Inside Leviana’s mental space, the surface of the Ice Tracking Mirror went suddenly black.
She sat bolt upright at once.
Ever since Lathel left House Avarenne, Leviana had been checking on him through this mirror from time to time. She had watched him stop in front of several hiring signs, had even noticed him paying special attention to a job that included lodging, but despite feeling helpless, she hadn’t interfered.
Lathel had spent three years confined to the space around her bed.
Right now he was only going for a walk, looking for work, and taking in the city like a normal person.
She didn’t want her fear of losing him to turn House Avarenne into another cage.
But the shop Lathel had just stepped into was a different matter entirely.
Leviana stood before the mirror, her icy blue eyes fixed on the worn sign that had appeared at the end of the alley.
Antiques.
Those two words alone were enough to change her expression.
"Pandora..."
In the previous life, Lathel had once told her about a strange antique shop that could never be found a second time.
It was also where he had met Pandora.
Leviana immediately pressed her hand to the mirror’s surface.
"Lathel, don’t go in."
He couldn’t hear her, of course.
The door opened.
Lathel stepped inside.
Immediately after, the image on the Ice Tracking Mirror shuddered violently. The two knights and the maid vanished from the frame, and darkness quickly swallowed the mirror’s surface.
Leviana clenched her fist.
She had once sent Black Rose to search for Pandora, but to this day there had been no results. The shop didn’t seem to be fixed to any particular street or city.
What truly worried her wasn’t the shop itself.
It was what lay inside.
In the previous life, the power Pandora offered had allowed Lathel to bypass his inability to chant. But that power had never been free.
Lathel paid with his lifespan.
Little by little.
At first so little that even he didn’t notice. By the time Leviana learned the truth, the life he had already lost could never be recovered.
She didn’t want to remember the details.
That alone was enough.
"Show him to me."
Mana flooded into the Ice Tracking Mirror at once.
The mirror’s surface shook violently.
Leviana continued pouring in more power.
"Where is Lathel?"
A crack appeared across the ice.
She still didn’t stop.
After a few seconds, the darkness finally wavered. A faint image appeared, then rapidly sharpened.
Lathel was lying on the shop floor.
Leviana immediately examined his body.
No blood.
No visible wounds.
Still breathing.
She had barely begun to relax when her gaze landed on the wooden counter ahead of him.
Empty.
Leviana frowned.
"Where’s Pandora?"
From what she knew, the box should have been near Lathel.
But the counter held only a blank space.
No Pandora.
Nothing resembling the box from her memory.
Leviana placed her entire hand flat against the mirror.
"Lock onto Lathel."
The Ice Tracking Mirror immediately shifted targets.
Instead of trying to observe the space within the shop, the connection began anchoring directly to Lathel’s aura.
A thin layer of mana passed through his body.
Then went deeper.
The instant it touched his soul...
"Oh?"
A female voice rang out through the connection itself.
Leviana went rigid.
The sound hadn’t come from inside the shop.
It was transmitting from within Lathel himself.
Her eyes turned cold at once.
"Pandora."
A beat of silence from the other side.
Then the female voice spoke again, sounding puzzled.
"Who are you calling?"
Leviana stared at the image of the unconscious Lathel.
"Get out of his soul."
A short pause.
"His soul?"
Pandora sounded genuinely surprised.
"Ah... so this place is the soul?"
The space around Leviana began coating itself in a thin layer of ice.
"You think I’ll believe that?"
"Believe what you like." Pandora kept her lazy tone. "I’d also like to know why I’m in here. He touched me, everything suddenly lit up, and by the time I realized what was happening I’d already crawled inside."
Leviana didn’t respond.
In the previous life, this hadn’t happened.
Pandora had existed outside Lathel in the form of a box. The relationship between them had been a transaction, not a presence directly sheltering inside his soul.
This time was already different.
Leviana’s gaze shifted to Lathel’s face.
"What did you take from him?"
"Haven’t taken anything."
"I’ll ask again." Leviana’s voice grew colder. "How much lifespan have you taken?"
Silence from the other side.
Only for the briefest beat.
