Peaceful Days End Here
The side entrance to the garden on the north side of the imperial palace was wrapped in an eerie silence.
No, it was less a silence and more a suffocating, heavy stillness.
“…What on earth happened here?”
The empire’s most elite imperial guards lay sprawled across the marble floor like puppets with their strings cut.
Some had completely lost consciousness, while others clutched their heads with unfocused eyes, groaning in confusion.
Their memories had been violently carved out, leaving only hazy fragments of whatever had just occurred.
Amid that crowd of fallen men, only one person stood radiating an overwhelming aura.
The ruler of the empire, Kaelus, with his languidly disheveled black hair and crimson eyes that gleamed like a predator’s in the dark.
He stared down indifferently at Elik, the knight commander of the imperial guard, who had dropped his sword and lost his spirit.
“Your Majesty… how… why am I here…? I was definitely chasing a brown-haired boy…”
It seemed Elik could recall nothing beyond the fleeting image of pursuing a “brown-haired servant.”
The awe-inspiring sight he had witnessed at the end of that chase had been completely erased, as if wiped away by a giant eraser.
“A boy? No, Elik.”
Kaelus’s lips parted slowly.
His voice carried a lazy yet thick undercurrent of madness.
“He was no ordinary boy servant. He was something even I never anticipated… a dazzling, beautiful impurity.”
Leaving behind words that were difficult to comprehend, Kaelus toyed with a single shard of a shattered artifact resting in his palm.
“The second coming of the goddess…”
He remembered it clearly.
The brilliant platinum hair that had torn through the darkness of night, and the wave of sacred power that had overwhelmed the very air.
‘Erase the end of the memories directed at me.’
Her quiet, clear voice still echoed in his ears.
Even the strange sensation of the wave of light sweeping through his body, attempting to briefly wipe away her existence embedded in his mind.
It was no ordinary magic.
It was an absolute authority that only a very special bloodline blessed by the gods could possess.
‘But… it didn’t work on me.’
It didn’t matter why the memory erasure had failed only on him.
What mattered was that he was now the sole witness in the entire empire who remembered the radiant second coming of that goddess.
“The prey has fled. And quite cleverly, at that.”
A twisted smile curved Kaelus’s lips.
In an instant, the tediously boring imperial palace had transformed into a thrilling chessboard.
“I look forward to what comes next, my clever little thief who tried to steal my memories.”
A night remembered by only one person.
It was the beginning of the emperor’s secret and relentless pursuit.
**
After a hellish month in the imperial palace, a dreamlike peace had finally arrived.
“As expected, my room is the best.”
My bedroom in the Lucerne Duke’s Mansion was quite literally paradise.
The commotion on the day I fled had been perfectly settled by thoroughly emptying my second brother Cassian’s wallet, while my eldest brother Carlyle had fallen for my clever scheme and buried himself in monster subjugation reports.
Now, only one mission remained for me.
To live as lazily as possible while dodging my nanny Marta’s barrage of nagging!
But there was one person who refused to leave me in peace.
“My lady! How about this dress? It’s the latest design, and it matches your platinum hair perfectly!”
My personal maid and the most passionate ‘Number One Fan of the Young Duchess’ in the world, Lily.
In truth, she was far more than just a maid to me.
In my blurry childhood memories, after losing both parents at once, I had completely shut my heart away. Back then, I had lost all expression and voice, living like a lifeless marionette doll.
At that time, Carlyle, who had become the family head at a young age and had to become a shield for us siblings, and my second brother—who was only three years older than me and equally overwhelmed by the shock—were both struggling to handle themselves.
I had been quietly dying between them.
It was Lily who introduced me to a whole new world—not fairy tales suitable for ordinary girls, but the genre known as romance fantasy.
‘My lady, look at the heroine in this novel. No matter how terrible the trials she faces, she eventually shines like a jewel.
You must live boldly like that too!’
Every night, Lily would sit by my bedside and recount the heroic tales of new romance fantasy heroines.
Though a bit biased, it was thanks to her blind encouragement and the worldview of those romance fantasy novels that I was able to choose a life not as a tragic duchess floundering in misfortune, but as a romance fantasy heroine who forged her own destiny.
In other words, Lily was my maid, my one and only best friend in the world, and honestly the greatest life consultant who made the current me possible.
But even Lily had one fatal flaw.
She was trapped in fantasies about the title of “duchess” several times more intense than my own.
Whenever she had the chance, she would drape me in rare, sparkling jewels and extravagant dresses, constantly trying to play dress-up with me like a doll.
So whenever I tried to wear even slightly comfortable clothes, she would cry out with an expression like the world was ending.
‘My lady! It’s a sin to waste that national-treasure-level beauty! Wearing even one more dress is a way to save many people.
At the very least, it lets my eyes feast. Oh dear, don’t you think it’s such a waste of that face?!’
A waste of my appearance, she said.
Today as well, Lily was enthusiastically adorning me, pressing all kinds of jewels against my platinum blonde hair.
“Lily, everything’s fine, but don’t you have something like a pants-dress that’s easy to wear in a carriage? When I’m going around the shopping district, comfort and mobility are best.”
“Paaaants?! My lady, have you forgotten the number one rule of romance fantasy heroines I taught you? It’s that the heroine ‘never loses her elegance anywhere!’
The flower of Lucerne wearing paaaants?
