Vol2-Chapter1: The Morning After
To be completely fair to the concept of reincarnation, nobody ever mentions how incredibly exhausting it is to have your soul violently vacuumed through a spatial rift.
Hania lay still. Her eyelids felt like they had been forged from titanium and welded shut.
I am alive, she thought, the realization dripping into her consciousness. I think. Unless the afterlife has memory foam mattress toppers, which, honestly, would explain a lot about religious devotion.
She tried to remember what she had been dreaming. There had been something. The images were there, just out of reach, swimming in the fog of her exhausted mind like fish in murky water.
But the harder she tried to grasp it, the further it slipped away. Like trying to catch smoke with her bare hands.
It'll come back, she told herself. It always does. Eventually.
Her mind drifted. Thoughts floated through the haze.
I'm so, so tired. I've been through so much. I saw my mother. She has purple eyes just like mine. She saw me. She didn't speak. She walked through me like I was a ghost.
The thought stung. Even through the fog of exhaustion, it stung.
Why didn't she say anything? Why did she just leave? She saved father… then she just... left. Didn't even look back.
Maybe she couldn't stay. Maybe the portal was closing. Maybe she was in danger. Maybe she was trying to protect me by not speaking. That's a thing, right? In stories, that's always a thing. The mother leaves to protect the child. It's a classic trope. It's in like seventy percent of the manhwa I've read.
Her thoughts stalled.
...Or maybe she just didn't want to talk to me. Maybe I'm not worth talking to. I mean, she left me when I was a baby. She didn't even hold me. She just handed me to father and walked away.
That hurt more than she wanted to admit.
But she gave me my name. Hania. That has to mean something, right? She thought about me. She picked a name for me before I was even born.
Or maybe she just thought it sounded nice and didn't care either way.
Stop it. Stop spiraling. You're doing that thing where you overthink everything and make yourself sad. You're seven years old and you've been through more than most people go through in a lifetime. You deserve to rest.
She shifted slightly, burrowing deeper into the blankets.
I wonder where I am.
Then the emotional weight hit her again.
And Dravin, her father. At least he was alive. The curse had stabilized. He was out there, probably brooding under a frozen sky, grunting at inanimate objects, and being generally impossible to communicate with.
How am I even supposed to face him now? A sudden wave of panic pierced through her exhaustion. 'Hey Dada, sorry I accidentally breached your private soul-garden, watched your tragic childhood seizures, and witnessed you giving a dragon an assisted-suicide pass. Nice hair dye trick by the way.' No. Absolutely not. If I tell him I know about the willow tree, he'll probably seal my mana down to negative four percent and make me draw chalk circles until I'm thirty.
But then again... it wasn't like he knew what she had gone through. To Dravin, she was just an annoying gremlin who had fainted because her core couldn't handle Lusha's sleeping gas. She could just play innocent.
Yes. The harmless innocent defence.
Her thoughts took a sharp left turn.
Wait. Oh no.
Truck-kun.
A cold sweat broke out across her neck. The last time she had seen her loyal, interdimensional transport companion, his front axle was wedged between the forks of an enchanted cherry blossom tree, his radiator was spewing black smoke, and his oil pan was screaming in structural agony.
I left him hanging in a pocket dimension, she realized, horrified. If he gets totaled because of spatial feedback, who is going to transport me back to the waking world next time? His therapist Patricia the minivan is going to have a field day with this. "So, Patricia, my stalker finally found another dimension to obsess over and forgot about me." I am a terrible friend.
Guilt and curiosity finally overrode the titanium weights on her eyelids. Hania forced her eyes open.
Her entire body screamed in pain. Every muscle ached like she had been thrown down a flight of stairs. Her joints felt stiff, her back was sore, and her neck cracked when she tried to turn her head.
Too much sleep, she realized, wincing. I've been lying in one position for way too long. This is what happens when you hibernate like a bear. I'm going to need physical therapy just to walk to the bathroom.
She tried to lift her arm. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds. She managed to raise it a few inches before it flopped back down onto the bed with a thump.
Hmm… This is fine. I'm just... temporarily... paralyzed... by excessive comfort. This is a medical condition. I'm sure there's a name for it. 'Cocoon-Induced Immobility Syndrome.'
She lay there for a moment, breathing heavily from the effort of moving her arm. Her vision was unfocused. The world swam in front of her eyes like she was underwater.
Then with effort she sat up slowly, her tiny hands clutching a blanket that was woven from silk, though the pattern embroidered onto it was undeniably a cluster of stylized black widow spiders.
"Where... on earth... am I?" she mumbled.
She surveyed the room. The ceiling was a vaulted dome of dark obsidian stone, but instead of standard chandeliers, the light source came from clusters of glowing, bioluminescent purple mushrooms nestled inside silver web-work brackets. The walls were draped in dark velvet tapestries depicting historic battles—specifically battles where giant, multi-legged horrors were systematically dismembering imperial knights.
The bed she was sitting on was completely bizarre. It was shaped like a massive, hollowed-out cocoon, suspended from the ceiling by thick, braided silver cables that swayed gently every time she shifted her weight.
So, Hania thought, her internal genre-radar pinging immediately. I am definitely safe. Nobody in the Bumania Empire has taste this aggressively terrifying except for one person. This is Lusha's territory. The secondary estate. Or the nursery section of the Southern Caves. Either way, there are definitely spiders within a three-foot radius of my toes right now.
She looked down at her clothes. She was wearing an oversized nightgown made of the same purple silk. Her hands were clean, and her mana core felt stable. Cool. Like mint water running through her veins instead of the boiling tar from before.
So the curse stabilization affected me too, she noted, rubbing her temples. Good to know. The Noctis family bundle deal: save the father, get a complimentary core cool-down for the heir.
Click.
Hania's entire body went rigid. She pulled the spider-silk blanket up to her chin, her eyes locking onto the dark iron door at the far end of the room. The handle turned slowly, revealing a tall silhouette against the bright, torch-lit corridor outside.