_____
G6 strode down the polished hallway of the West Villa, putting as much distance as possible away from the garden. Her "perfect act" was over. Well, that's what she thought.
Mid-stride, she paused. The gilded corridor looked nothing like on their way to the garden earlier. Oh, crap. This is the opposite way.
She stole a quick glance at Tina, who trailed behind her in a state of what could only be described as complete and utter awe, her face a pale mask of stunned silence.
Shit, she looks like my brother when I accidentally crashed his Bugatti Chiron super sport. (The truth is she really crashed it against her target car on purpose when she's doing the chase.)
G6 cleared her throat, trying to show an aura of an unbothered queen. "Well, you see that right? They want me to lose my cool." she said to Tina with a face saying I'm being bullied.
Tina's only response was a slow, heavy sigh. As if rebooting her entire world.
Spotting an archway leading to a secluded courtyard, G6 veered off course—a tactical diversion to avoid admitting she was lost. The courtyard was small, centered around a weathered marble fountain of some weeping goddess. A stone bench, half-hidden by creeping ivy, sat facing the water. It was quiet, save for the gentle, endless plink of water droplets.
G6 didn't sit. She leaned against the cold stone ledge of the fountain, her back to the water, and stared at a particularly determined weed cracking through the flagstone. Tina remained standing a few paces away, a silent, judgmental statue.
Ah… Who would have thought I'd find solace in this hidden gem?
(Just like Reise having a literal hidden Gem in her body [Gemstone-6 *G6*])
"Out with it," G6 said, not turning around. "I can hear your mind cursing me."
"My lady…. I mean Lady Reise." Tina began, G6 formed a quick smile—Tina's being considerate for correcting herself in calling her my lady which she hates. "That was…"
"Perfect?" G6 offered, while playing with the water in the fountain.
"Yes…—No! You disrespect the Prince with your blunt words, and left the tea party that is not yet done." Tina finished, while getting herself together for agreeing blindly in
G6.
G6… For the first time in her two whole days only a chaotic expression—she laughed.
"You just agreed with me. Besides, would you rather me stay there until I flipped the table and grabbed that woman's hair?" G6, like calculating Tina in manipulating her to agree again in her words.
Tina, moved closer to G6. Three steps away. "What exactly is happening to you Lady Reise?" She asked, but this time not as a servant , her tone was devoid of any emotions except for worry.
G6 looks at her. And then looked away up the sky. "I don't know either…" but that answer is for something else. It was an answer to her own question—Why am I here?
Tina, in a way that G6 wasn't expecting—she hugged her. "You can always lean on me. I know you are not the kind of person they think you are." she whispered in a soft manner.
G6's world narrowed to a series of sharp, analytical input. Her mind is acting like the Operator was talking in her earpiece.
Input: Physical contact. Initiated by Tina. Classification: Embrace. Subcategory: Non-hostile. Comfort/Reassurance.
Her body went perfectly still, a statue carved from ice. Every muscle locks into place, not with rigidity, but with a predator's poised alertness. The words of sarcastic G6 are gone. Completely shut and silenced.
Her eyes, which had been looking at the sky, stared blankly at the greenery ahead, her processors overloading. This was not an emotion. It was a data point. A bizarre, conflicting data point.
Her entire existence was a catalog of sensations useful for survival: the cold weight of a pistol grip, the sharp bite of a blade's edge, the jarring recoil of a rifle, the adrenaline spike of a kill. This…warmth… served no tactical purpose. It was a vulnerability. A point of contact where a knife could easily slide in.
After a long moment of motionless. A tactical response was made.
G6, slowly, almost hesitantly, as if the limbs weren't her own, her hands came up. They didn't clutch at Tina, but simply rested against her back, the touch light and uncertain. A manipulating response for vulnerability.
"You don't know that," she whispered, her voice raw and small… but the weight of words are clearly not performative edges. "You can't possibly know that." She was arguing, but the fight was gone. It was a plea, a confession of her own terrifying uncertainty.
