"It was a bright morning in Gobsburgs, while Friedrich Wolff still slept in his home, Sophie Blutwald was already seated before the mirror in the great house of Blutwald."
My hair was being pulled quite hard. Each stroke of Marta's iron comb felt like roots being forcibly yanked from my scalp, yet somehow also felt gentle.
I sat on a plush wooden bench upholstered in deep crimson velvet, directly in front of a large oval mirror with a mahogany frame carved with winding vines and roses whose petals seemed almost alive.
In the dim, early morning candlelight, those carvings danced in shifting shadows, creating the illusion that the wooden flowers were blooming and wilting in an invisible cycle.
"Please be still, Fräulein Sophie," Marta said tonelessly, her voice as flat as the frozen morning air outside the window, even as she gently arranged my hair.
She selected strand after strand of my blonde hair, shaping it into a tight bun that would make my scalp throb all day.
In the mirror, I could see the reflection of Marta's face. Her expression was focused, almost like an artist completing her masterpiece.
Her thin lips were pressed tightly together, forming a line with no room for doubt. Her dull brown eyes were fixed on the braid at her fingertips.
She looked at me calmly, and with her smile, perhaps she felt nostalgic, because she had been doing this for seventeen years of her life.
She reached for a blue ribbon from the small vanity beside her. That object, a length of expensive sky-blue silk, looked far too beautiful in her deft hands. It was made from imported fabric from the land of Alphalus, Father had said when he gave it to me last year.
Its color was like the sky at dawn over mountains I had never seen. Marta tied it into my bun with a knot that was tight too tight. Her fingertips touched my scalp, cold as metal left outside all night.
As I shifted my gaze back to the mirror, my own reflection stared back. A girl with porcelain-white skin, eyes black as a starless night, and blonde hair now neatly bound, not a single strand out of place. That face in the mirror smiled thinly. And I smiled back.
"This is too tight, Marta."
"You must be neat, Fräulein." Those two words were uttered like an absolute command, a dogma not to be questioned. "As a daughter of the Blutwald family, your father does not like to see messy hair. It reflects indiscipline."
Silver hairpins were inserted near my ear. I counted the first, then the second. They felt sharp but quick, piercing with a precision achievable only through thousands of repetitions.
"Have you heard? They say Herr Oswald disappeared in that incident too!"
A voice from behind me, coming from the partially open bedroom door. Another servant, sounding like Lina, was gossiping with a colleague I couldn't see.
Marta didn't turn around. Her back remained straight, her hands continuing their work. But I saw it. The vein on her slender neck tensed, dancing beneath her pale skin like a small trapped snake.
That gossip again... I had heard it. Since three days ago, the rumors had crept into this house like an unavoidable cold fog.
At first, it was just whispers among the servants as they cleaned the ballroom that was never used.
Then, conversations would stop when I approached the well in the backyard. Now, they didn't even bother to hide it anymore.
People were disappearing. Not one or two, but over a dozen in a week. And what was more horrifying: some were found again, and they said those corpses were discovered in a condition that made the oldest priest in Gobsburgs immediately begin praying.
According to the gossip, their skin was peeled off. Yet oddly, no blood was left at the scene. As if those corpses had been dried, packaged, and prepared for something no one wanted to think about.
"Do not gossip carelessly while attending to the Fräulein!"
Marta's voice this time was sharp, high, cutting through the air like a whip swung with full force.
Her pale cheeks flushed, two uneven red blotches, like the mark of a slap.
Lina fell silent. The sound of her quick footsteps retreating echoed in the marble corridor, reverberating briefly before fading, leaving a silence thicker than before.
"Ah. Calm down, Marta," I said, trying to make my voice light. "I'm actually… rather interested in that kind of gossip."
I stared at the reflection of my own eyes in the mirror. Black. Flawless. Expressionless. Perfect. Within them, nothing could be read. As it should be.
Honestly, living in this house… was rather boring. Even though our garden was beautiful, with red roses specially imported from Lanitum and a fountain.
Of course, I knew it wasn't my right to complain. Beyond these walls, perhaps even beyond our always-locked iron gate, thousands of people in Gobsburgs struggled just to survive.
They woke before dawn and worked until night, until their backs were bent by invisible burdens. Children played in gutters, not in gardens with fountains. Their thatched roofs leaked during the first rain, while my roof had never even been touched by water.
