Elma was four years old.
The mirror, a sheet of polished obsidian framed in heavy silver that dominated one corner of her nursery, felt profoundly unsettling to her.
She stood rigidly before it now, hands clasped behind her back, performing slow, precise movements—a slight tilt of the head, a minute flex of the left hand.
The shape in the mirrored surface—the child with the smooth, pale skin and the large, calculating green eyes—followed her movement with unsettling accuracy.
She leaned in, observing the thick curtain of hair that fell around her shoulders.
It was the rich, blinding golden color of newly minted coin, the unmistakable shade of House Altheris, the same as the silk-draped giant who claimed to be her father.
A flicker of pure, crystalline resentment stirred deep in Elma's chest. She did not want this color.
She wanted the subtle, aristocratic silver of Christa, the shade of polished steel and quiet defiance.
She stood watching the reflection for a solid hour, unmoving save for the slow, measured breaths that mimicked a compliant, absorbed child.
She was trying to reconcile the two realities.
She stared deep into her reflection, past the green eyes, past the gold hair, to the blank, pale-blue wall behind her.
And then, a flicker.
It was dark and formless, a momentary smudge that absorbed light instead of reflecting it, like a depthless stain on the glass.
The dark shape was behind her, a shadow too heavy to be her own. It didn't move. It swallowed the light around it, a pupil dilating in the centre of the world.
Elma's heart jumped. It was the first true, physiological reaction of fear she'd had since leaving the coffin.
She whirled around, every muscle contracting in preparation for impact.
The nursery was empty.
The sunlight streaming through the lace-trimmed windows fell evenly across the corniced floor.
The brightly colored wooden rattle Leta had once offered her lay forgotten near the toy chest. The wall was a uniform, sickening shade of peace.
Nothing.
She turned back to the mirror. The child with the gold hair stared back, her face utterly expressionless. The dark flicker was gone, leaving only the mundane, accurate reflection.
Elma stood frozen for a long moment. She forced her breathing steady and tried to make sense of what she'd just felt.
A hallucination, probably. Or just her body being its usual, unreliable self.
The stress needed to go.
She abandoned the mirror and moved with decisive speed to the toy chest.
She didn't select a solid object; she grabbed the largest, most yielding toy she could find: a soft, plush horse, stuffed densely with cotton and covered in heavy, durable velvet fabric.
She settled on the floor, clamping her jaw down hard on the synthetic mane. Her effort was consumed by the useless give of the fabric.
The soft toy offered no sharp resistance, only muffled, frustrating pressure. She worried the seam with her front teeth, desperate to find a weak point.
She bit down, channeling her rage into the silent, furious act. She was trying to destroy, but the soft resistance absorbed the blow, dampening her intention.
She gnawed with grim, singular purpose, testing her new body against the soft, pathetic defense of the toy.
She found a seam where the threads were thin. She strained, pouring her focused, surgical force into the tiny incisor. There was a sound—a slight, satisfying rip.
She pulled back, observing her work. A thin, horizontal tear marred the velvet, a small, dark crescent where the stuffing peeked through.
It was not much, but it was a victory. The tension fled, not through satisfying destruction, but through the validation of her strength. The session was over.
She tossed the torn toy back into the chest with a sudden, final motion.
With a final puff of exhausted breath, she threw herself back onto the soft, downy mattress of her bed. She landed with a small, compliant sigh, perfectly still. The pressure ebbed.
From the hallway, Christa's soft voice floated in, laced with the subtle, compelling affection that Elma now recognized as command.
"Elma, my love? Dinner is ready."
Elma got up, her internal processes snapping to attention. She didn't want to go to the Dining Hall, but with Valerius still away on campaign, the place wasn't nearly as cold.
Without him around, Christa wasn't forced into that brittle, obedient silence, and the vast room felt almost—strangely—warm. In his absence.
Elma ran toward the dining hall. She slid into the high chair set between her mother and the perpetually empty seat of Valerius.
The silver clinked softly against the porcelain.
Elma began her meal, maintaining the outward posture of an attentive, quiet child, while she began an analysis of the room's architecture.
Her eyes settled on a specific pillar—a thick, marble column positioned awkwardly near the northern curve of the vast dining hall.
It stood too close to the service door, disrupting the flow of the servants and cluttering the otherwise clean lines of the hall.
She hated its current placement. She always had. It was a mistake. A flaw. A persistent irritation in the physical environment.
She wanted it gone. She wanted the space clear. She glared at the stone, pouring all her silent frustration into the wish that it would just stop being there.
The world complied.
CRACK.
The sound was like a thunderclap trapped inside a stone jar.
The marble column didn't vanish. It didn't slide. It detonated.
In a fraction of a second, the heavy stone structure shattered into thousands of pieces—smithereens of white marble and dust that rained down onto the polished floor with a deafening, clattering roar.
A cloud of fine white powder billowed outward, settling over the nearby service table.
Elma flinched violently, dropping her spoon. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, terrified rhythm.
She stared at the pile of rubble, her eyes wide with utter shock. Then back at Christa.
Christa, who had been quietly eating, had frozen. She was staring at the pile of shattered marble, her mouth slightly open, the fork trembling in her hand. The shock was absolute.
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the settling dust.
Christa looked at the destruction, then slowly turned her gaze to Elma. She looked at Elma's wide, panicked eyes, and then back at the rubble. The realization seemed to settle over her like a heavy cloak.
Christa let out a long, shaky breath. The shock faded from her face, replaced by a weary, knowing smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. It was the look of someone who had been expecting bad news and had finally received it.
"Oh," Christa murmured, picking up her napkin to dab at her lips, her voice resigned. "Your Aegis must have awakened."
Elma stared at her mother in total disbelief.
Aegis?
The word hung in the air, and suddenly, the shock evaporated.
The term slotted into her mind with the satisfying click of a bolt sliding home. Aegis. Domain? The power of magic.
In her past life, magic had been the only variable D-66 could not solve. It was a sensory blind spot, a glitch in her otherwise perfect calculations.
She could predict the trajectory of a bolt, the tensile strength of a neck, or the exact millisecond a guard would blink—but she could not calculate a glare that turned stone to dust.
Magic didn't follow the laws of leverage or momentum. It was a cheat code written in a language her mind couldn't parse. It was the only reason she had died.
Elma looked down at her small, pale hands.
I am House Altheris. I am House Kresnik.
The logic was cold and absolute. She was high nobility. She was bred from the blood of warlords and Pattern masters.
Of course I can do that.
She looked back at the pile of smithereens—the jagged shards of marble that had once been an annoyance, now reduced to harmless gravel simply because she willed it.
Elma picked up her spoon, her panic replaced by a cold, simmering satisfaction.
Her lips pulled back into a small, terrifyingly sharp smile.
I can use this.