The hug ended not with release, but a retreat. G6's arms fell back to her sides, the ghost of Tina's warmth a confusing, persistent error message on her skin. She took a single, sharp step back, re-establishing a perimeter.
"I should… rest," G6 said, the words a sterile—her despite being high on guard was still influenced by the emotion. For G6, it was gross—out of her character.
Tina, her own eyes glistening, simply nodded. She understood the dismissal, recognizing the walls slamming back into place. She didn't push. "Of course…. Lady Reise. I'll ensure you are not disturbed."
G6 turned and walked away, her pace not a flight, but a tactical withdrawal to escape from the unsettling situation for her.
The forgotten path on the way in her room, unconsciously appeared in her mind. Her brain must be in emergency escape mode.
_____
The door to G6's room clicked shut behind her. The lock engaged with a soft, satisfying thud of finality. Silence. Isolation. Controllable variables.
Now, let's do the search.
Her eyes, cold and methodical, swept the space. This was not a sanctuary; it was her new AO—Area of Operations. A potential nest of threats and intelligence. Her posture shifted from the hesitant statue in the water fountain to a stalking panther in an unfamiliar jungle.
She moved with a ghost's silence. Fingertips traced the top of the door frame for dust variance or possible wires. She dropped to a crouch, checking under the bed, not for monsters, but for pressure plates or anomalous accumulations of dust. She ran a hand along the seams of the wallpaper, searching for the slight give of a hidden panel. Every book on the shelf was tilted just so, a hair's breadth out of alignment, a trap for anyone who might touch them. She found nothing. The room was clean. Sterile. A gilded cage with no visible locks.
It was too clean. A cover for a deeper secret.
Her gaze fell upon the ornate writing desk. It was the only piece that seemed genuinely used, not just placed for show. The wear on the chair, the faint stain of ink on the desktop… This was a focal point.
She systematically emptied the unlocked drawers. Stationery, sealing wax, blank parchment. Useless. Her hands, trained to feel the minutest imperfection, gilded over the desk's surface, along the sides, under the lip.
There. A slight discrepancy in the grain on the right side. A panel, so expertly crafted it was nearly invisible to the naked eye. A locked drawer.
A ghost of her old, sarcastic self might have smirked. A challenge.
Her tools were not lockpicks, but they would serve. A hairpin from her own hair, its metal strong and pliable. A thin, sharp letter opener from the desk's top. Her hands worked with an unconscious, lethal grace, no longer uncertain or hesitant. This was a language she understood perfectly.
Input: Physical intrusion required. Bypassing mechanical security.
Action: Apply tension to torsion wrench. Manipulate tumbler pins. Feedback: Pin one set. Pin two set…
There was a series of almost inaudible clicks, a sound of pure satisfaction to her honed senses. A final, soft thud echoed in the silent room.
The hidden drawer slid open without a sound.
Inside, there was no weapon, no magic tools, or expensive jewelry. There was only a book, bound in soft, worn leather, its pages faintly smelling of dried flowers and ink.
She lifted it out, the object feeling alien in her hands—so much lighter than a gun, yet somehow infinitely heavier. She opened it to the first page. The handwriting was elegant, flowing, and utterly unfamiliar. Yet, at the top of the page, a name was written in a confident, looping script that made her processors stall completely.
It was a name that was not a designation. It was the truth, and it was the title of this chapter of her existence.
The Diary of Reise Worthon.
She sat on the floor, sitting near the balcony's door. The early pages were a flood of elegant script—poems, observations, the chronicle of caged spirit. She read of a decade-long, unrequited love for a man named Prince Dio, each entry a brushstroke in a portrait of profound loneliness. The words were full of a beauty that ached.
As the pages went deeper, so did the heavy emotions of the owner…
Then, the final entry. The date was the night before G6 arrived in this world. The writing was not elegant; it was frantic, desperate scrawl, the pen nearly tearing through the page.