My complaints, if spoken aloud, would sound like a joke that wasn't funny. They would feel like an insult. So I suppressed them, letting them settle at the bottom of my heart like tea leaves that were never stirred.
"Huh… Fräulein…" Marta sighed, long and weary, like a balloon slowly deflating. She didn't argue with me further.
She turned to the jewelry box on the vanity. A carved wooden box depicting a phoenix whose tail curled around the lid, its eyes made of red agate that glowed when hit by light. Her dexterous fingers selected a pair of pearl earrings. With movements now more delicate, almost gentle, she fastened them to my ears.
And finally, when she stepped back, I stood up, turned, and faced the large mirror.
There stood Sophie Blutwald. Daughter of the Blutwald family. A flawless white face stared back at me. Her deep black eyes, like an old well that had never seen sunlight, radiated light towards me.
Her blonde hair was styled in an intricate braid that encircled her head like a capable crown of thorns.
At its center, the sky-blue silk ribbon glowed softly, the only splash of bright color amidst the dominance of navy blue and ivory.
I smiled at the reflection. And the reflection immediately returned my smile.
I left the room with steps neither too fast nor too slow, a rhythm Mother had taught me since I could walk.
After leaving the west wing, the great house spread out before me. Its walls were adorned with beautiful paintings in intricate gold frames.
Here, my ancestors stared at me from their canvases: my great-grandfather in the war uniform of the Lawe Kingdom, my grandfather in his court robes, my still-living father in a portrait painted three years ago. Their black eyes watched me.
In another, smaller painting, the Glaubenkirche Cathedral was rendered with precise detail every carving, every stained-glass window, even every crack in its ancient stone captured with precision. The horizontal bar was long, and below it, a second, shorter bar slanted to the right. The symbol of faith.
From a distance, through a window left slightly ajar, the great bell of Gobsburgs Cathedral tolled. Its first rhythm, then the second, up to the eighth.
Its sound was deep and authoritative, like Grandfather's advice I always remembered, even though his face had begun to fade from memory.
I quickly passed by many such items and areas, finally arriving at a junction in the east wing corridor of the great Blutwald house.
Actually… I was not supposed to be here.
That thought surfaced faintly in my mind, but it was too weak to stop my steps. The etiquette class with Frau Heidrich would surely start in five minutes.
I supposed I would have to come up with a reasonable excuse later. A headache, perhaps. Nerves because of the news about missing people.
Even though I wasn't skilled at polite dishonesty, my feet kept moving.
If I went towards a place I had never been before… I felt that if I turned into the corridor I always passed without truly seeing it, if I pushed open the door that was always locked… I would find something.
Even though it felt irrational, the feeling kept swirling in my head, like a metal coin falling and rolling on a marble floor, spinning endlessly, making a noise that drowned out the voice of reason.
I quickened my pace, my navy blue skirt rustling softly as it swept the floor. Marta and Lina were long behind me; they probably thought I was heading to the etiquette room as usual. Though if they found me not there, they would come looking.
And finally, around me, the scenery began to change. The corridor, usually bright with large windows, gave way to a narrower passage.
Here, the walls were no longer adorned with paintings of great-grandfathers with swords and grand robes, but with doors lined up tightly, one after another, from floor to high ceiling.
This was likely the east wing. Where Father spent hours, sometimes until sunset, and emerged with a face paler than when he entered.
But today, at the end of this silent corridor, there was a door different from the others. This door was unlocked!
Usually, that carved iron handle wouldn't budge even if I shook it with all my might. Father kept its key around his neck, beneath his always-neat white cravat.
Today, the handle turned smoothly in my palm.
This was foolish, clearly. If I was caught, I would have to explain… But what was worse than an insatiable curiosity?
I turned the handle. And the door opened without a sound, the perfectly maintained hinges not complaining. And I stepped inside.
The scent was acidic and faintly sweet of drying ink, of dust from decades-old documents, of old wood from cabinets and tables that had absorbed all these aromas into their pores over generations.
I observed and realized this room was large, far larger than I had guessed from outside.
Oak tables were scattered irregularly, each covered with documents stacked elbow-high. Some were in neat piles, tied with leather ribbons. Others were messy, as if someone had searched through them hurriedly and hadn't had time to tidy up.
I walked towards the nearest table. My fingers… and saw a tax report for the Gobsburgs district for March 1631. Numbers neatly arranged in columns: income, expenditure, property tax, trade tax. Boring. Nothing interesting here.
