Even while Elara slept, her mind refused to rest. Thoughts spun like overworked gears, cold and relentless. Maybe her brain was broken, maybe it was just how she'd always been—unable to feel things properly, only able to dissect them. Her dreams weren't really dreams at all. They were like a desktop screen replaying scenes in neat little windows: what happened, what variables she'd missed, how to fix it next time. No warmth, no softness—just optimization.
Tonight, one question kept looping in that mechanical mind: she couldn't handle this. Not like this. The problem wasn't that she was too tired or too weak; it was that the **position** itself was wrong. She wasn't Crown Princess. On paper, she was only the Emperor's stand-in, a temporary substitute wearing his shadow while he lay in a coma. Substitute. Not successor. And when he woke up—if she ever allowed that—her authority vanished in a blink.
