"You will die here, Lady Celine. Not because you are weak. But because you are the perfect copy of something that should never have existed."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Celine de Montfort knelt on the cold stone floor of the family dungeon, her hands bound behind her back with ropes made of human hair—her own hair, she realized with a strangely dulled horror. The navy-blue silk gown she had worn to the evening party was now torn at the shoulder, revealing a crescent-moon birthmark on her pale skin. The exact same mark her sister, Rowena, possessed.
No. Not her sister. Her twin.
Celine had never truly understood what it meant to have a twin. Rowena was a shadow that had always lingered at the edge of her memory—a girl with the same eyes, the same golden-blonde hair, the same mole at the left corner of her mouth. But Rowena had been born two minutes earlier, and in the de Montfort family tradition, those two minutes meant everything.
The first to be born was the heir.
The second was the spare.
Blood trickled from Celine's nose, dripping onto the stone floor and seeping into the cracks between the tiles. She couldn't remember when the nosebleed had started. Maybe after she was struck. Or after she had screamed for too long. Or maybe after she realized that none of the servants in this dungeon would ever hear her—because they were all already dead.
"You know what's the funniest part?" the voice returned, this time closer, whispering right behind her left ear. Celine could feel a cold breath against her skin, reeking of wet soil and rusted metal. "Your family thought they were protecting you by hiding you. They sent you to the convent for seven years. They forbade you from touching magic. They even erased your name from the family tree. All so you would remain unknown."
Celine bit her lower lip until it bled. She would not cry. She was a de Montfort, and de Montforts did not cry—they froze their tears into ice and turned them into weapons. That was what her mother had always said. But her mother had died three years ago, and no one had taught her how to freeze fear.
"But you were still found, weren't you?" the voice laughed, a sound like shards of glass grinding against each other. "You were found by something even your great family doesn't dare remember the name of. And now here you are. In the same room where you were born. In the same room where you were supposed to die twenty-three years ago."
Celine lifted her head. The dungeon was dark, but her eyes had adjusted. She could make out faint shapes around her—stone statues of de Montfort ancestors lining the walls, each carved with the same cold expression. In the center of the room stood a polished black marble altar, and atop it was a mirror.
Not an ordinary mirror.
It was the size of a door, framed in black silver engraved with intricate spiral patterns. At its four corners, gemstones pulsed with a faint red light, like slow-beating hearts. The mirror's surface reflected nothing—only thick darkness that moved like water, swirling slowly in an endless vortex.
"Look," the voice whispered. Celine was certain now that it came from inside the mirror. "Look at what your noble family has hidden beneath their house. Look at the gift they stole from the gods."
Celine stared into the mirror. And for the first time in her life, she saw something beyond the darkness.
Inside the mirror stood a woman.
The woman stood in an endless field of white lilies beneath a night sky with two moons shining in different colors—one pale blue, the other red like an open wound. She wore a gown of flowing black that moved like smoke, and her long, silver-white hair stirred even though there was no wind. Her eyes… were identical to Celine's.
But something was different. The woman in the mirror was smiling. And her smile was that of someone who had been waiting for thousands of years.
"You are not me," Celine whispered, her voice cracking.
"Correct," the woman in the mirror replied, though her lips did not move. Her voice echoed directly inside Celine's head, vibrating through her skull. "I am not you. I am what you were meant to become. I am you before the de Montfort family cut me in two and imprisoned half of me here, between worlds."
Celine felt something crawling up her spine. Not a hand. Not fingers. Something older, colder, hungrier. It crept from the base of her tailbone, up her vertebrae, until it reached the nape of her neck.
"But now," the woman continued, her smile widening into something no longer human, "I will come out. And you will give me a place."
Celine wanted to scream. She opened her mouth as wide as she could, drawing a deep breath into lungs that felt like they were burning—
But no sound came out.
What poured from her mouth was only blood. Thick, black blood that flowed not in drops but in a heavy stream, like water from a shattered jug. The blood spilled onto the floor, forming a pool, and the pool began to move on its own, shaping circles and symbols Celine had never been taught in the convent.
She fell forward, her chin striking the cold stone floor. Black blood continued to pour from her mouth, her nose, her eyes. She felt her body growing lighter, emptier, as if something was being drained from deep inside her.
Before total darkness swallowed her, she saw one last thing on the mirror's surface:
Her own face, reflected among the dark ripples.
But the face was not screaming.
It was smiling.
Fragment of Rebirth
Rowena Ashworth had never believed in reincarnation.
As an archaeologist specializing in ancient manuscripts at the University of Oxford, she had spent fifteen years of her life proving that all myths about life after death were merely social constructs born from humanity's fear of oblivion. She had written three books on the subject. She had given lectures in twelve countries. She had debunked at least thirty-seven theories about "transcendent memory" with irrefutable archaeological evidence.
So when she opened her eyes and found herself not in her messy London apartment with piles of books in every corner, but in a gigantic bed with deep blue silk curtains cascading from a five-meter-high ceiling, the scent of lavender and beeswax candles stinging her nose, the only rational reaction she could muster was:
"Bullshit."
Her voice sounded strange. Too high. Too soft. Too… expensive.
Rowena raised her hands in front of her face and almost screamed.
They were not her hands.
Her hands were supposed to be calloused from fieldwork, marked with small scars from artifact knives, with short, perpetually dirty nails no matter how many times she washed them. But the hands staring back at her now belonged to a noblewoman: long, slender fingers, perfectly manicured nails painted a deep blood-red, skin as white as porcelain without a single flaw.
