The entire basement distorted for Aefia only. A wind rose and then died down rapidly. Suddenly, it was a clear sky, a wonderful blue day. It was a bustling marketplace. Children were running around from shop to shop while some knights followed them around.
Laughter filled the entire area.
Slowly, Aefia looked down at her own hands.
"Hmm..." She breathed out through her nose. "A simple touch and a bit of magic... The power of a Guardian is astonishing."
Besides that, when she looked towards a shop window... She was someone else entirely.
Her face was as usual, but her eyes were a darker red and her hair full black and reaching past her waist. She looked weirdly like how everyone described her mother.
Seeing her like this right now, she could easily say they both shared the same skin tone.
"Wow... Mom was... Beautiful." She whispered to herself. Her fingers twitching at her sides as she contemplating reaching out to touch the glass, just to inspect it that it wasn't just a reflection.
"Thank you for the toys, Your Majesty!" A kid shouted, grasping a doll at her hands.
Aefia's eyes immediately drifted that way. Her fingers started to tremble when she saw...
That the dolls with their porcelain face—who was staring back at her—looked rather familiar. The eyes, the hair, the dress.
"I have seen those before!" She whispered to herself, fisting her hands beside her. "In that... Storage room. The one Cedric had led me to, for retreiving the artifact..."
Immediately, she pinched the bridge of her nose and took a step back. But her head instantly filled with a familiar voice.
"Hello! We meet again! Do you remember me?"
The blonde-haired, blue eyes, and blue-dressed doll said.
The next time Aefia opened her eyes, she found herself standing in absolute void, in an entirely dark room where she was saw nothing else except a milky-white face standing so far away.
"Are you the one I had interacted with the last time? In the King's storage room?"
"Took you long enough to figure it out."
"..." Aefia let out a sigh through her nose. Her eyebrows furrowing as she thought about it deeply.
"You all... Are humans made into toys? For the orphans?"
"Yes."
"And you were?"
"The Princess's lady-in-waiting."
"Oh..."
"I told you a name the last time."
"You said ######"
"Yes."
"So did they kill you?"
"You are smart. I like you."
Her mind raced for a bit. Something wasn't right though.
"So... We had a conversation only in the future. How do you recall me if we are currently in the past? Or are your memories intact in whatever timeline or whichever place?" She asked, her voice low.
The doll clasped her hands behind her back and started to pace a small patch of ground. "Well of you say it like that... You are the Guardian of Death and so was your mother. Normally, Guardians can't share memories. But you took the Guardian of Death's seat which was also your mother's. So your powers linked to hers and you can access memories from the past regardless of what timeline.
"And as for us... We are dead and right now we are ghosts. As your mother once used the same powers as you are right now... We can easily tell who is who—"
"No that is not explaining a single thing..." Aefia held out her hands, waving them. "I meant... How do you know what happened in the future if it didn't happen yet for you?"
"..." The doll slowly turned it's head towards her. "I was not done talking."
"..."
"Your mother and you have something in common. Your powers. And because of which, you can access 'her' memories in the past. But because you are the current Guardian, we ghost travelled back in time along with you."
"Uh..."
"It has something to do with a portion of your father's magic in you too."
"The reason you all got transported back too?"
"Well, at least we are having a chance at another conversation. Right?"
"Yeah... I guess," she replied softly. A drop of sweat rolling down her forehead and down to her chin. "But then... Why did you get killed? And why were you turned into toys?"
"We know a few things. Like the name of the person who did it. The thing they had been doing and the reason they had been doing it." The doll answered, a wide smile breaking across it's face. "Besides... You came here for a particular reason."
The void immediately died down and dissolved into the ground, pulling her right back to the past she had arrived in.
Her finger twitched at her side, feeling something. When she looked down, that doll was holding onto her forearm.
"I will be holding onto you while you navigate. Just watch for now." It spoke.
Aefia stared ahead. Her eyes narrowing as she slowly took a step forward.
"How many did we hand over today?" The King asked, looking around with a smug face. In his arms were four-year-old Kazimir chewing on a chocolate bar.