I walked deeper, moving further from the door. The further I went, the older the documents seemed, the paper yellowing, the ink fading to a dull brown.
And on a small table in the corner, hidden behind a filing cabinet that towered over my head, I found something.
It was a single sheet of paper, placed casually on top of a thicker stack of other documents. But something about it made me stop, draw a short, nearly inaudible breath.
This… was a missing persons report!
My black eyes, which felt like eternal darkness, scanned line after line with a speed I didn't realize I possessed.
"To:
His Excellency the Imperial Minister of Defense, Count Friedrich von Waldburg
Number: 487/A/1631
Re: Disappearance of Baron Felix von Metternich, Son of Prince Klemens von Metternich (Federal Faction)
Your Excellency,
With respect, we submit this official report on the disappearance of Baron Felix von Metternich, second son of Prince Klemens, since March 3, 1631.
Chronology:
The Baron was last seen at 21:30 at the Imperial Opera House; after attending that place, he was accompanied by his adjutant, Lieutenant Alois Brunner. He was described as calm, slightly tired, and briefly joked with the Chief of Protocol about the quality of the 1612 vintage wine.
The Baron's official carriage was found at 06:30 in the Prater district, precisely at the intersection of East Highway and Garden Road. His horses were still harnessed, showing no signs of panic or flight.
Medical examination conducted by the Ministry's team revealed abnormal residues in Lieutenant Brunner's blood. Preliminary analysis indicates the involvement of the Divern in this incident…"
"Divern…?"
Father had mentioned the Divern before. A few times, the first when I was twelve and asked why he always wore gloves even at dinner.
His black eyes had stared sharply at me, and for the first time in my life, I saw anxiety on his face.
"Divinum is something you should not know about, Sophie," he had said, his voice like crumpled paper. "Divinum is the reason this world doesn't collapse. It is also the reason this world could collapse at any time."
Then, afterwards, he said that Divern was the term for beings who used Divinum. People who used Divinum always had power above humans, like superhumans.
And this case involved that…
What actually happened to them?
That question had just formed in my mind when—
Thud!
I stepped back, then back again, and without realizing it, my heel caught the hem of my own skirt.
That perfect navy blue silk betrayed me, snaring my ankle like a trap set deliberately.
The report slipped from my hand, fluttering briefly like a paper bird with a broken wing, before falling to the floor with a sound too loud in the too-silent room.
And I fell.
My bottom hit the wooden floor with a dull, painful impact. But that pain meant nothing compared to what I saw before me.
On the table I had collided with during my fall, there was something. Covered with dark purple velvet cloth, its edges embroidered with gold thread forming patterns of stars and crescent moons. Even in my stumbling state, I could see that the cloth itself was expensive. Very expensive. Perhaps from first-grade Kagerium silk fiber, specially imported for the imperial family.
My hand moved without thinking. I reached for the edge of the cloth and pulled.
The velvet slid down with a soft hiss, revealing what lay hidden beneath.
A mirror.
Its frame was made of silver, the carvings intricate, more intricate than anything I had ever seen in this house: not flowers, not vines, but symbols.
A circle with a dot in the center. A triangle inside a circle. A sun with twelve rays, but each ray ended in a small symbol I didn't recognize. At the top of the frame, a dragon was carved with painful detail every scale, every curve, even every fleck of detail on its wings.
But it wasn't the frame that filled me with wonder, it was…
The mirror reflected nothing at all!
I leaned forward, closer, and still, nothing. I moved my hand in front of it. No reflection of my fingers, no shadow of movement.
Just darkness. Not gray, but an absence of existence. A visual hole in the world, a void that refused to produce reality.
"This…" I whispered, my breath almost freezing in my throat.
I touched its surface. No resistance. Just a surface that refused to be a mirror.
I tried to turn it over. It didn't move. I tried to knock on it. The sound that came out wasn't the usual tap of glass, but a dull thud, like knocking on a tombstone. I tried whispering a spell I knew no spells, just lip movements without sound. I tried wiping its surface with my sleeve. I tried bringing it closer to the light.
Still, nothing happened.
Maybe it was just a strange object. Maybe Father collected ancient artifacts with no real function. And maybe it was just a broken mirror too expensive to throw away.
"Anyway," I murmured, more to myself than to anyone else. "This object has nothing to do with Divinum, right?"
And the mirror answered
"I am very much connected to Divinum."
...
"A Noble Princess of extraordinary beauty and kindness! A Heroine destined to accompany the protagonist!"