Mavis woke to the sound of muffled murmurs. The voices danced at the edge of her consciousness, fragmented and distant like echoes in a dream. One voice squealed, "She's really waking up!" while another, wet and choked with sobs, sniffled louder than seemed dignified. It was a strange thing to wake up to—joy and grief braided together in a single moment.
Her eyes fluttered open, heavy as if she'd been asleep for years. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar—carved stone with glowing etchings. She shifted, and the texture of the sheets beneath her felt too fine, too smooth. This wasn't her bed. These weren't her walls.
There were five people surrounding her. Strangers. Three women, two men. But the memories... the memories were not strangers.
They hit like a crashing tide—images, laughter, warmth. A girl with golden hair and a voice that made flowers bloom. A hero. A shield. A beacon. Her name was Nyx. And somehow, all of her memories now lived inside Mavis.
It wasn't just knowledge. It was emotion. Familiarity. Love. Responsibility.
Mavis knew their names before they spoke them. Oryo. Joene. Daise. Jewls. Muhle. She knew what made them laugh, what they feared, who they once were and who they wanted to become. But none of them knew her. Not really.
She blinked and tried to sit up. Her arms—toned, muscular—weren't hers. The body responded like it had fought dragons, not depression.
"Nyx, how are you feeling?" Oryo asked gently.
Fine, she wanted to say. But what came out was, "...Fine."
She wasn't. The body felt heavy, like it remembered things she hadn't lived through. Joyful memories sat in her chest like stones, and still, a single tear escaped the corner of her eye. She wiped it away before they could notice.
Joene, the tearful one, lit up. "You must be hungry. Daise cooked—your favorite! Pasta! She burned the first batch but—"
"I'm not hungry," Mavis cut in.
Her stomach disagreed, growling softly. But she didn't want food. She wanted space. She wanted silence. She wanted to disappear into herself, the same way she had on Earth when life became too loud to bear. But these people weren't leaving.
Daise and Jewls clung to her like ivy, arms around her in a suffocating embrace.
"We were so worried," Jewls whispered. "Especially after what the Demon King said. He took your light. Your happiness."
Ah. So that's what it was. That hollow space inside her chest—Nyx's light, stolen. But the emptiness? That wasn't new. Mavis had lived with it. The only difference was that now it had a poetic excuse.
"I see," she said, voice flat. "That's unfortunate."
They didn't seem to hear the resignation beneath her words.
Daise pulled back, fists clenched with fiery resolve. "Then we'll get it back. We'll find the Demon King and take it back!"
Mavis looked at her. This girl—bright, brash, burning like a candle with too short a wick—thought the world could be fixed with determination. She even had the gall to force Mavis's lips into a smile.
"That's what makes a person a person! A smile!"
God, it was idiotic. What kind of logic was that? Smiling made you a person? What did faking joy have to do with being whole? But Mavis couldn't even muster a sarcastic snort. All she could do was stare at Daise, too tired to argue, too empty to care.
When Daise finally let go, Mavis rubbed her jaw. Her lips tingled like they'd been stretched too far.
Then, something flickered across Daise's face. Not the usual fiery determination, but something quieter—grief, perhaps. A deep ache dulled the edges of her smile, like the weight of memory pressing down behind her eyes. She missed Nyx. The real one. The one who used to laugh too loudly, who carried their hope like it was armor, who made impossible things feel inevitable.
But that version of Nyx—the one they clung to in memory—was gone, stolen by a hand they couldn't touch yet. And until they found the Demon King and somehow defeat him, all they had was this echo. A pale imitation stitched from borrowed memories and grief.
She also had no intention—none whatsoever—to learn more about the world she had been so violently plunged into. Despite the pull of fascination buried somewhere in Nyx's memories—fragments of knowledge about the Constellations, the Abyss Index, scattered pieces of wonder waiting to be understood—Mavis kept them at arm's length.
It was interesting. Objectively. Beautiful, even. A world stitched together with myth and madness. But she refused to let herself care. She treated it all like a rerun she'd already seen, something predictable and tired, just to justify the listlessness that draped itself over her shoulders like a second skin.
She cast them a glance, slow and pointed, then dragged in a breath and released the most deliberate yawn she could muster. It wasn't convincing—too staged, too rehearsed—but it did the job. Jewls, ever the doting one, picked up on it immediately. Of course she did. The mother of the group, sensitive to every shift in tone, every flicker of discomfort. What a painfully perceptive soul.
"Maybe Nyx is just tired," Jewls murmured. "Let her rest."
"Finally," Muhle muttered. She was already walking away. In Nyx's memories, she hadn't been much for sentiment. She joined the Hero Party because they were strong. Power drew her like blood drew sharks.
Good. Mavis preferred it that way—cold, quiet, distant.
When the rest left, Mavis finally looked at herself. A nearby glass pane reflected her new face: gold hair, ocean eyes, a beauty sculpted with divine cruelty. She looked like someone who should be loved. Someone who should be happy.
But inside? Rot.
And she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that it wasn't Nyx who was cursed.
It was her.
Mavis—the outsider, the vessel, the one who woke up wearing someone else's life like an ill-fitted mask. She hadn't inherited a destiny. She'd been shackled to it.
Sleep came, eventually. Not in the way it used to, like a slow unraveling into darkness. No, this was more like collapse—like her mind had given up and surrendered to the void. She sank into the sheets like a corpse returning to the grave, limbs heavy, breath shallow, heart stubbornly beating for reasons she couldn't begin to understand.
But peace didn't last.
A chill spread across her skin. Not the physical kind—no draft or cold breeze disturbed the room. This one seeped from the inside, like frost curling along the edges of her soul. She wasn't alone.
Darkness stirred.
Not the soft dark of slumber, but a deeper, older shadow. The kind that watches. Waits. It had no shape, no face, yet its presence filled the space like an overflowing cup.
Then a voice. Low. Resonant. Absolute.
"I'll let you live," it said.
The words didn't echo—they simply existed, etched directly into her bones.
"But don't you think the Hero should meet the Dark?"