The last entry of Reise Worthon's:
He is here. After three long years, Prince Dio is a guest at the Annex Duo of West Villa. I thought fate had finally spun a thread for me. I stole through the gardens like a ghost, my heart wild thing in my chest, just to catch a glimpse of him from the shadow of annex.
And I saw. Oh, I saw.
He was speaking with her—that woman, Eliza, from the annex. And on his face… It was a light I have never seen. Not in ten years of my hoping, my pleading, my perfect, beautiful silence. In her grace, he sparkled and he was alive. A look he never once, not for a single second, ever granted me. I am a portrait on his wall; she is like the sun that lights his world.
The last of my hope turned to ash in my mouth. I am so tired of being beautiful. I am so tired of being seen and never known. This gilded cage is a tomb, and I can no longer pretend I am alive inside it.
I would rather be no one. I would rather be a blank page than a story everyone misreads.
So I will burn this painting. I have prepared the mixture—the white droplet flowers, crushed and steeped in strong spirits. They say it stills the heart and brings a sleep without dreams. A kinder end than this waking death.
I leave this as my truth. And I leave a final letter hiding like it doesn't want to be read. For my father and mother, so they do not think their love was not enough. It was just… this world is too painful to breathe in… it's just the love I learned was slowly burning my soul.
*the last paragraph with a small hint of blood*
I cast this wish upon the silent stars: let no one grieve the empty shell. Let a new soul, wild and free and untouched by this sorrow, find a home in this vessel. Let them live the life I was too weak to grasp. Let them be the someone I could never be.
G6 sat on the cold, polished floor, the diary a lead weight in her lap. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, were fixed on the frantic, despairing script. The words seemed to pulse with a final, terrible energy.
The strength bled from her spine. Her shoulders slumped, her head lolling back against the cold-glass door of the balcony. The diary felt like it was burning a hole through her, right over Reise's heart—a heart that had been deliberately, poetically stilled to make room for her own.
She was fucked. And for a woman built on a foundation of control and denial, the refusal to admit it was the only thing holding her together. She just sat there, on the floor of a dead woman's room, a stolen diary on a stolen chest, breathing the air a ghost had willingly vacated.
_____
[West Villa's Annex-Unus]
Setting: The common room in Annex-Unus. The room is opulent but lived-in, with maps of Einston's borders and sea charts scattered alongside discarded fencing gear and half-finished glasses of brandy. The air is thick with the aftermath of sheer disbelief.
The heavy oak door of the common room slammed shut, sealing the three of them in a bubble of stunned silence. It was Keith who broke first, collapsing into a high-backed armchair with a low, incredulous whistle.
"'Well," he drawled, running a hand through his already disheveled teal hair. "That was… I don't even have a word for what that was."
Prince Dio stood by the mantlepiece, his back to them, staring into the cold fireplace. His knuckles were white where he gripped the marble. The image of Reise—no, not Reise, but G6 in Reise's skin—turning her back on him was burned onto the back of his eyelids. The cold, unbothered behavior of G6 played a loop in his mind.
"A performance," Dio stated, his voice tight. He finally turned, his eyes flashing with a fire that had been conspicuously absent in the gazebo. "A calculated, petty performance to get a rise out of me. She's realized her usual hysterics don't work, so she's chosen a new tactic. Indifference."
Earl, ever the scholar, was perched on the edge of a desk, methodically cleaning his glasses on his vest. He didn't look up. "Your thesis is flawed."
Dio's head snapped toward him. "And what do you mean by that?"
"If it was a performance aimed at you," Earl continued, his tone calm and analytical, "she would have glanced back to gauge your reaction. She did not. Her exit was… terminal. She assessed the social situation, found it lacking in value, and terminated her participation. Efficiently." He placed his glasses back on his nose, his gaze sharp and focused, "It was the behavioral equivalent of swatting a fly that's ceased to be interesting."