And on her left wrist was a mark.
It was an inverted triangle with a circle in the center, pitch-black like fresh ink etched beneath the skin. Rowena recognized the symbol. It was the Sigillum Dei Mortis—the Seal of the Goddess of Death—a mark that appeared in only three manuscripts in the entire world, all written in an unknown language she had spent a decade trying to decipher.
"Impossible," she muttered, her voice trembling. "It's just a myth. It's only—"
"Lady Celine!"
The bedroom door burst open, and a man entered with such speed that Rowena instinctively reached for—reached for what? She had no knife. She had nothing.
The man was tall, perhaps 185 centimeters, with a body clearly trained for battle. He wore full knight's attire—a dark blue uniform with silver accents on the shoulders, a longsword at his left hip, and a short leather cloak draped over his left shoulder. His hair was jet-black, slightly long and loosely tied back, with a few strands falling forward to frame a face that made Rowena frown.
It was too handsome. Not handsome in the ordinary sense, but handsome in a way that was almost disturbing—like the ancient Greek statues she had studied at university, with proportions so perfect they felt unnatural. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, straight nose, thin and firm lips, and silver-gray eyes currently filled with what looked like…
Panic.
"Lady Celine, thank the gods you're awake," the man said, kneeling beside the bed and taking Rowena's hands without hesitation. His touch was warm, and she could feel the calluses on his palms—the mark of someone who truly used his sword, not merely carried it as an accessory. "I heard you scream. I came as fast as I could. Are you hurt? Did anyone harm you?"
Rowena stared at him blankly for three full seconds, her brain spinning as it tried to process this absurd situation.
Okay. Okay. First: she was not herself. She was in the body of someone named "Lady Celine." Second: there was a ridiculously handsome knight kneeling beside her bed with the expression of a worried puppy. Third: there was an ancient magical symbol on her wrist that should only exist in 14th-century manuscripts she had once found in a Bulgarian monastery basement.
So. Available options:
A) Scream hysterically.
B) Faint.
C) Act like a sane person and try to gather information.
Rowena chose C.
With the kind of effort an academic who had handled literally cursed manuscripts (she had once dealt with one rumored to curse anyone who read it—turned out it was just dust allergy) needed to summon calm, Rowena took a deep breath and spoke in the steadiest voice she could manage:
"I… I don't remember what happened."
The man tensed. His handsome face shifted into an unreadable expression—a mix of worry and something deeper, older. "What do you mean you don't remember? Do you remember what happened in the dungeon? I found you there, Lady Celine. You were unconscious on the floor, covered in blood, but I couldn't find a single wound on your body. I—" his voice cracked slightly at the end, and he lowered his head until his forehead nearly touched the back of her hand. "I thought you were dead."
Rowena felt something strange in her chest. It wasn't her own feeling—she didn't know this man—but an echo of something left behind in this body. An echo of fear. Of loneliness. Of gratitude so deep it hurt.
This isn't mine, she thought coldly. It's Celine's remnants.
Still, she spoke gently. "I'm not dead. I'm here. But I… I don't remember what happened after I entered the dungeon. Everything is blurred."
The man lifted his head. His silver-gray eyes stared at her with an intensity that made Rowena want to pull away, but she held herself still. "You really don't remember?"
"I really don't remember."
He gazed at her for a long time, as if searching for lies in her eyes. Then, slowly, he nodded. "All right. It's okay. The important thing is that you're safe. I'll call the physician. And I'll—"
"Before that," Rowena cut in, because she was an academic and academics could not suppress curiosity even in the most absurd situations. "What is your name?"
The man froze.
His expression shifted from worry to confusion, then to something resembling… heartbreak? But it passed quickly, replaced by a thin, bitter smile.
"I am Kaelan, Lady Celine. Sir Kaelan Veyne. Your personal guard." He stood up, gently releasing her hands. "But you've always called me Kael. Just Kael. For the past ten years."
Rowena felt a sharp stab of guilt—not hers, but Celine's lingering emotion—pierce her chest.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just… my head hurts."
Kaelan—Kael, Rowena corrected herself, he wants to be called Kael—nodded. His face returned to calm, but something in his eyes said he was holding back questions he wouldn't ask right now.
"Rest, Lady Celine. I'll guard the door. No one will hurt you again."
He turned and walked toward the door, his heavy footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. Just before he left, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Oh, and Lady Celine?" His voice was flat, but there was a tone Rowena couldn't quite identify. "The Duke's family sent a letter. They will arrive tomorrow to… discuss the funeral. It seems they've already received the report of your death."
He smiled again. The same thin, bitter smile.
"But you're not dead, are you? So I suppose you should prepare yourself to explain how a woman reported dead can be sitting in her bed drinking tea tomorrow morning."
The door closed softly.
Rowena sat in the enormous bed, inside the body of a noblewoman she didn't know, in a world she didn't recognize, with an ancient magical symbol on her wrist and memories of a strange mirror pouring black blood from someone's mouth—memories that weren't even hers but felt so vivid it was as if she had experienced them herself.
She stared at the ceiling, adorned with a fresco of a night sky with two moons.
Two moons.
She was definitely not in her old world anymore.
Rowena—or Celine? or whoever she was now—closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.
"Bullshit," she muttered once more, but this time there was a note of resignation in her voice. "Total bullshit."