“What are you hiding, Illiana Levni.”
Cassian’s frigid voice sliced long through the air of the solitary cell.
“Perhaps even that name is a lie?”
My heart thumped once and plummeted endlessly beneath my feet. The Count Levni household. It was a fabricated cover identity the witch had hastily crafted to push *Rodri*, a mercenary of the Eastern Kingdom, into this Imperial Palace as a handmaiden. A phantom house that had never existed in the first place—there was absolutely no chance records remained in the capital.
“…What is your intention in asking me that?”
I squeezed my voice out, trying my utmost to appear composed, but Cassian’s lips, caught at the edge of my vision, were already twisting upward.
“Before I took this throne, the Empire waged a fierce war with the Eastern Kingdom.”
He approached, the cadence of his boots ringing at steady intervals. A massive shadow slowly engulfed me.
“And among those barbarians, I was told there was a monster that roamed about crushing Imperial knights’ heads like beasts.”
My breath caught in my throat. Cassian’s deep violet eyes swept over my entire body—obsessively, cloyingly—especially the silver hair and red eyes shining with cold light.
“They say that barbarian’s hair and eye colors were truly ominous and bizarre.”
His large hand, clad in a leather gauntlet, slowly seized a handful of my silver hair. My scalp drew taut, tangling me perfectly in his serpentine gaze.
“Silver hair. Blood-red eyes. Exactly like the Illiana standing before my eyes now. Just like you.”
In an instant, a cold shiver raced straight down my spine.
*Shit… have I been found out?*
Alarms blared like mad inside my head. I forcibly suppressed my breathing, which threatened to quicken, biting my tongue hard. The fishy taste of blood spread through my mouth.
*Where did it go wrong? Is he completely certain I’m Rodri? This is dangerous. That look isn’t a mere probe.*
He struck straight at my blind spot without even giving me room to make excuses. When I had read the original, there had been no scene whatsoever where the Emperor interrogated my true identity to this degree so early on; I couldn’t tell whether it was the butterfly effect of the regression or where exactly the trajectory had derailed. A blood-curdling psychological battle ensued. Crushing strength gradually built in his grip on my silver hair.
*Calm down. If I falter here, it’s over.*
If I averted my eyes at this very moment or showed even the slightest sign of agitation, that man would gain certainty and cut my throat immediately. The horrific sensation of my severed neck flying through the air beyond the castle walls, spraying blood like a fountain before the regression, flared like phantom pain. Cold sweat poured like rain down my spine.
But my mind had already blanked white with fear, and no proper excuse came to mind. What broke that suffocating silence was a voice both unfamiliar and familiar, coming from the direction of the firmly closed door.
“Your Majesty. Lady Illiana is indeed the young lady of Count Levni’s household.”
Clank. With a heavy metallic sound, a knight in silver armor strode into the cell. She removed her helmet, tucked it under her arm, and knelt on one knee behind Cassian.
It was Elise, who had died of terrible burns while trying to drag me to safety in the previous round.
“I am the living proof of that.”
Cassian’s head turned halfway. Chilling killing intent bore down on Elise for the rudeness of interrupting the Emperor’s words, yet she didn’t bat an eye and continued to speak with flawless fluency.
“The Levni household was cruelly destroyed by the Eastern Kingdom’s invasion, but in the past, it was a vassal and collateral bloodline of a County that had guarded the Empire’s frontier. As it was a small house at the border’s edge, the records in the capital were lost amid the chaos of war.”
Elise met Cassian’s killing intent head-on with a firm gaze that did not waver an inch.
“In truth, I was the daughter of a commoner knight who served Lady Illiana at the Levni estate. When the territory was trampled by the beasts of the Eastern Kingdom, I survived together with the young lady and drifted into the Empire.”
Her delivery was so smooth and persuasive. It was a narrative so perfectly consistent that it was impossible to believe it a lie. Had I not been Rodri myself, even I would have nodded and accepted it as truth—such was the perfect alibi.
Cassian silently looked down at the kneeling Elise. Seconds passed in suffocating silence as the air in the room froze coldly.
Soon, Cassian’s tightly sealed lips parted.
“…What is your name.”
“Elise. I have no family name, as I am of humble birth.”
Cassian slowly released his grip on my silver hair.
“I will remember that.”
Leaving behind only those brief, meaningful words, Cassian flared his great cloak and left the solitary cell without a backward glance.
Clack. The heavy door shut completely, and a suffocating silence pervaded the room until the sound of Cassian’s boots faded distantly down the corridor.
The moment she confirmed the presence had completely vanished, Elise’s shoulders, which had been kneeling rigidly, slumped. She slowly raised her head and opened her mouth heavily.
“…Rodri. It’s only a matter of time before you’re found out.”
The knight’s voice that had been so bold and persuasive moments ago was gone without a trace.
“I managed to gloss over it for now, but if that quick-witted Emperor catches on, he’ll figure out it’s a lie soon enough.”
Scratching the back of her neck awkwardly with the hand that held her helmet, Elise looked embarrassed.
“Sorry, Rodri. The Emperor was bearing down on you, so I just blurted out that I had to help you first, but I think I’ve ended up putting you in an even more difficult position.”
I pressed my throbbing temple and looked down at her with a blank expression. I had inwardly admired the perfect lie she spun so fluently, but she had simply opened her mouth without giving any thought to the aftermath.