Keith barked a laugh. "He's got you there, Dio. She didn't look back once. I was watching. It was the most brutally dismissive thing I've ever seen. And I've seen you reject a dozen women before breakfast." He shook his head, a grin spreading across his face. " 'A future annoyance'. I'm going to have that embroidered on a pillow for you."
Dio's jaw tightened. "Her opinion is irrelevant."
"Is it?" Keith pressed, leaning forward. "Because the Reise we knew would rather swallow live embers than imply you were anything less than the sun itself. That woman in there? She looked at you like you were a mildly inconvenient piece of furniture. That's not a tactic. That's a fundamental system overhaul."
"Three years is a long time," Earl mused, almost to himself. "The mind can recognize itself under prolonged stress. Perhaps the constant, um… unreciprocated investment…" he said, diplomatically avoiding 'your relentless rejection,' "...finally caused a break. A psychological recalibration where her survival instincts finally overrode her obsessive ones."
"So you're saying I bored her into sanity?" Dio asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I'm saying the person we just witnessed operates on a completely different set of core directives," Earl corrected. "She wasn't lovesick. She was… pragmatic. To a terrifying degree. Did you see how she held the teacup after she insulted you? Steady as a rock. No tremors. No nervousness. Just pure, unnerving calm."
The room fell quiet again, the weight of Earl's observation settling over them. The image was undeniable. The old Reise's hands would have been fluttering, her eyes brimming with tears. This woman's hands were those of a surgeon. Or an executioner.
Keith broke the silence, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "Forget the teacup. Did you see her eyes when I tried to get a rise out of her about the commoner—Eliza? Nothing. It was like tossing a pebble into a well and never bearing it hit bottom. It was.. Fascinating."
Dio's eyes narrowed at Keith's choice of word.
Fascinating.
"She's unwell," Dio declared, turning back to the fireplace, a finality in his tone that dared them to disagree. "The journey, the pressure, it has clearly unhinged her. She'll be back to her usual simpering self within a week you'll see."
But as he stared into the cold, empty grate, Prince Dio found himself exactly opposite. The silence she left behind was infuriating, maddening, and it itched under his skin like nothing ever had. He wasn't watching for the return of the old Reise.
He was waiting for the next move from the new one.
Thescene will shift back to G6's.
_____
Setting:Reise's bedroom. The room is lavishly decorated but feels like a gilded tomb. It was already night, the darkness housed the room, the light coming from the moon bleeds through the balcony glass doors, casting a long, deep sadness aura. G6 still on the floor, her back against the doorframe, the leather-bound diary lying open and heavy in her lap. The final entry is like a ghost whispering its last breath into the silent room.
The words on the page seemed to pulse with a final, aching throb of pain.
'Let a new soul, wild and free and untouched by this sorrow, and find a home in this vessel.' This line echoed in her mind, over and over again.
G6 leaned her head at the doorframe in a depressive way. The diary in her lap felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, an anchor chaining her to a tragedy she never asked for.
She'd spent her life as a weapon, a tool for death. She'd seen the light leave people's eyes, and had been the cause of it more times than she could count. But this… this was a different kind of death. A slow, quiet suicide of the soul, meticulously documented in elegant, heartbreaking script.
'I am so tired of being beautiful. I am so tired of being seen and never known.'
A bitter taste filled G6's mouth. She'd mocked Reise. Called her pathetic, obsessed, a hopeless romantic. This was the cry of someone who had been systematically erased, whose very existence had been rendered invisible by the one person she thought might finally see her.
'A kinder end than this waking death.'
G6 fingers, usually so steady, trembled slightly as she traced the faint, rust-colored smudge at the edge of the page. Hint of blood. The final, physical testament to Reise's despair. She hadn't just died. She had erased herself. And in her final, desperate act, she hadn't wished for revenge or for Dio to suffer.
She had wished for a replacement. For someone better.
The irony was a physical blow. The universe, in its infinite, twisted sense of humor, had sent an assassin. It had sent the Reaper.
