The words of the shadow figure lingered in my mind like a cold mist that refused to fade, drifting through my thoughts no matter how hard I tried to push them away.
Successor.
Reversal.
A king for the darkness.
Each phrase echoed again and again as I stepped out of the small stone cell that the servants insisted on calling my room, because even though part of me still felt uneasy about everything the shadow had told me, another part of me had begun to feel something else.
Somewhere above my head, the upper levels of the castle were probably beginning their morning routines.
I imagined the smell of fresh bread drifting through bright halls while servants carried trays of tea and nobles gathered to speak proudly about the four heroes who had been summoned to save their kingdom.
Down here, however, the air felt heavy and stale, and the lowest floor of the castle seemed less like a place where people lived and more like a forgotten corner where unwanted things were quietly pushed aside.
Servants moved silently through the corridors with their heads lowered, carrying crates, buckets, and baskets as if they had long ago learned that drawing attention to themselves was simply another way to invite trouble.
No one spoke unless they absolutely had to.
And no one looked directly at anyone else for more than a moment.
I wandered through the back stone courtyard behind the kitchens without paying much attention to where I was going, my thoughts still tangled with the memory of the shadow's voice.
Then, suddenly, a sound broke through the silence.
It was a cry.
Sharp.
Frightened.
And filled with genuine terror.
I stopped immediately and waited, expecting someone nearby to react.
Surely a guard would shout, or a head maid would rush toward the sound to investigate.
But nothing happened.
The servants who passed through the courtyard continued walking without even glancing in that direction, their expressions completely blank, as if the cry were nothing more than another ordinary noise in the background of their lives.
To them, it was normal.
But to me, it wasn't.
I had not been born into this kind of cruelty.
Slowly, I followed the sound until I reached a stack of wooden crates beside the scullery wall.
There, crouched against the dirt with her back pressed to the cold stone, was a young servant girl who could not have been more than fourteen years old.
Her uniform was torn.
Dark bruises spread across her thin arms like ugly stains.
And a deep cut along her forearm continued to drip blood onto the ground.
I knelt down carefully so I wouldn't startle her.
"Hey," I said quietly, trying to keep my voice gentle.
"Who beat you?"
The girl flinched violently at the sound of my voice and jerked backwards so quickly that she struck the wall behind her.
Her eyes were wide with fear.
Tears trembled along her lashes as she stared at me as though she expected something worse to happen.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then her lips trembled.
"Why…?" she whispered hoarsely.
"Why would someone like you care?"
I glanced down at my hands before answering.
"They say I'm useless," I admitted softly.
"But even if that's true, I'm still a healer."
"That means I can help."
The girl looked at my worn clothes and pale face with obvious doubt before instinctively pulling her injured arm away.
"You should go," she said nervously.
"If they see you talking to me, it'll be worse."
I slowly knelt down beside her in the dirt.
"If anyone asks," I said with a faint, tired smile,
"you can tell them I healed you."
"I'm already the kingdom's mistake, so they can't hate me much more than they already do."
She hesitated for a long moment before cautiously extending her wounded arm toward me.
Taking a slow breath, I placed my hand gently over the jagged cut on her forearm.
Back home, healing magic in movies always looked warm and comforting, glowing with golden light that filled the air with peace.
What happened instead was something completely different.
The air around my hand suddenly turned ice cold.
A thick shadow began seeping slowly from my skin.
It spread across her arm like dark ink crawling across paper.
It did not look like healing magic at all.
If anything, it looked like something alive.
Despite its unsettling appearance, a strange thrill of excitement ran through me.
This was my first patient.
And I wanted to save her.
Focusing on the wound, I pushed the strange power inside me forward.
Not knowing what to say or do, I said,
"Reverse".
Return to when it was whole.
Surprisingly, the blood on her arm did not simply stop flowing.
Instead, it began moving backwards.
The red liquid crawled slowly across her skin and slipped back into the wound as though time itself had begun to turn in reverse.
The torn flesh pulled itself together with a faint, wet stitching sound until the injury disappeared completely.
Within seconds, the cut was gone.
Her skin looked perfectly smooth.
"There," I said softly, feeling a small flicker of pride.
"You're healed. Let's get you..."
The words stopped in my throat.
The girl was not looking at her arm with relief.
She was staring at me with pure horror.
Her eyes widened as if she had just witnessed something unnatural.
She scrambled backward through the dirt, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
She did not thank me.
She did not smile.
Instead, she looked at me the way someone might look at a corpse that had suddenly begun speaking.
Without saying a word, she turned and ran into the dark hallway as though something far worse than her attackers was chasing her.
"Wait", I started to call.
The word never left my mouth.
A violent shock of pain slammed into my spine.
"AGH!"
My body collapsed instantly as agony spread across my back and arms.
The Reversal had not erased the event.
It had moved it.
The pain she should have felt from the beating.
The burning bruises.
The throbbing cut.
The deep ache.
Had transferred into my body all at once.
It felt like invisible whips were tearing across my skin.
My chest tightened as the familiar weakness returned, stronger than ever.
I tried to crawl toward the door, dragging myself across the stone floor as my vision spun wildly.
My fingers clawed at the ground as I forced myself forward.
I managed only a few meters before the world tilted sideways.
The last thing I saw was the tall shadow of the castle walls stretching across the courtyard, completely indifferent to my suffering.
Then the darkness took me.