That’s a betrayal of my pride and an insult to your elegance!”
Her large eyes shimmered as if tears would spill at any moment, so I ultimately had to compromise with a sapphire-blue dress that had a generously loosened waist.
The deep sapphire hue, as if the blue sea itself had been captured and brought here, resonated perfectly with the color of my eyes.
The soft silk rippled like waves, and the delicate silver embroidery at the sleeve cuffs looked like sunlight shattering across the sea.
Thanks to the slightly lowered waistline, the pressure of a corset had vanished, yet the naturally flowing silhouette made me appear more relaxed and graceful than usual.
Above all, when my cold, transparent hair cascaded like a waterfall over the dark blue dress, it created the illusion that I was wrapped in the cool moonlight of a midsummer night.
“Oh my goodness, my lady…. As expected, my eyes were right again today!”
Lily had already forgotten all her hard work. She clasped both hands to her chest and gazed at me with an ecstatic expression.
“This dress color emphasizes your blue eyes as if it wants to swallow them whole! And with that dazzling platinum hair on top…. This is foul play.
What if people on the street later lose their minds staring at you and the entire shopping district gets paralyzed?”
“Oh come on, it can’t be that bad, right? Are we done now?
Let’s hurry. You said you wanted to go to ‘All About Pudding,’ didn’t you!”
I lightly brushed off Lily’s exaggerated praise and took one more look at myself in the mirror.
Indeed, Lily’s sense was truly remarkable.
We climbed into the carriage headed for the shopping district.
“Wow, it’s been so long since we’ve been to the shopping district!”
Lily exclaimed in a voice as excited as a child’s while looking out the carriage window.
After being stuck in that suffocating palace for a whole month, stepping out into the wide-open streets felt like all the congestion in my chest was finally clearing.
The most bustling area in the empire, the Etoile Shopping District, was our most beloved place.
People of all kinds bustled along the neatly paved marble walkways, and the shop windows of the luxury boutiques lining both sides of the street sparkled brilliantly with sunlight reflecting off glass and jewels.
The shyly clasped hands of lovers, the laughter of children running about—vibrant life overflowed from the streets.
Best of all, the savory aroma of buttery brioche, the rich scent of Ceylon tea, and the heavy fragrance of lilies from the corner flower shop all mingled together, constantly whispering to me.
‘This is what it means to live in the real world.’
“Today’s my treat, so pick out anything you want, Lily! You’ve worked so hard taking care of me.”
“My lady! Then can I have regular pudding and the ‘Super Special Pudding’ too?
Eating them with you would make me so happy!
It’s a limited edition that they don’t sell often… Please, let it be in stock today!”
“Alright! Today, that pudding shop belongs to the Lucerne family!”
With rather comically solemn expressions, we laughed brightly like sisters and stepped down from the carriage.
Every time the heels of our pure white shoes touched the marble floor, a cheerful sound rang out.
We were weaving through the crowd, heading toward the dessert shop ‘All About Pudding’ where the smell of burning sugar hung thick in the air, when it happened.
Thud!
“Eek!”
I collided head-on with someone who had burst out from the shop entrance. There was no time to dodge.
The fairly heavy impact made me stagger backward, and Lily let out a gasp as she grabbed my arm.
“Oh no, my lady! Are you alright?!”
“…I’m fine. Whew, that surprised me.”
I barely regained my balance and looked up. The person I had bumped into also looked clearly flustered.
He wore a deeply pulled-down, worn hood, but the slightly visible jawline and smooth skin belonged to quite a young boy.
“I-I’m sorry! I was in such a hurry that I—”
Before he even finished apologizing, the boy vanished into the alley beyond as if someone were chasing him.
“Oh my! Look at how rude he is! He bumps into the young duchess and doesn’t even apologize properly before running off!
My lady, should I chase after him and drag him back?”
“It’s fine, Lily. He must have been in some kind of rush.”
I stared in bewilderment at the dark alley where the boy had disappeared, then noticed something heavy had fallen onto the marble floor at my feet.
“What is this?”
It was a small silver cylinder about the length of two finger joints.
It had clearly been dropped by the boy I collided with.
“My lady, it looks like something that boy dropped. It seems expensive—shouldn’t we return it?”
“Hmm… he’s already gone, though.”
I picked up the silver cylinder from the floor. The cold touch of metal met my palm. The surface was intricately engraved with strange patterns that dazzled the eyes.
But the moment I stared closely at those patterns—
Hiss—
The latent ability of Lucerne sleeping inside me reacted faintly, like static electricity.
‘This isn’t just an accessory.’
My heart sank coldly.
A foreboding intuition flashed through my mind—that the ominous gears that had shaken my peaceful life with that password back at the palace were beginning to mesh together once more.
It was exactly then.
Thump.
The silver cylinder in my hand emitted a very faint, unpleasant vibration, as if responding to my magic power.
“My lady? Why are you suddenly like this? You don’t look well…”
Lily’s worried voice grew distant.
The sweet smell of burnt sugar that had been tickling my nose vanished in an instant, replaced by a chilling trace of magic mixed with the metallic scent of blood that numbed my senses.
Who was that boy just now?
And what on earth was this bizarre pulse?
My peaceful and cheerful break had begun to be sucked back into an unknown abyss along with this silver cylinder.
[Elinor Lucerne]