A sharp, precise knock shattered the heavy silence.
G6 didn't move. Didn't breathe. The sound was an intrusion into a sacred, terrible grief that wasn't even hers.
A moment passed. Then another knock, softer this time, followed by the familiar, hesitant voice.
"Lady Reise?" It was Tina. "It is late. May I enter?"
G6 closed her eyes. The compassion in Tina's voice, the unwavering loyalty… it was meant for the girl in the diary. The girl who was gone. A fresh wave of something cold and guilty washed over her. She was a fraud in a dead woman's clothes.
She pushed herself up, her movements slow, weighted down by the ghost in the journal and the internal conflict. She crossed the room and stopped before the ornate door, her forehead leaning against the cool, polished wood. She couldn't open it. Couldn't face the concern in Tina's eyes when all she carried inside was another woman's sorrow.
"What is it, Tina?" Her own voice sounded foreign to her, stripped of its usual sharp edge, leaving only a hollow exhaustion.
A pause from the other side. "I… I wished to know your preference for dinner. The kitchen can prepare anything you wish."
The thought of food turned her stomach. How could she eat when the previous occupant of this body had starved herself of everything until there was nothing left?
"I'm not hungry," G6 replied, the words flat and final.
"You must eat something, my lady. You've had a… trying day." Tina's voice was gentle but firm, a caretaker's insistence.
"I said I'm not hungry." The words came out sharper than intended, a sliver of the Reaper's impatience piercing through the numbness. She took a breath, softening her tone. "Just… leave it be, Tina."
A long silence stretched through the door, thick with unspoken worry. G6 could practically see the conflicted expression on the maid's face on the other side.
Then once again, it echoed like an alarm clock in her mind again. 'I leave a final letter hiding like it doesn't want to be read.'
Then, her eyes change from depressive into something more assertive. As if a lost cause detective just found what's missing in the case.
She walked towards the tea table located on the right side, 5 steps away from the balcony. She sat there, and placed the diary at the table.
She dropped her head into her hands, fingers tangling in pink hair that felt like a costume. A harsh, humorless sound escaped her—half laugh, half sob.
Pathetic.
The insult echoed in her own mind, but now it was aimed squarely at herself. She, Akira "G6" Gemstone, who prided herself on reading people, on seeing the threat before it moved, had been utterly blink, She'd dismissed Reise Worthon as a two-dimensional character, a plot device in a tragic romance. A foolish lovesick girl.
But she wasn't. She was a person. A woman who had been slowly, methodically erased, her love weaponized against her until the only power she had left was the choice to stop her own heart. And G6 had called her pathetic for ending her life in the book because of a man.
Her eyes snapped back open, zeroing in on the diary. The letter. The poison. Reise left evidence. A trace of her last moments.
A switch flipped inside her. The grief and guilt crystallized into a single, razor-sharp Imperative: Find it.
She moved.
It wasn't a search; it was an excavation. A violent dismantling of the life that had suffocated the girl who came before.
The first target she's going to ransack is the wardrobe where her eyes are planted.
[Intercutting scenes]
S: Reise's bedroom is in utter chaos. The hallway outside is bright but silent.
G6(Inside):
The beautiful gowns were an obstacle. G6 hauled armfuls of silk and tulle from the wardrobe and threw them behind her without a glance, like discarding trash. They landed in a heap, a blossoming mountain of pastel ruin blocking the floor.
TINA(Outside): *Whump. Whump.*
In the hallway, Tina stood frozen, her back pressed against the cold, opposite wall. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the edge of her clothes. Each sound coming from the room made her flinch, her eyes wide fixed on the ornate door, worried.
G6(Inside):
"Which drawer?" She yanked a drawer from the vanity, its contents—pearl combs, satin ribbons,—exploding across the floor like shrapnel. Nothing.
TINA(Outside):
The violent screech of wood and the skittering of hundred small things made Tina's heart hammer. 'She's searching for something. But what could justify this?'
