Reincarnated As An Archmage’s Daughter

The garden exploded into a million fragments of light, and Hania was thrown backward through the void. She tumbled head over heels, her ears ringing, her vision swimming with afterimages of pink sky and silver hair and red eyes.

"Truck-kun!" she screamed.

"I've got you!" His voice was strained, his engine roaring somewhere in the darkness. "Hold on, something's wrong with the dimensional stability... the memory collapsed, but there's another wave coming—"

Another wave?

Before she could ask, the void surged. Light exploded around her. She hit the ground hard.

She was in the garden again.

The cherry blossoms were gone. The lotus pond was still there, but the flowers had withered, their petals brown and curling at the edges. The willow tree was larger, its branches hanging heavier, as if weighed down by years of grief. The pink sky had dulled to a muted gray-violet.

And there were two graves now.

Hania pushed herself to her feet, her head spinning. The second stone marker was newer than the first, its surface unweathered by time. It sat beside the original grave, close enough that their shadows overlapped in the dim light.

Beneath the willow tree, a man stood alone.

He was young, early twenties, perhaps. His silver hair fell past his shoulders, longer than before. His red eyes were the same crimson she knew, but they were slightly colder now.

He wore black formal clothes. The clothes of someone who had just buried the person they treasured most.

He was staring at the two graves. His back was straight. His expression was terrifyingly blank.

"Truck-kun," she whispered. "What's happening?"

Truck-kun's voice came from somewhere behind her, weak and strained. "It's his unstable mana. The seal is breaking, and it's causing a memory cascade, a rush of his most significant moments, bleeding through the dimensional barrier. These aren't just memories, Hania. They're the foundation of who he is."

"Why am I seeing them?"

"Because you're linked to him. Because you're his daughter. Because the garden is tied to his soul, and his soul is fracturing." A pause. A cough of smoke. "You need to hold on. Keep watching. The most precious memory, the one that anchors him, will come last. When it does, the mirror dimension will break, and you'll be able to step into the actual garden. Where he really is."

"How many memories?"

"I don't know. But I can't hold this form much longer. The dimensional pressure is—" He broke off with a grinding sound. "Just... hold on. Don't let go. Whatever you see, don't look away."

Hania turned back to the young man beneath the willow tree.

He hadn't moved. Minutes passed. He simply stood there, staring at the two graves.

Say something, Hania willed him. Do something. You're allowed to grieve. You're allowed to feel.

But he didn't. He just stood.

Then, finally, his hand moved. His right hand unclasped from behind his back and dropped to his side. His fingers brushed against the bark of the willow tree. Once. Twice.

Then his hand returned to its position behind his back, and he was still again.

That's it, Hania realized. That's all he'll allow himself.

She pressed her hand to her chest. The pressure was back. The pressure of watching someone you loved in pain and being unable to help.

"Father," she whispered.

The young man beneath the willow tree didn't hear her.

The garden flickered. The gray-violet sky shuddered. The withered lotus pond rippled.

"Another wave," Truck-kun warned. "Hold on, Hania. There's more coming."

The world shattered again.

"The timelines are clashing!" Truck-kun's horn blared. "His memories are fighting each other, the corruption is dragging up his earliest trauma! Hold on!"

The world stitched itself back together with a blinding flash of golden light. Hania slammed onto a polished marble floor, the echoes of a grand orchestra playing a celebratory melody ringing in her ears.

She was back in a banquet hall, but it wasn't the one she had just escaped. The banners hanging from the high vaulted ceilings bore an older, grander crest of the Noctis royal house. Tables full of exotic fruits and tiered frosted cakes. It was a birthday celebration.

But the music had suddenly stopped, replaced by panicked screams and dropped crystal glasses.

"Dravin! My baby! Someone help him!"

Hania scrambled to her feet and pushed through the crowd of frozen, horrified nobles. In the center of the floor, a tiny boy, no older than five or six, was collapsed on his side. His silver hair was matted with sweat, and his small body was locked in a violent seizure. His crimson eyes were rolled back, his tiny fingers clawing helplessly at the air as arcs of unstable, erratic black mana violently erupted from his skin, cracking the marble beneath him.