Yet I couldn’t exactly blame her. The silver-armored knight before my eyes, Elise. She was disguised as a member of the Imperial Knights, but in truth, her identity was a real spy belonging to the Eastern Kingdom’s intelligence bureau.
Combining the flow of the original work with the memories remaining like fragments in this body, her story was tear-jerking. A loyal retainer who had served Rodri since the days of Count Cotton’s household. A comrade who had reunited during mercenary life in the East after the house’s fall, sharing life and death together.
Then, when Rodri went missing, she quit her mercenary life, entered the intelligence bureau, and infiltrated the Imperial Knights to begin her spy activities. Rodri, who had suffered terribly as a handmaiden in the confinement palace, had discovered her by chance, and the two achieved a tearful reunion in the heart of enemy territory.
Her martial prowess was good enough to be selected as an Imperial Knight in a short time. However, she didn’t seem to possess a particularly sharp mind. She was Rodri’s closest confidant and most loyal retainer. That was the Elise I knew.
“Rodri.”
To me, lost in thought, Elise spoke in a much softened, gentler voice.
“Do you remember when we were young, playing together at the estate?”
For a moment, it felt like I’d been smacked in the back of the head. Childhood? Playing together?
Perhaps such tender nostalgia remained for the original owner of this body, but there was no way such vague memories existed in the mind of a possessor like me. But I couldn’t afford to make excuses amid this suffocating tension. Hiding my agitation with effort, I lowered my gaze and nodded forlornly.
*So she was even set up as a childhood friend?*
I swallowed a scream inwardly. Nowhere in the original novel I had read overnight was such a specific past depicted, not so much as a single line. Settings hidden between the lines, which the author had glossed over or never bothered to reveal to the reader, were exploding in quick succession.
Elise’s eyes grew moist with the distant nostalgia of the past.
“Those times were truly wonderful… I think of those days, sometimes. Very occasionally.”
She slowly rose from the floor and looked straight into my eyes. With her helmet removed, Elise’s face was neat yet bore the straight, sharp lines unique to a knight. A faint scar grazed one cheek, as if to prove the hardships of her mercenary days, but even so, her long eyelashes, pert nose, and eyes clear to the point of coldness were beautiful enough to captivate the gaze at once.
Thinking that this face, perfectly whole and beautiful without a single burn scar, so tightly bound by loyalty and resolve, had burned and crumbled horribly like a lump of charcoal in the previous round while trying to save me, a corner of my chest stung.
“You said it, didn’t you? That you were holed up as a handmaiden in this dreadful corner of the Empire in order to protect the young siblings left behind in the East.”
Heat gradually began to build in Elise’s voice.
“That oath—that you would someday restore the estate and reclaim the trampled honor of Count Cotton’s household by any means. I haven’t forgotten it either.”
Elise clenched her fist over her left chest, against the armor above her heart.
“The reason I risk my life playing spy in this enemy nation is the same. I, too, wish for the revival of your house, House Cotton. And that wish is also my own personal desperate longing.”
A faint, tender smile spread across Elise’s resolute lips.
“Because that place… is also my hometown.”
With those grand, weighty words as her closing line, Elise pulled the cold silver helmet back on.
“No matter what happens, I’ll protect you. I’ll come again soon.”
She left the room, leaving behind a solemn back. The sound of the door locking clacked, echoing through the room with unusual heaviness.
Left alone in empty solitude, I roughly swept up my disheveled silver hair and collapsed heavily onto the bed.
“…Damn it… haah…”
My breathing grew rougher and shallower, like a person starved of oxygen.
House revival? Young siblings left in the East? A childhood friend spy who infiltrated the Imperial intelligence bureau?
What use was any of this crap? To me, who had once been an ordinary young man in South Korea, siblings I had never laid eyes on and the honor of a destroyed house were nothing more than the revolting setting gimmicks of a third-rate novel.
Right now, Cassian could notice my true identity and thrust a blade at me at any moment. The terrifying possibility that if I defied his mood even slightly, my neck might be severed futilely as in the previous round was branded into my very bones.
I squeezed my eyes shut. In that darkness with my sight blocked, Scarlett’s pale face flickered like a dying light—rolling and falling into a pool of blood with a dull thud—driving me to the brink of madness.
The warm warmth that had embraced me, vowing to protect me, vowing to tear apart and kill anyone who hurt me, be it the Emperor or a beast. Even in that horrific instant when death had crept right up to my throat, those red eyes that had never once blamed me, holding only me until the very end.
*Scarlett…*
With both hands trembling violently, I tightly grasped my neck, still attached and unharmed. In this insane world, in the gaps between the disgusting and burdensome settings the author had forcefully crammed in… only Scarlett’s bizarrely pure devotion, which had desired me so blindly, felt like the only “real” thing I could touch.
“Scarlett, I need you… please…”
The name compulsively leaked from between my split lips. I wanted to see her right now. I wanted to run and confirm with my own eyes that she was still alive and breathing. I wanted to bury my face deep in Scarlett’s small, soft chest. Listening to that blindly devoted heartbeat permitted only to me, I wanted somehow to quell this terrible fear and seizure of not knowing when my neck would be severed.
I buried my face between my knees and muttered Scarlett’s name incessantly, like a beast driven to the edge of a cliff.