Her eyes snapped open, and the first thing she did was feel around her abdomen. No signs of bleeding. Her hands weren't dyed red in an instant.
She looked down, and there was no sign of that knife. What's more, she wore a rundown dress she was seeing for the first time.
"Pink… Or at least it used to be—" Giulia said as she analyzed the garment. It was easy to see that the dress had been carried through dirt, and the bruises on her arm completed the story. She had been wearing it as the dress got ripped and dragged around.
Maybe the girl would have spoken out herself about those findings were she not too shocked at hearing her own voice.
First, she placed a palm on her lips. Then she looked around to see if anyone was there. She was all alone in a dark room that smelled of freshly cut wood. But if there was nobody around, where did that voice come from?
"Ahem!" she coughed to check on her vocal cords once again, and instead of a violent cough, what came out was a gentle one that could soothe anyone's soul.
"That's not my voice! This isn't my body!" Giulia concluded, but somehow that conclusion also felt wrong. From the outside, she didn't recognize herself, but on the inside, she still felt like Giulia. As proof, even her memories were untouched. She still remembered the conversation she'd had with Alf just moments ago.
"You could have stayed grateful. All you had to do was listen."
"Ack—"
With those memories came pain. It was the pain of being stabbed, the pain of being afraid, and the pain of being used.
No, something else was lingering there. It was another kind of pain, one that she wasn't aware of, but it made her nerves twirl all the same.
"AHHHHHH!"
Giulia shouted as memories of another girl violated her mind. She saw a castle; lands unknown to her; two nobles who proclaimed their love to this Giulia, and a young boy—a beautiful young boy who still hadn't said the words she was waiting for.
"Leo…" she spoke his name. Why did she know that name? Who was that boy to her? Why did her chest feel tight whenever she pictured his face in her mind? Why were tears streaming down her face? What had happened to Leo? Where was he? Why was he hurting? How could he kill all those people? WHY DID HIS HEAD FALL OFF?
No, Leo was strong. Leo knew where she was, and he would surely come.
"Save me…"
She felt pathetic. She put her trust in a skinny little boy. If she had had her grown body, she could have lifted that boy with two fingers, yet now she too was a skinny helpless girl.
It hurt. She was scared. She was nowhere. She had nobody around.
"Make it stop…"
Nobody would come.
"MAKE IT STOP!" Giulia shouted, smashing her head into the wooden walls until the room she was in turned sideways.
"Boss! That girl's going crazy in there! She flipped the whole thing over!"
Shortly after those words were spoken from far away, somebody opened a door that lay sideways. The more she looked at that someone, the more she noticed his distinct features. She was a monster. She was a walking lizard. Why? Why could lizards walk and speak like humans?
Aren't you all jumpy and energetic? The boss won't let us cut off the goods, so at least your limbs are safe, but don't worry, we have other ways to tire you a little," the lizard woman said, licking her lips in anticipation.
The approaching lizard woman was terrifying. Every step she took made Giulia instinctively take a step back, like she knew that once she got his hands on her, it would be over.
Yet what distracted Giulia even more was a man outside the caravan. He was a man who wore a familiar side profile, yet she didn't know what name to give it.
She stared at it long and hard until the man turned towards her, at which moment, Giulia's heart stopped.
"If only you would have listened."
Those words came from the man's mouth.
His eyes were open wide—wider than should have been humanly possible. Then, a light came over that man. In that light, he started melting, his hair burning as his eyes popped out.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—!"
While her vocal cords worked well enough for her to scream until her voice gave out, her heart refused to start again. Struck by terror, Giulia felt a sharp pain in her chest, and soon after, the room went dark.
The last thing she felt was the scaly touch of that lizard.
*****
She opened her eyes. She was staring at an unknown ceiling—one that was beautifully decorated.
She felt around her body—there were no wounds.
She got up and instinctively grabbed the lovely robe hanging in her beautifully decorated room. Soon, somebody knocked on the door.
"Come in!" her suave voice allowed.
Having received permission, multiple women entered her room to help her put on makeup and get dressed.
"The emperor said he would visit you in the evening. This is your chance, my lady!"
Without as much as a smile, Giulia—though she had thrown away that name long ago—nodded graciously.
"Let's go then."
A foreigner in those lands, she had gained the favor of the emperor long ago thanks to her looks, and today was the day she would make good use of them.
As usual, she headed for the throne room to greet the emperor. The long, dark corridor made her skin crawl, but she couldn't turn back. She had to keep going no matter what. For them. For him.
"Make it stop…" she whispered so that only she could hear herself, silently rejecting the life she had to live.
"Giulia, my dear! Run away!"
