"Home?" The word slips past your lips before you can keep them sealed. Even saying it feels strange. Nothing in your life so far has ever felt like home. Even now, the heart inside this body doesn't feel like yours yet, and the world around you still feels borrowed. How could any of it be called yours?
Lina's gaze shifts, catching the way your expression lingers on the towers ahead.
"Nox, are you alright?" Her voice softens, and the sunlight on her face makes the word angel feel useless in comparison. Your heavy eyes meet hers, and your chest tightens. In your entire life, this feeling of someone caring about you, whether it's real or not, has never come so close.
"Seeing your friends die like that must've been tough on you. Is that why you look so pale?" Lina probes, noticing your lips stay shut tight.
"I understand." Her soft hand reaches forward and takes yours, her fingers wrapping around your knuckles with gentle certainty. Warmth spreads through your chest like wildfire.
"I remember the day I first had to go to the battlefield. It was rough. Blood and screams are the only things I can still recall."
Brilliant crimson eyes catch the sun like a fresh dawn, and her care pulls you in.
"Let's go get some rest." She tugs you along gently. Your mind tells you it isn't right to stare, but those hungry eyes of yours still track the curves in front of you. The thin black armor barely hides her plum ass, and a filthy thought slips in anyway, making you wonder how fast you could peel it off. Every sway of her hips leaves you lightheaded, and it annoys you how easily your body obeys.
About ten minutes later, the mountain passage finally reveals the treasure hiding behind it. A city rises tall, a stronghold of white and gold.
Nothing around you feels like the world you once breathed in. Every wall looks like a myth, every person moves as if they were woven from the finest silk, and every face your eyes catch could be a celebrity on the biggest screens. Beauty is normal here. Even the air feels different, clean and cool, carrying a faint floral scent that doesn't belong anywhere near a battlefield.
The gate, the kind that would need heavy machinery to lift, rises without effort. A gentle wash of golden spectral light carries its towering ten-meter frame up. The metal doesn't groan or scream; only a soft hum follows the light, as if the gate is obeying it.
It takes about five minutes for Lina to clear the documents required for your entry.
Lina guides you through the gate the moment the seal is approved, never loosening her grip. Warm light runs along the stone beneath your boots as you pass into the outpost, and the noise of the outside world dulls behind thick walls. A short corridor later, she pulls you into the officer's office, shutting the door behind her.
"Reporting in!" Lina's fist snaps to her chest as her spine straightens. "May I speak to the Gate Captain? The request is urgent!" Her soft voice booms through the room, sharp enough to pull every gaze toward you.
She turns at once, speaking to one of the officers and answering questions in quick, respectful bursts, never fully taking her eyes off you for long. That gives you a short moment of time to breathe, and you use it to study the surroundings.
Black armor wraps nearly every woman in the room, spears and blades holstered to their bodies, the metal shining with a brilliant white. One guard still catches your attention because she looks different.
She sits comfortably on a chair at the back of the officer's office, naked legs crossed, not a piece of armor on her. Instead, she wears a short skirt you'd call almost modern, something that goes against everything you've seen so far.
Her purple eyes drag you in the moment you understand she's caught you staring. Only now, with a sliver of calm settling in, do you start to question why women in this world have such odd eyes. Strange or not, a smile tugs at your lips. It looks nice, you tell yourself.
Catching your smile, fury replaces the look on her face. A mysterious pressure settles over you, as if a hand has been placed on the top of your head, forcing your frame down. Your neck strains, but your head still lowers inch by inch, no matter how hard you try to fight it.
"Lowly slave." A hoarse voice leaves her lips. She looks barely thirty, yet her authority fills the room with danger. "How dare you have thoughts about me?" She's misunderstood that smile, you know it, but your mouth won't open under the weight pressing you down.
Lina's face drops. She rushes in front of you and places her palm on your head. The pressure dissipates at once, but the drawn weapons surrounding both of you make it clear this isn't ending quietly.
"Gate Captain Rania, please stop this at once." Lina's desperate cry catches a breath in your throat.
"A mere swordwoman dares to order me around and protect a filthy slave?" The pressure crashes down again, heavier than before. This time it doesn't stop at your neck. Second by second, it forces your knees closer to the ground, pain like needles biting into your spine until you want to scream.
"How… dare you? You damn bitch!" The roar that bursts from your lips surprises even you.
[Unusual fluctuation detected in the user's mental state. The system has detected a deep desire for resistance.]
[A new skill rewarded: Lion's Pride — Activating this skill allows the user to fight off the pressure of a stronger opponent for a limited time.]
Your exhausted mind fills once more with the system's robotic voice, but most of it comes through as noise you can't fully catch. In the moment pride drowns out common sense, there's no room to waste time on anything but what's in front of you. You have to prove you're no mere pushover, and more than that, that you're no slave to anybody, not in this life or the last.
Before your knees can hit the ground, golden brilliance bursts from your skin. The weight lifts. Your body turns light again, like a feather returning to the air.
Rania's expression drops the moment your feet steady and your body moves. Since childhood, the few men left in this world have always growled at her feet, sickening her until she started treating every single man like a plague.
The fist coming for her face looks too big, too close. In her entire life, no man has ever dared to go against her.