--
It had been two weeks since the wedding.
The grand halls still echoed with music in her ears, the scent of wine and jasmine still clung to the dresses in her closet, but the excitement had long since passed.
Now, everything was quiet. Too quiet.
And Iris didn't trust the quiet.
She sat in front of her vanity mirror, brushing Salira Hasrima's hair with absent strokes, her eyes focused on the unfamiliar green ones staring back.
The reflection was elegant. Beautiful. Powerful.
And completely wrong.
"Iris died," she whispered under her breath. "So why am I still here?"
But worse than that…
> Why do I feel like I'm not alone in here?
The voice in her head—her own—was slowly becoming one of two. Sometimes she thought of equations she'd never studied. Sometimes she hummed lullabies she had never heard. Once, she'd reached for a fork and caught herself correcting her grip in a noblewoman's manner, with such ease it terrified her.
It was like being haunted from the inside out.
Her dreams weren't helping either.
She kept seeing shadows of rooms filled with gears and blueprints, tools clattering on stone tables, a fire roaring in the corner while the red-haired girl—Salira—sketched weapons faster than her ink could dry.
> She was… brilliant.
But none of that matched the Salira the novel described. The villainess wasn't an inventor. She was a jealous noble's daughter, petty, cruel, obsessed with power and romance.
So why were Iris's fingers itching to build something? To break rules? To do more?
She glanced down at the page before her.
It was filled with calculations. Circles. Schematics. A rough blueprint of a rotating blade powered by compressed air.
She hadn't remembered starting it.
She hadn't even known what "compression torque" meant yesterday.
"I need answers," she muttered, standing abruptly.
But answers don't exist in palaces where every room has ears.
---
That afternoon, Salira left in plain brown boots and a tattered cloak, slipping past guards who no longer looked too closely. She told her maid she was visiting a temple for reflection.
She went the opposite way.
The town buzzed like always—market stalls shouting, children darting between horses, noblewomen fanning themselves in carriages—but Iris ignored it all. Her feet moved with purpose. As if she'd been here before.
Down a narrow street. Past an old clocktower. Behind a crumbling cathedral with ivy covering its windows—
There it was.
A forgotten library, sunken slightly into the ground like it didn't want to be found. A rusted sign clung to its roof by a single nail. Most of the glass was broken, but the heavy wooden door remained shut.
She pushed it open.
Silence met her. The kind that clung to your skin.
Inside, the smell of parchment, dust, and rusted ink greeted her like an old friend. Shelves leaned like drunk men. A staircase to the upper floor was half-broken. Cobwebs spun gold in the corners.
> No one came here anymore.
Perfect.
She passed the history section. Ignored the religious texts. Then behind a half-collapsed wall, she found it: the section with the heavy books. Not just on weapons—but on the forbidden sciences. Clockwork. Alchemy. Mechanized defense.
Her heart beat faster.
Every day she returned.
---
No one knew.
Every afternoon, she studied. Every evening, she washed the ink off her hands. Every night, she dreamed of steel and fire.
The designs she made were crude at first—childish, even. But the more she read, the more things… clicked. It felt like remembering, not learning.
> But how could she remember what she never knew?
She kept notes in a hidden compartment in her room, tucked between layers of an old dress box. If discovered, she could be imprisoned—or worse.
But she didn't stop.
Because deep inside, something was changing.
Something was waking up.
--
One afternoon, it rained. Hard.
She lost track of time.
The thunder outside sounded like roaring cannons as she leaned over a blueprint, drawing a design for a wind-powered slicing disc that could rotate in midair. Her vision blurred from hours of focus, her fingers ached—
And she fell asleep.
Head resting against the table, eyes shut… she dreamed again.
But this time, it wasn't of weapons.
It was of two girls. One inside a mirror, banging against the glass. The other walking away, wearing her face.
When she jolted awake—someone was standing in front of her.
Tall. Older. Smudged coat. Sharp glasses.
> Faer.
"Who are you?" she gasped, nearly knocking her chair over.
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he plucked the blueprint from beneath her arm.
"…You try to kill yourself with this?" he muttered.
"What?"
He pointed to the mechanism. "This part here—if you attach it like that, the rotation will misfire and the blade will ricochet back."
He tossed her a piece of chalk. "Fix it."
"Excuse me?!"
"You're not as clever as you think. You copy books, but you don't understand them."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then why are you here?"
He finally looked at her—really looked.
"Because I built something like this once," he said, quieter now. "And no one else has come this close in years."
"…Who are you?"
"Name's Faer. Retired weapon master. You're trespassing in my domain."
She opened her mouth to apologize—but he waved it off.
"You want to build things? Fine. But if you're gonna do it, do it right."
And with that, he sat across from her.
---
Unseen
That night, she returned home soaked and silent, heart still racing from Faer's words. She snuck into her room, dried her hair, changed clothes…
And then—on her mirror—she saw something written in fog.
"Not alone."
She blinked. It vanished.
The glass was clear.
Just a trick of the light… right?
But something in her gut twisted. A memory she couldn't name whispered back.
And for the first time since she arrived, Salira—or Iris—couldn't tell where she ended and someone else began.