Hearing those words from before the throne, the concubine lifted her face, yet what she saw was not the source of the sound—not anymore. Now, it was a lifeless body, its head rolling down the stairs.
"You monster—"
The same had once happened to her father—once a Reman noble, then a rolling head.
"So tell me, is this how you used to show love to your monarchs back home too? By plotting a rebellion?" a voice beaming with authority asked from the throne.
Caught red-handed, she turned around to run away, but her own attendants wouldn't budge from the entrance.
With no way to escape, Giulia faced the emperor, who approached her with slow steps.
"If only you would have listened…"
With those words, he pulled out his sword and swung it at her neck. For but a second she saw the ground coming into view from above, and then the lights went out.
*****
She opened her eyes. She was in a room high up in another palace. The architecture was completely different from the last place she had woken up into, but it was a palace nevertheless.
Outside, fires burned the houses of unfortunate civilians. Giulia got out of her bed the moment she opened her eyes, but there was nothing left to save. Smoke rose up to her window, hiding away the disaster the attacker had created.
That would have been the case, were it not for the attacker's pride dictating most of its decisions.
With a flap of its wings, the red flying lizard—the Fire Dragon—blew the smoke away, its shiny scales reflecting the sun right in Queen Giulia's eyes.
"The Fire Dragon… Could it get any more clichéd?" the woman joked with a smug smile.
With unwavering conviction, the woman stared the dragon dead in the eyes. She knew it was over, but even in this hopeless battle, she wouldn't let her heart falter.
She'd been defending Merlobasso for years. The capital that had been at war for as long as she could remember managed to resist across generations of attackers. That was the case until the elemental beast entered the fray.
"If only you would have listened," the dragon's voice resounded like thunder.
From behind her, loud bangs knocked down the door to her chambers.
"It's over, Your Majesty," the voice of a man—no, the voice of another lizard provoked her.
"Let basil rule this country now."
In a few moments, the war would end. In a few moments, the final human battalion of the country called Rema would fall.
If anything, it was a miracle that the royal family managed to hold out for so many years, but as with any prospering country, greedy hands would one day find something to grab.
Grabbing her sword that leaned on her bed, Queen Giulia would not give up even in her last moments.
Why she was there and what those fuzzy memories were doing in her head, she didn't have time to think about such trifling matters. What mattered was how well she gripped that hilt.
If anything, at least this body felt strong. Not as strong as she was used to, but this was a fighter's body.
That day marked the end of another era, and humanity's finale was signed with the blood of its last guardian.
*****
"Ahh… Won't you let me dream some more?"
*****
"Ahh… Won't you let me dream some more?" he whispered as he broke out from another illusion.
Wiggling in bed, he felt the warm body of the woman he loved so dearly. With his eyes closed, he felt how his dear reciprocated feelings he though lost in the merciless whirlwind of time.
It was a miracle. He didn't know what brought that miracle about, but he couldn't deny it—no, must not deny it.
His eyelids were heavy, ready to take him back to sleep so that he could wake up to another morning next to her. He knew the patter, for he had repeated it for seven days already.
It was a pattern 'he' would probably never get bored of. If anything, he wanted to test this hypothesis.
"…"
But her cries for help grew faint, and as much as 'he' wanted to keep on dreaming about his life with Giulia, 'he' had to wake up.
The way to wake up? Randulfr knew it all too well. All he had to do was dream. That's what he had been doing every night, after all.
"What a greedy man you are~" a voice he thought gone now came back to life inside his head.
"To try and force the world to bend to your will like that…"
The Murdering Wold spoke only the truth, and 'he' couldn't deny it.
One night, he dreamt he was running. He ran as fast as he could, following the tracks left behind by a band of mercenaries, doing his utmost to save his sweetheart.
His mind kept repeating the same scene. It repeated the moment she was shoved there, her terrified face, and the last glimpse of her he'd caught.
If it wasn't that man, somebody else would have done it regardless. In another dream, the young lad could do nothing to save the beautiful lady, for by the time he reached her, she had already bled dry.
The same happened when he rushed to save a royal concubine. By the time he'd taken the life of a man with a familiar face, the woman once called Giulia was no more.
Be it from a queen's position, the same ending came upon her. No matter how much he'd tried to get past that dragon, the beast was much too strong, so he was left with nothing to do but look at the queen falling out the window as his own body was burning to ash, engulfed by the dragon's undying flames.
Failing to save her, he woke up drenched in sweat every morning, and while Giulia was glowing next to him at those times, the tears she'd been crying at night left a stain on the pillow.
No matter how beautiful this dream was for him, a thrall woman somewhere was somehow fighting for her life and losing.
He grabbed her hand and squinted his eyes. Then, he asked—
"Feign ignorance or go back, what will it be?"