When he felt a sudden presence, his eyes fell directly onto her. But he made no move to complain to his father. The stare lasted approximately until she dissappeared behind a store.
But she still listened from the side, quietly.
"I think... Twenty or so." A servant politely answered.
"That is enough then. Let's call it a day." The King answered, turning on his heels to head back to his grand carriage waiting by the entrance of the orphanage.
Aefia's eyebrows furrowed. "They didn't even say much. Not an explanation—"
"Besides... When we head back, we need to track down another servant." His voice came, a bit quieter.
"Is it the new rumor?"
"Yes," he nodded, shifting little Kazimir a bit at his hip. "The new one about the Kingdom using dark magic to source toys...
"Which certainly is true. But I don't think I like people who spread it around. Guess we will have to have them killed secretly."
The doll beside her let out a dry, clicking laugh that vibrated against Aefia's arm.
"They built their entire reign on this, Guardian," the doll murmured, its blue porcelain eyes fixed on the retreating carriage. "The orphans receive their toys and grow up loyal to a 'generous' King. The nobles remain oblivious. And whenever the rumor gets too loud... another maid, another knight, or another lady-in-waiting simply vanishes into the basement."
"And my mother?" Aefia turned her head, her crimson eyes piercing down at the doll. "When she walked this realm as Guardian... she found out about this too, didn't she?"
"She did, but she also didn't." The doll replied quietly. "She was gathering the thread, just as you are now. But before she could slice the kingdom's throat with the truth... she was gone. And the secret remained buried beneath the palace floorboards, rotting quietly until you stepped onto the exact same stage."
She didn't feel rage. But she felt something similar to it.
"You said you knew a name," Aefia spoke up, her voice regaining that sharp, commanding edge. "The person who actually executed the killings back then. Before Kazimir was old enough to hold a blade himself."
The doll slowly looked up at her, its painted smile stretching just a fraction wider.
"The King didn't dirty his own hands with every cut," the doll whispered as the bright blue marketplace around them began to fracture, long dark cracks spreading across the sunny sky like breaking glass. "He had a shadow. Someone who knew every hidden passageway, every lock, and every secret storage room in the Mides castle."
"I want to truly see that person. With my own eyes..."
"..." The doll stared up at her. "Very well."
The sunlight shattered completely.
The bustling marketplace, the laughing children, and the grand carriage dissolved into swirling specks of crimson dust.
The cold, suffocating dark of the void pulled them down, and within a single breath, Aefia felt the damp, iron-scented air of the present-day basement slam back into her chest. But with a different intensity.
She was standing in a brightly lit kitchen, the sharp smell of roasted meats, fresh bread, and copper thick in the air. The clatter of pots and pans rang in her ears. She wasn't watching—she was inhabiting.
She was the chef.
Her fingers—calloused and stained with herbs—were trembling as she hid behind a tall pantry rack. Through the crack in the wooden shelves, she watched two figures standing near the grand hearth.
King Mides. And a Prince Kazimir.
The King was holding a small, silver velvet-lined chest. Inside rested a delicate, horrifyingly familiar piece of jewelry—a crown made of fused bone and black iron. Beside the chest lay a stack of forged letters bearing the seal of a Dowager Queen from another Kingdom.
"The old woman was getting too vocal about the old beliefs," King Mides's deep, cold voice resounded through the kitchen. "She insisted on inviting the Guardians to the solstice. A foolish, stubborn hag."
"Is the poison taking effect?" Kazimir asked, his voice smooth, completely devoid of emotion.
"She will be dead before the week ends," the King replied casually. "Make sure her personal maid is handled quietly. We cannot have anyone questioning why the Queen Dowager's heart simply 'failed' in her sleep. And the body... strip it of her sigils. The children at the eastern orphanage always enjoy new 'toys' to play with. It keeps them quiet."
Kazimir chuckled. "A fitting end for a woman who preached mercy."
A gasp escaped the chef's lips—a tiny, tragic mistake.
Kazimir's head snapped toward the pantry instantly.
"Who's there?"
The vision blurred, spiraling into a nightmare of frantic running, dark hallways, a sudden, blinding strike to the back of the head, and then—the cold floor of the basement.