G6(Inside):
A foolish, porcelain shepherdess figurine was swept off the vanity. It shattered on the floor. A distraction. Irrelevant to the objective. Her eyes didn't even track its destruction.
TINA(Outside): *CRASH*
Tina jumped, her hand flying to her chest. That was porcelain. Something expensive. The old Reise would have cherished it. The new one didn't even seem to notice its destruction.
Inner Tina:'Clarity,' the lady had said in the gazebo. This looked like a single-minded obsession.
G6(Inside):
"Where is it?" her whispering to herself, her breath was even, her movement precise. This was a search pattern. She upended the bookshelf. A bunch of books fluttered to the ground. She stepped over it.
A soft shuffling sound in the hallway. Then a whisper.
(Outside):
The servant who bump into G6 earlier came forward to Tina's who was silent and staring straight to the fancy door of Reise's (G6) room.
"Miss Tina? Is… is Lady Reise alright?" Lilia asked with a hesitant voice but clearly, this curiosity is different, not something to gossip later in the servant quarter, but a worried one.
Tina's attention shifts into Lilia whose face is painted with concern. "Our lady is… processing," she said, her voice strained. "Today was… eventful". Tina said with a straight face trying to say that there is nothing to worry.
G6(Inside):
All the corner, and possible place to hide something was already wrecked by her and found nothing. She took a calming sigh. Her eyes scanned the stripped room. The bed. The one place she hadn't touched. She tried to lift it up like her usual strength (as G6) and she can't. "THIS BODY LACKS MUSCLES." she said in an irate tone.
With a grunt of effort she has to use in Reise's body strength, she grabbed the corner of the heavy mattress and heaved.
Tina(Outside):
A low, scraping groan came from the room, the sound of immense weight being moved. Lilia flinched, her eyes wide. "This doesn't sound like processing, Miss Tina. It sounds like… she's moving…."
Tina turned her head to Lilia with what she said. Wait-what? Is my lady trying to… run away? Is she packing in hu—no, I must not think of something ridiculous.
Tina slowly shook her head to erase the thought and fixed her glasses.
"Her ways are her own," Tina said, the hollow words tasting like ash. "Go ahead and take a rest, Lilia. Speak this to no one."
G6(Inside):
As Lilia's footsteps hurried away, G6's world narrowed in the bedframe.
And there it was.
Tucked neatly in the center, as if waiting for her. A single, folded piece of heavy parchment, sealed with a blob of red wax imprinted with a perfect, delicate rose. And lying atop it, like a period at the end of a tragic sentence, was a small, crystal bottle. It was empty as if it already served its purpose.
G6 reached for it, her fingers,, for the first time since she'd woken in this body, trembling not with fear, but with a terrible, reverent finality.
Tina(Outside):
The noises had stopped. The sudden, absolute silence was somehow more terrifying than the violence. Tina leaned her head back against the wall, her hands tucked in each other. What had she found? Or what had found her?
Inside, the excavation was over. The target has been apprehended.
[Intercutting ended.]
G6 now handling the two last things the old Reise's had held. Her assassin's instincts moved first. The bottle. She brought it to her face, she tilted it slightly and passed the opening beneath her nose, giving a short, sharp sniff.
The scent was deceptively simple. Not bitter or chemical, as she'd expected poison to be. It was.. Floral. Sweet, almost cloying, but with a sharp, green undertone that spoke of crushed stems and a life cut short. It was the essence of a meadow, bottled for a funeral.
White droplets flowers. This name from the diary surfaced in her mind. She buried the scent in her mind and senses. Just like the normal assassin would do.
She sat on the floor atop a mountain of messy gowns. With fingers that felt numb and thick, she broke the rose-seal on the letter. The wax crumbled like dried blood.
The moonlight was just enough to read by. She unfolded the parchment, and the elegant, wavering script seemed to bleed into the page.