A woman was on her knees, crying hysterically as she tried to hold the boy's thrashing body. Her gown was rich silk, her hair the same silver as the child's. Royal guards and frantic mage physicians surrounded them, their hands glowing with healing magic, but every time they tried to touch the boy, his volatile mana violently repelled them, burning their hands.

That's him, Hania realized, her heart seizing. That's my father.

"The prince's mana core is mutating!" a physician yelled in despair. "It's a systemic collapse! We can't stabilize it! His own magic is tearing his heart apart!"

"Step back."

A voice came from the shadows of the grand entrance, a figure stepped forward. She wore a deep green cloak, the large hood pulled low to completely obscure her face.

"I can stabilize him," she said.

The royal guards instantly drew their swords, stepping into a defensive wall.

"Halt! Stand down! No one is permitted near the royal family!"

"Let her through!" the Queen shrieked, clutching Dravin as his breathing grew shallower, his tiny chest hitching painfully. "If you can save his life, I don't care who you are! Guards, step aside! That is a royal order!"

The physicians hesitated, but the sheer desperation of a mother overrode the court protocol. The guards reluctantly lowered their blades, keeping their eyes locked on the stranger.

The woman in the green cloak glided across the floor, completely ignoring the whispering, terrified nobles. She knelt beside the seizing boy. Hania leaned in, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the woman's face beneath the hood, but it was shrouded in absolute shadow.

The woman reached out. Unlike the physicians, her hands didn't burn when they encountered Dravin's wild, volatile mana. Instead, the black sparks seemed to docilely part around her fingers.

Hania watched in awe as the stranger began to execute a strange craft. It wasn't standard spellcasting; she wasn't chanting, nor was she drawing a typical magic circle. Her fingers moved in rhythmic geometry through the air, weaving threads of an unrecognizable, dark crimson energy.

What is that? Hania thought, her mind racing. That's not any magic I've ever seen.

A sudden, violent pulse of mana rippled through the banquet hall, knocking several nearby mages to their knees. On the little boy's forehead, the flesh began to blister and glow. Hania gasped, her hand flying to her own face as she watched a bright, blood-red crescent moon mark burn itself into the center of the young Dravin's brow.

It was the exact same mark as Hania's. The exact same mark that was killing him in the present day.

The woman pressed her palm flat against the boy's chest. A thumping sound echoed through the room, like a secondary heartbeat forcing its way into Dravin's body. She was infusing something directly into his soul. A powerful anchor meant to forcefully lock his mutating mana core in place.

Slowly, the violent arching of Dravin's body stopped. His breathing evened out. The black sparks receded back under his skin, leaving him limp and unconscious, but alive. The red crescent moon on his forehead dulled from a fiery glow to a dark, permanent brand.

The head royal physician dropped to his knees, staring at the unconscious prince in disbelief. He looked up at the hooded woman, his hands trembling.

"This... this is a miracle. The core mutation has been completely suppressed. My lady, please, who are you? The Royal Academy, the King himself, would grant you any title, any reward! Stay and guide the royal physicians! Teach us this craft!"

The woman in the green cloak slowly stood up. She didn't look at the physician, nor did she look at the weeping, relieved Queen who was murmuring breathless thank-yous.

"I have no interest in your titles or your academy," the woman said coldly from beneath her hood.

Without another word, she turned her back on the imperial court. The crowd of nobles parted for her in a daze of awe and fear as she walked out of the banquet hall, her green cloak sweeping behind her, leaving behind a fundamentally altered prince and a curse that would take centuries to unravel.

Hania stared after her, her mind spinning.

That mark. The crescent moon. So someone put it on him when he was a child. Someone saved his life, but they also—

She didn't have time to finish the thought.

The grand banquet hall began to vibrate violently. The pillars cracked. The terrified faces of the nobles vanished. The floor beneath Hania's feet buckled and split.

"Hania! The clash is ending!" Truck-kun's voice roared, a bright headlight piercing through the fracturing memory. "This is the anchor, hold on to your soul signature!"