But Leviana caught it immediately.
Then Pandora asked:
"Lifespan?"
Her voice carried genuine confusion.
"What would I want that for?"
Leviana didn’t believe her.
But instead of continuing to press, she fell silent and observed the other’s reaction.
Pandora was also quiet for a while.
Then her voice came slowly:
"On the other hand, you seem to know quite a lot about me."
Leviana’s expression shifted at once.
"You..."
A surge of violet mana suddenly appeared within the connection.
Pandora yawned lightly.
"Where I am, why I ended up in here, even I don’t fully understand yet. But there is one thing I’m certain of."
Leviana immediately channeled more mana into the Ice Tracking Mirror.
Pandora laughed.
"Peeping into someone else’s soul is very rude."
CRACK!
A bolt of violet light struck the connection head-on.
The Ice Tracking Mirror shattered.
Hundreds of ice fragments sprayed outward, dissolving into faint blue sparks before they could touch the ground.
Leviana stood motionless in the center of her mental space.
The connection to Lathel had been severed completely.
She didn’t immediately create a second mirror.
Doing so would only continue draining mana, and Pandora had clearly been able to detect and actively sever the Ice Tracking Mirror.
Leviana slowly lowered her hand.
’Pandora is inside his soul.’
That change alone was enough to fill her with unease.
So many things had already diverged from the previous life’s memories. She had woken earlier, Lathel had developed mana channels, Catrina had appeared ahead of schedule, and Aldric had been repeatedly forced to change his plans.
Yet certain events still found their way to Lathel.
Pandora was one of them.
This made it impossible for Leviana to keep treating every change as mere coincidence.
Perhaps the things that had once happened didn’t necessarily have to repeat in exactly the same way.
But a few critical junctures of fate were still trying to manifest.
Leviana looked at where the Ice Tracking Mirror had just shattered, her mind quickly reorganizing what she had just seen.
Lathel was alive.
No signs of serious injury.
Pandora claimed she hadn’t taken anything.
The only thing Leviana couldn’t confirm was whether that last claim was true.
She didn’t intend to immediately label Pandora an enemy.
In the previous life, Pandora had taken Lathel’s lifespan as the price for power, but Lathel had also used that deal of his own free will. Now the form of the connection had changed completely. If she attacked based solely on old memories, the first person to suffer the consequences might very well be Lathel himself.
She needed to stay calm.
At least until he woke.
Leviana closed her eyes for a moment, forcing the mana fluctuating around her back into her body.
But when she opened them again, the coldness in those blue eyes still hadn’t faded.
Pandora wanted to nest inside Lathel’s soul?
Leviana stood in the center of her mental space, but the composure held for only a few seconds.
Pandora was inside Lathel’s soul.
That single thought was enough to send every memory she had been forcing down flooding back at once. Lathel lying in the snow, his face deathly white, his lifespan consumed to the point where nothing could save him. Back then she had also thought she still had time, that she could deal with Pandora later.
The result was that she arrived too late.
"No."
Leviana clenched both fists, her breathing growing ragged.
"I won’t accept this."
She didn’t care that Pandora claimed she hadn’t taken anything, didn’t care whether this link was different from the last life. As long as there existed even the possibility that Lathel would once again trade his own life for power, Leviana absolutely could not sit here and wait.
She immediately tried to force her consciousness back into her body.
But the real body was still deep in its mandated sleep. Today’s four hours of wakefulness had already ended, and the soul and flesh were separated by what felt like a thick membrane. Leviana tried to break through it, and pain instantly lanced through her consciousness, driving her to her knees.
"Wake up."
She braced one hand against the icy floor.
"Wake up already."
No response.
Leviana gritted her teeth and continued pouring mana into the connection with her body. Cracks quickly spread beneath her feet, but no matter how hard she tried, the eyelids of her real body refused to open.
Right then, an unexpected warmth appeared at her back.
Leviana froze.
Before she could turn her head, an invisible hand had gently settled against her back.
It had no form.
No voice.
But the instant it touched her, the barrier between consciousness and body suddenly broke apart.
CRACK!