My Dearest Tina,
If you are reading this, then the old tales have failed me, and my final wish was but a whisper lost to the wind. For that, and for the pain this will cause you, I am so terribly, deeply sorry. Please forgive this last and greatest act of my selfishness.
You have been more than my servant. You have been my keeper of secrets, my silent shield against the worst of the whispers. You saw the woman behind the title, the fear behind the anger, and you never once turned away. For that, I will love you always.
I need you to be strong now, for I have one last secret to burden you with.
Please, go to my mother and father. Do not let them weep for me. Tell hem… their daughter loved them more than any crown or title, but that the weight of it all became a mountain she could no longer carry. Tell them it was not their failure, but the world's. Comfort my mother. Stand firm with my father. And for the love of skies, please knock some sense into my careless brothers. Make them understand that their duty is not just to the wind, but the family that remains. The House of Worthon must not falter because one of its pillars was made of glass.
I often dreamed of what it would be like to be here in this palace not as 'Dio's Fiancee,' but as Reise Worthon. Just Reise. To have my worth measured by the strength of my own magic, the sharpness of my own mind. To stand beside Earl and Keith not as a rival for attention, but as their equal—a Guardian of the Sky in my own right. What wonders could we have achieved? What battles could have won against the dark things beyond our borders? It is a beautiful dream. One I'm too weary to dream any longer.
Do not mourn the woman I was. Mourn the woman I could have been, had this world been a little kinder, a little wider.
This is not an end, but a release. I have poured every last shred of my hope into a final, desperate plea to the stars, to the void, to any power that might be listening. I have begged for a new soul, wild and free and untouched by this sorrow, to find a home in this vessel. To live the life I was too weak to grasp. To be brave where I was fearful. To be the someone I could never be.
But I write this letter fearing you will find it. That my plea went unanswered, and all that remained is this sad, empty note. I hide it away, clinging to a foolish hope that the ritual I chanted with my last breath will work—that when someone next opens this letter it will not be you, my dear Tina, grieving, but her. The one I wished for. And that she will have no need for this letter, because she will be too busy living.
If it is you, my sister, I am so sorry. Forget these words. Remember only the girl I was before this palace stole my light.
Thank you for everything.
With all the love my broken heart can hold,
Reise.
G6's hands did not tremble. They were steady as stone as she finished the last word, her eyes tracing the final, elegant curve of Reise's signature. The silence in the ravaged room was no longer empty; it was filled with the echo of a ghost's last breath.
The plea. The ritual. The desperate, impossible hope hidden in this letter is like a final, fragile secret.
'...when someone next opens this compartment, it will not be you, my dear Tina, grieving, but her. The one I wished for.'
The clinical part of her brain, the part that categorized threats and opportunities, recognized the truth. A universe took its chance when she also pathetically died.
She was not an intruder.
She was an answer to a prayer.
She looked at the empty bottle. Not a tool of cowardice. A key to her death and to G6's new life.
Akira "G6" Gemstone, the Reaper, the woman who dealt in endings, had just been given a mandate to live.
She stood up and grabbed the match that was at the top of mini fireplace in her room. The fire lit the dark room in its small flame. G6 burned the letter and threw it inside the fireplace.
She just stared at the letter slowly turning into ashes, as if it was the last image of the old Reise finally leaving eternally.
She walked towards the mirror and stared at Reise's face, with G6 real face overlapping. Weirdly enough, they just looked the same. Just a different style. As if Reise beauty was copied in G6's.
Their grey eyes lit a fire. And G6 smirked.
"It was an insult to ask the Reaper to live, when all it does is end lives."
"I'll accept this as a gift, and whatever happens here doesn't concern you anymore."
"I'll live this, now—my life to the fullest. Now, rest in peace." She said with her back in usual tone. Plain. Sharp.
"This body and life are officially mine."
She added and turned away from the mirror just like how the last glimpse of old Reise faded.
The Wicked Rose was gone. Long live the Thorn.