Aefia felt the sharp, agonizing slice across her throat. She felt the hot blood pouring down her chest, the horrific sensation of drowning in her own lungs while Kazimir stood above her, wiping a silver blade on a velvet cloth.
Beside Kazimir stood another figure, holding a lamp and watching with a solemn expression.
######
Her eyes widened in shock. It was the first time she saw this person in real-life... But she most definitely heard a lot about him from somewhere else.
Slowly, everything around her shifted a second time.
"Now now... Guardian... Didn't you think that was the end?" The doll's voice appeared again.
The memory surged forward into a horrifying, blurred tempo.
Aefia didn't have time to process the quiet horror of the King's words before the vision accelerated violently. The world around her warped into a nauseating, high-speed montage of blood, machinery, and absolute cruelty.
She saw it all in rapid succession—flashes of terror, silent screams, and cold, mechanical precision.
First came the executions. They weren't grand trials or public hangings; they were quiet, systematic slaughter. She watched through the ghosts' eyes as servants, knights, and innocent palace staff were dragged into the damp lower levels, their throats severed or heads struck down before they could even draw a breath to scream.
The sheer volume of blood was overwhelming, pooling across cold stone floors like an endless tide.
Then came the manufacturing.
The vision fast-forwarded through the grotesque process of turning those lives into innocent-looking playthings. Flesh and bone stripped, harvested, and fused with dark, twisted magic. Porcelain poured over silent agony. Hair threaded onto delicate dolls. Minds broken and sealed into tiny, hollow wooden and ceramic frames.
It was a conveyor belt of nightmares, executed with a sickeningly mundane routine—turning human slaughter into bright, smiling toys destined for the hands of unknowing children.
The sheer brutality of it slammed into Aefia's chest. For someone who was the Guardian of Death—someone tasked with guarding the dignity and peace of the departed—this wasn't just a crime. It was a vile, grotesque desecration that made her stomach violently churn. A cold sweat broke out across her forehead as her vision trembled under the weight of the endless, gruesome memories pounding into her mind.
CRACK.
The void shattered, throwing her violently back into the real world.
Aefia gasped, stumbling back into the damp air of the present-day basement. Her hand flew to her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The sickening images of the fast-forwarded horror still burned behind her eyelids—the blood, the severed limbs, the porcelain masks being pressed over dying faces.
"Aefia!" Cedric caught her by her arm, his eyes filled with panic as he looked at her pale, shaken face. "What was that?! Your eyes... you looked like you were going to collapse!"
"Who said I wasn't?" Aefia slowly lowered her hand, her breathing ragged, her bare fingers trembling violently against Spectrum's hilt.
"They..." Her voice came out choked, but within a fraction of a second, her expression hardened into something cold, terrifying, and merciless. "They turned them into toys. All of them."
Cedric's breath hitched, his grip on her arm loosening in absolute shock. "...What?"
"The executions... the factory... and I don't know what..." Aefia turned her gaze slowly toward the iron doors. Before her hand reached out to grab a side of his collar to whisper.
"They didn't murder them to only hide the truth," she whispered, her voice dropping into a deadly, echoing resonance. "They desecrated every single one of them. Most of them were royalty who came across even a tiny breath of information—and they were first threathened that if they even say a thing, their throne is Mides'. When the greed was too overwhelming, they went ahead to kill them."
She let go of his collar to judge his expression.
He slowly turned his head towards her. "So to put it simply... They deliberately let a few victims know. The others—like servants—were just tragic mistakes."
She nodded, then looked at Rosetta—who was confused.
"You know," she turned back at him. "I think it would be best if you take the Queen and Rosetta out of this palace the next thing. For one part that I am sure of... I am only the final target. The ones before me... Are you, her and the Queen."
He flinched. "The funny fact is... even if we make it out alive, we will still be chased and ended. And then what about you?"
"I will swear an oath to protect you first by the way. I have everything prepared. If anything goes wrong... I will see to it so you don't have to worry." She responded, turning around to face both Rosetta and Cedric at one.