“In an age where knowledge cuts deeper than knives, Victoria is about to learn far more than is safe for any soul to bear.”

Victoria and Robert were torn from the gentle dullness of their ordinary century and cast into a realm governed by proto-concepts—those ancient, unblinking truths from which life, death, and divinity themselves are carved. Proclaimed “Heroes” by a world too desperate to question its own choices, they were commanded to rise in strength, confront a Demon Lord, and deliver salvation to a land that had never been theirs.

Robert donned the mantle with the fervour of a man stepping into destiny.
Victoria… hesitated.

And in that hesitation, something old—older than scripture, older than light—turned its gaze toward her.
She felt its attention like a draft through a locked room.

In a moment poised between terror and terrible understanding, she accepted its offer: a contract sealed in silence, a year of her life exchanged for a thing that should never have been permitted to exist. Not in this world. Not in any.

She did not yet grasp that, in straying from the Hero’s ordained path, she had not merely shifted her fate—
she had begun to unwrite the very scaffolding of her humanity.

Now Victoria walks like a phantom through a world that has marched on without her—
one year behind the celebrated Hero,
yet burdened with an insight so sharp it threatens to cut her free from mortality itself.
She can now trespass upon knowledge forbidden to scholars, sorcerers, or even those who stand at the pinnacle of human mastery.
She commits the kind of acts whispered only of beings who have stepped beyond the human threshold… and never returned.

And in a world built on primordial, immovable truths, one truth endures:

Knowledge is power.
But power, when mishandled, becomes a curse that devours its bearer—
quietly, inevitably, like rot beneath embroidered silk.

I was outside getting Mommy some lemongrass for her tea with sparkles when the people she had talked about before bedtime came again.


They stood by the garden fence like they had never arrived.


One of the women looked at me. She looked like a princess, but she made my chest feel wrong and noisy. Like when the wind goes too fast inside you.


I looked up at Mommy. She squeezed my hand while she kept talking.


The other two girls stood behind her. One had pretty horns. They both smelled like the orange flowers Mommy once showed me.


After a while, we all went inside the house.


"How would you like some biscuits I made?" Mommy asked, arranging cups on a tray.


I peeked at the three women sitting on the sofa. Then I tugged at Mommy's sleeve.


"Of course, dear," she said, rubbing my head. "Go to your room. I'll come meet you when I'm done talking with our guests."


I nodded and ran upstairs with my biscuits.


"Sparkle," I whispered, taking out my pencil and paper, "what do you think those pretty ladies want?"


Sparkle stayed very still while I dipped my biscuit into the chocolate.


"Sparkle, don't move around so much," I said. "I'm trying to make you pretty on paper."


"This is really good," she said seriously handing it to me.


"If you let me draw you properly, I'll give you one of my biscuits," she added, rubbing her hands on her dress.


"I'll add the sun too," I said, climbing onto my bed with my sketchbook.


"Sparkle, do you think the singing birdies would let me draw them?" I asked, starting a new page.


"I wonder when Mommy will finish her talk…"


I woke up in my bed not knowing when I slept.


"Oh, you're finally awake," Mommy said, cleaning up the room. "I was just about to wake you. Lunch is almost ready."


She peeled a piece of paper off my face.


"Oh! Sparkle, we're having mince pie!" I said excitedly.


"…Are you done talking with those women?"


"Yes," she replied, rubbing my cheeks gently. "They just wanted to buy some plants."


As we walked downstairs, she asked, "Milk or juice?"


Chapter 183 - Shortbread