nostrils.

The palms of my hands felt damp.

‘Am I… lying down?’

For a moment, I wondered if this really was the inside of a coffin. I carefully turned my head to look to the side.

A small window, no bigger than a palm, was set in the highest part of the wall. What was that faint light coming through? Surely not sunlight.

‘I definitely died… so why.’

Why am I back in the place I lived long ago, before becoming an assassin? The underground storage of the Lahert Grand Duke’s main residence.

Is this the afterlife?

Is the afterlife a place made from one’s most difficult memories in life?

I see. This is where I’ve come after death.

Considering the things I did in life, it’s a fitting result.

As I was thinking this,

Suddenly, two streams of tears flowed down my cheeks.

Does the body remain intact even in the afterlife? Why are all these sensations so vivid, just like when I was alive?

Even the pain in my heart, how can it be so…

Lady Medeia killed me.

I was… the Emperor’s only blood relative.

Not the White Butterfly assassin, but the only princess born to the Emperor’s only son.

A truth now buried and useless after death.

Slowly, I got up from the straw bed I was lying on and went to the mirror hanging on one wall. And I stared into the mirror.

But I was startled. The me in the mirror was younger than I had been just minutes ago when I met my death. The me in the mirror looked like myself from several years ago.

I stared blankly at my appearance anew.

The left side of my face was grotesquely distorted like melted candle wax. In the eye socket that drooped so much the underside of the eyeball was exposed, there was an ominous red pupil.

And as if split exactly in half, the right side of my face was completely different from the left.

Snow-white transparent skin, beautifully arched eyebrows, round eyes with long ends like water droplets, sky-blue pupils set within. Crimson lips unlike the grayish lips on the opposite side.

This was my right face. And my half-mask always covered this right side of my face.

A small half-mask, probably the size I would have worn as a teenager, lay on the old table in front of the mirror.

Duke Lahert had said:

[The left side is your original face, and the right side is a face changed with the help of a magician. The left is real, the right is fake. It’s only thanks to a great magician that even half of that face could be fixed. Be grateful and serve my daughter.]

To which I had replied:

[I will engrave your grace in my bones. Thank you, Your Grace.]

That duke killed my mother and father?

With trembling hands, I traced my face in the mirror.

“Fake.”

Which side is my real face?

“Fake.”

The voice I made with my mouth reaches my ears.

My life was fake.

A groan escaped through my tightly clenched teeth.

All the pain is so vivid. Is this really the world after death?

It was then.

Clunk−.

The wooden door beside the straw bed suddenly opened. A young-faced maid I had never seen before stood in the doorway.

What is this? This hell that feels so real?

As I stared at her blankly, the maid wrinkled her face in apparent shock at my appearance. Instinctively, I picked up the mask and covered the beautiful side of my face. It was such a familiar reflex action.

She said:

“The Black Bug is looking for you. Come to the training grounds now.”

She slammed the door shut and left.

I was dazed.

Why does this situation feel so familiar?

Is this my resentment that couldn’t disappear even after death?

The Black Bug?

My swordsmanship teacher whom I killed long ago?

As I stood there blankly for a while, someone else suddenly flung open my door.

‘You are…’

A boy with curly straw-colored hair and freckles all over his face.

An assassin trainee who died at the hands of the Black Bug when I was twenty. He had struggled to survive but ultimately lost to me and one other boy, and was discarded.

We had trained together as assassins for over ten years, but even after this child died, I didn’t know his name. We were raised without even knowing each other’s names.

“Hey, monster. Aren’t you coming? Are you going to take responsibility if we get overnight training because of you?”

At the boy’s shout, I hurriedly followed him out.

It was winter outside. The wind brushing my cheeks was cold enough to cut flesh.

Arriving at the training grounds, I could see the Black Bug glaring at me with piercing eyes even from afar. For a moment, the blood in my body ran cold.

A man with long black hair tied tightly in a ponytail, a smooth face that looked younger than his age, and a cold heart.

An assassin and assassin trainer who secretly raised potential assassins for the Grand Duke’s family, and killed those judged useless – a teacher and enemy.

He approached me, his black eyes glittering. Then he inserted his fingers into my silver hair and grabbed a fistful.

“White grub. If you don’t do your best, today will be your last day.”

I stared at him expressionlessly. At that, sparks flew in his eyes.

The Black Bug pointed his sword, much longer than a normal sword, at my neck. As I quickly stepped back, his eyes flashed. Then he began to launch increasingly precise attacks.

I maintained a blank expression as I dodged his attacks by a hair’s breadth.

Whether this was hell or the resentment of the dead, I didn’t want to be killed again. And above all, his quick movements that I couldn’t see as a child were now all visible.

‘He’s slow.’

I became a Sword Master at 22. Of course, as an assassin who couldn’t reveal my identity, it was an honor I couldn’t make public.

And the Black Bug never reached the level of Master until his death.

At some point, he stopped attacking and said:

“How are you so different from yesterday? Your skills are quite something. On the day the Northern Duke arrives, I might give you your first mission.”

“!”

For a moment, I froze at his words.

“Is this inside my memory? What year is it now?”

He tilted his head at my words.

“Speaking informally, huh. Hehe. It’s 1,110 in the Delfast calendar. The 30th year of Emperor Dimitus’ reign.”

When I was nineteen years old.

“You said the Northern Duke is coming?”

He frowned at my question. Then he swung his longsword towards my face. Thinking ‘surely not’, I reflexively dodged, but his sword grazed my distorted cheek.

The blood that flowed down was hot. Such a vivid sensation. Almost like reality.

“Focus. Didn’t His Grace the Duke invite the Northern Duke as a reward for defeating the barbarians in the south of the empire?”

Suddenly, my hand holding the sword began to tremble.

The winter of my nineteenth year, an unforgettable winter.

Six years ago, when I assassinated Lord Arcadia Nugent, the right-hand man of Northern Duke Sion Belfast, disguising it as suicide.

That was my first assassination. The incident that became the starting point for the fall of the North.

Why have I returned to that time?