Then, the side effects hit me like a physical blow to the gut.

A wave of nausea slammed into my stomach, followed by a dizzy spell so intense the room tilted forty-five degrees to the left. My vision blurred into a kaleidoscope of grey and black. Valeria’s warning about severe anemia wasn’t a suggestion; I felt as if my blood had suddenly turned to water. I staggered, my small thirteen-year-old hands grasping at the telescope’s cold metal frame for support, just as the heavy oak doors of the observatory were flung open with a deafening bang.

"KAIRI!"

Azalea and Helena burst into the room, their faces masks of panic and exertion. They were gasping for air, their clothes disheveled as if they had been running through the castle for hours. I blinked, trying to force the black spots from my eyes as I fought to keep my balance.

"Hah? You guys... just woke up?" I managed to say, my voice sounding thin and weak even to my own ears.

The question was genuine. The battle with Valeria had been a cataclysm. There had been screams, magical detonations that shook the foundations of the castle, and the literal fabric of reality tearing open. How could they have slept through a war?

Azalea glared at me, her face flushed red with a mixture of confusion and mounting fury.

"Woke up? Kairi, I’ve been looking for you for nearly two hours! I couldn’t find a trace of you anywhere!" She planted her hands on her hips, her chest heaving. "Helena and I have been wandering these corridors like fools. It wasn’t until we ran into Milena—who was just strolling through the lower hallway like she was on a morning walk—that she casually mentioned you were up here."

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the elixir.

Milena.

If Milena knew we were here, she had likely watched the whole thing. Was this room soundproof? Or had Valeria placed us in a pocket dimension where time moved differently? I didn’t have the mental energy to solve the puzzle.

Azalea’s eyes suddenly swept past me, and in that moment, her face drained of all color.

"SELENE!"

She sprinted across the room, nearly knocking me over as she threw herself down beside Selene’s limp body. Helena was a step behind her, her eyes wide with horror. Azalea’s hands were trembling as she pressed her fingers against Selene’s neck, searching for a pulse.

"Kairi! What happened?!" Azalea screamed, her voice breaking. She looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "Why is she like this? Why is she so cold?!"

I scratched the back of my head, the movement sluggish. My brain, still reeling from the magical "patch," defaulted to its primary defense mechanism: a calm so flat and detached that it bordered on the sociopathic.

"Oh, that," I said, my voice devoid of emotion.

"She’s just sleeping."

The silence that followed was heavy enough to suffocate.

One second passed.

Two.

SLAP!

The sound of the slap echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the observatory. My head snapped to the side, my right cheek erupting in a bloom of white-hot pain. It was a sharp, stinging reality check. I stared at the floor, my hand slowly rising to touch the heat on my face.

"Sleeping, you say?!" Azalea’s voice was a jagged blade of emotion. "Look at her! Her face is like paper, her pulse is so weak I can barely feel it! I have never seen Selene this broken, and you... you just stand there looking perfectly fine! You don’t have a scratch on you, while she gave everything!"

Azalea was right, from her perspective.

In her eyes, I was the coward—the incompetent girl who had let her protector wither away while I remained unscathed. She didn’t know about the elixir’s healing properties; she didn’t know that my "refreshed" look was a byproduct of a magical mutation. To her, I was a girl who had watched her sister die and felt nothing.

I knew that if I tried to explain, she wouldn’t listen. If I argued, the resentment would solidify into a permanent rift.

I needed a different tool.

I needed Cienna.

I lowered my head, letting my hair veil my eyes. I forced my shoulders to tremble. It wasn’t hard to find the catalyst; I simply let the lingering nausea and the terror of Valeria’s void bubble to the surface. I didn’t just act—I invited the persona of the fragile, broken sister to take the wheel.

"Hiks..."

A small, broken sob escaped my throat.

Azalea froze, her hand still raised for a second strike that never came.

"I’m sorry..." my voice shifted. It became higher, more vulnerable, laced with the frantic desperation of a child. "Forgive me, Sister Azalea... Kairi didn’t know what to do... everything was so dark... hiks..."

I was the Actor of the Year, and my stage was the cold floor of a dying castle.

The transformation in Azalea was instantaneous. The explosive rage evaporated, replaced by a crushing wave of guilt. She looked at her own hand as if it were a poisonous thing. In her mind, she had just struck a traumatized child who had likely watched horrors she couldn’t comprehend. She forgot the "Kairi" who was cold and calculating; she saw only the "Cienna" who was a victim of a cursed lineage.

"Ah... I... Kairi?" Azalea stammered, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I-I didn’t mean... I was just so scared..."

She let out a long, shuddering sigh and reached out, her hand hovering near my shoulder before she pulled it back, exhausted. The resentment was still there, buried deep, but the immediate threat had passed.

"Enough," she said, her voice weary. "Stop crying. We need to move her. Just... tell me what happened."

I wiped away the crocodile tears with the back of my hand, slowly letting my natural voice return, though I kept the fragile edge.

"I’m sorry," I whispered. "It’s... it’s happened before. Her magic... it takes a toll."

"What do you mean?" Azalea asked, her eyes narrowing again.

"It’s a long story," I dodged, staring at Selene. "A very long story."

Azalea grunted in frustration but didn’t press further. She and Helena began the arduous task of lifting Selene to carry her to the infirmary.

I stood back, watching them.

My mind returned to Selene.

She was a fool. A complete and utter idiot. She had burned through her very life force, using forbidden arts to pull me back from a void I had been half-ready to embrace. She had refused to let me be a sacrifice, forcing me to remain on this chaotic chessboard.

Our bond—the heirs to the cursed Nakanarian clan, bound by a love that the world deemed forbidden and "incorrect"—had never made sense. It was a glitch in the system.

But as I watched them carry her away, I realized that Valeria was right about one thing.

We were anomalies.

And in a world without a script, an anomaly is the only thing that is truly real.

Maybe, I thought as I followed them into the dark hallway, being a variable in a story with no ending isn’t the worst fate.

It meant that whatever happened next—

it would be ours.