Leviana opened her eyes.
The body lying on the bed jolted upright in a single sharp breath. Dizziness slammed into her at once, darkening her vision, but Leviana only braced her hand against the edge of the bed and forced herself to stand.
She was still wearing the long white sleeping gown that covered her entirely. Her silver-white hair was slightly tangled from sleep, falling down her back and over both shoulders. Her bare feet had barely touched the cold stone floor before they began to tremble from the years her body had not yet fully recovered, but Leviana didn’t even look down.
She headed for the door.
The first step was unsteady.
The second nearly sent her falling.
By the third, Leviana had used cold mana to force her body into balance and threw the door open.
The maid standing in the hallway flinched.
"Lady Leviana?"
She didn’t stop.
"My lady! You can’t be out of bed!"
Leviana braced herself against the wall and moved quickly down the corridor. Her pale bare feet stepped directly onto the cold stone floor, silver hair flying behind her with each stride. Every maid who saw her froze for a few seconds before rushing after her.
"Call the herbalist!"
"Lady Leviana is awake!"
"Someone stop her!"
One maid tried to step in and support her, but the instant she touched Leviana’s arm, a faint pulse of cold air pushed her aside.
"Move."
Leviana’s voice was hoarse from having forced herself awake, but so cold that the person before her stopped in her tracks.
She didn’t explain.
There was no time to explain.
Inside Leviana’s mind there was only one image.
Lathel unconscious on the floor.
Pandora inside his soul.
’No.’
She moved faster.
As she ran down the stairs, Leviana’s right leg suddenly gave out. Her body tilted to one side, but she immediately seized the railing and kept going. The soles of her feet had already turned red from the friction against the stone, and she didn’t notice at all.
The commotion quickly threw the entire estate into alarm.
Mirelle rushed out of her room the instant she heard the news.
"Leviana!"
She only turned to look at her mother once.
"Something’s happened to Lathel."
Just four words.
Then Leviana kept running.
Mirelle froze for an instant, then immediately shouted at the guards behind her:
"Follow her!"
Leviana had already burst into the front courtyard before anyone could catch up.
The wind outside whipped the white sleeping gown and silver hair behind her. Not far away, a stable hand had just led a brown horse out of its stall and hadn’t yet grasped what was happening when Leviana walked straight over.
"My lady?"
She seized the reins.
The stable hand panicked. "Wait! Your body isn’t..."
Leviana braced her hand against the saddle.
Both arms immediately began to shake.
Her current body shouldn’t have been strong enough to mount a horse on its own.
But a gentle trace of warmth appeared inside her, exactly like the invisible hand that had just helped her wake.
Leviana didn’t think.
She stepped into the stirrup and forced her body upward.
"My lady!"
By the time the guards ran out of the estate, Leviana was already on horseback.
The white sleeping gown draped down on either side of the saddle, her legs still bare, with no shoes or cloak at all. Her face was still pale from five years of coma, but in those icy blue eyes now there was nothing left except cold resolve and panic crushed down to the very bottom.
She pulled the reins.
The horse whinnied and turned.
Mirelle had barely made it outside when her face went white.
"Leviana! Where are you going?"
She looked toward the main gate.
The Ice Tracking Mirror had been severed by Pandora, but the final connection had still left Leviana with a rough sense of Lathel’s direction.
It was enough.
"To find him."
Leviana drove both heels in hard.
The horse surged forward at once.
"LEVIANA!"
Mirelle’s voice and the shouts of the guards rang out behind her, but she didn’t turn back.
The gates of House Avarenne opened to the thunder of hooves.
A young woman who had only just woken after five years, whose body was so frail that a few steps could send her falling, was now wearing nothing but a white sleeping gown, barefoot on horseback, charging straight into the city.
Leviana didn’t care how others looked at her.
Didn’t care whether her body could take it.
And certainly didn’t care that Pandora claimed this time was different.
She had once believed she still had time.
Once was more than enough.
Leviana gripped the reins with both hands, her icy blue eyes locked straight ahead.
’Wait for me, Lathel.’
’This time I won’t arrive too late.’
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