Warm darkness fractured.
Evelyn awoke with a jolt — a sudden, instinctive gasp her tiny lungs could barely manage. The air burned as it entered her chest, thin and unfamiliar. Her hearing was muffled, her eyes unfocused.
Where… am I?
The thought formed slowly, each word dragging through a fog of confusion. Then memory hit — the collision, the annihilation of her body, the violent dispersal of her mind. She remembered vaporization, the shattering of her existence into the void. Her soul had escaped.
She didn't panic. Instead, she analyzed. Her perception refocused, filtering data through instincts that belonged to something far older than her new body.
Cold air. Echoes. Rough stone surfaces.
A house? No… these acoustics — thick, reverberant. More like a fortress… or a castle.
Her vision steadied. She was lying in a cradle — delicate, carved, draped with embroidered cloth. Her arms, tiny and soft, barely obeyed her commands. Realization dawned: she was an infant.
Voices surrounded her.
"La samua del?"
"Del del! La no inti sarba!"
The syllables were foreign, fluid, and quick. Evelyn didn't understand, but her mind immediately began mapping them — lip movements, tongue placements, tone shifts. Each repetition was stored, analyzed, categorized.
Then, a shadow fell over her. A hand lifted her from the cradle.
The skin was smooth, the grip practiced — yet the touch lacked warmth. Evelyn noted the detail without judgment. She didn't know what warmth felt like, so she had no reference for its absence.
The woman holding her wore regal garments — intricate embroidery, precious metals woven into the fabric. Around her stood attendants in subdued uniforms. Hierarchy, Evelyn concluded. This is nobility. Possibly monarchy.
The woman — likely her mother — regarded her with a studied detachment, as if holding a fragile object she was required to acknowledge but not to love. Evelyn recognized the pattern. It was the calculated coldness of those who feared attachment. Either she was the child of a concubine, or a royal heir under scrutiny.
The maids whispered among themselves. Evelyn, her understanding of the language improving by the second, caught fragments of tone — concern, curiosity, perhaps pity.
The doors opened. A man entered, cloaked in white. His movements were deliberate, his posture reverent.
A priest, she deduced instantly. The iconography, the ceremonial gloves, the faint scent of incense — it all aligned with countless literary archetypes she remembered from Earth.
He carried an orb that pulsed faintly with light beneath his hands. The king — silent, distant — observed from the edge of the chamber. Tension radiated from everyone present.
The queen gently guided Evelyn's small hand toward the orb.
Evelyn complied, curious. The surface was cool and impossibly smooth — but no reaction came. The light dimmed. The orb remained inert.
Silence consumed the hall.
Evelyn glanced at their faces — the widening eyes, the subtle tightening of the king's jaw, the queen's frozen composure. Something had gone wrong, though she didn't yet know what.
Then the priest's voice broke the quiet.
"S–She… Your Majesty… the princess appears to possess no magic."