Little Mira stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, her gaze snared by a dress behind the glass, red as fresh-spilled blood on snow.

So beautiful, so blazing a red—like roses and briars, a color lush with danger, a flame that lured moths.

Wonder swelled first. She pressed her palm to the pane, yearning to feel cloud-soft silk and to see it drape her skin like moonlight on a lake.

Doubt crept in like a shadow at dusk. Maybe it was still too big for her—she eyed her small hand, then the hem pooling like a crimson river at the dummy’s feet.

She puffed her cheeks, a petal folding in frustration. Her mother’s laugh fell warm as spring wind, and fingers ruffled her hair like a sparrow’s nest.

“You want to wear a red dress too, Mira?”

“Mhm…”

Shyness came first, muffled and warm as a quilt. She looked up at her mother; sunlight stroked her cheek like honey, and everything blurred into glow—just like the smile on her mother’s face.

“So cute. But no, not yet. It’s too early for you.”

Soft fingers pinched her cheeks like kneading dough, and she let out a muffled little sound, a kitten’s mewl.

“In the Nuhaman Tribe, women wear red just twice in a lifetime—once for a wedding, once for a funeral. For either, you’re not ready.”

“Then… when will I be ready?”

“That’s for Mira to decide,” her mother said, palm resting on her head like a roof against rain.

Safety bloomed like a hearth fire. “Don’t worry. Until you’re ready, I’ll protect you.”

Her mother told little Mira that. But she failed to keep her promise, like a candle blown out by a midnight gale.

On the night the Nuhaman Tribe was slaughtered by nomad beastfolk raiders, her mother hid Mira beneath the sheets; through the crack between bed and boards, she saw a fur-eared monster slit her mother’s throat, and blood painted the white gauze dress like a red storm.

It was the very color she’d seen in the window—rose turned to wound.

Cough, cough—hack—

Pain yanked Mira back to the shore of waking like a hooked fish. She couldn’t stop the dry racking cough; spit and acid flooded her nose, a fire that seared her senses blank.

Her whole body felt like a thousand centipedes were gnawing, like every vein was unspooled, like her blood had turned to ash.

In agony loud as thunder, a voice reached her like a bell underwater.

“…add more… anesthetic… twenty-five erke.”

Erke—the Empire’s metric unit. Twenty-five erke would drop a full-moon berserking beastman like a felled tree. For an ordinary grown man, it was a never-wake dose.

Yet against the riot of sensation tearing her like a storm, that anesthetic threw a thin sheet of ice over boiling sea, saving her mind at the brink.

The needle bit into exposed flesh like a cold fang, and Mira slipped off reality’s edge again, falling like snow into silence.

Memory rose like smoke. The next day she crawled from a graveyard of fire and rot; a kindly passing merchant gathered her up like a stray pup; she ended in a cramped cage beneath an auction hall with ten other children, watching a playmate suffocate, eyes glazing like frost.

Sold as chattel, she crossed many roads, each one paved with blood and limbs like withered branches—yet never again did she see a red so vivid it seemed to speak.

Not until nine, when they took her to the Douglas Family.

Little Mira learned a “home” could have more than one kitchen, more than one bed, like a hive with many chambers.

Room after room, corridor after corridor—the five-floor mansion was a maze of bones and arteries, and she was lost like a leaf in a labyrinth.

Panic came first, tight as a fist. She turned in circles while butlers and maids flowed past like a stream. She didn’t dare speak; slavery had burned trust to cinders. She couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes—every gaze looked like a maw that would swallow her.

So she ran, a deer bolting through underbrush. Old injuries bit her calf and sent her tumbling, but fear whipped her on like cold rain.

She ran until, by accident, she slipped through a door like a swallow into a shrine.

It was a white room: white bed, white curtains, white walls, a drift of winter.

In that space woven of white, a pure-white girl sat by the window, watching the world like a swan on a still lake. She was so beautiful—like an elf shaped from snow, skin and hair so pale they seemed unreal; the room’s white turned to ash beside her.

Even panic froze, a moth caught in amber. Mira stood there until a breeze from the window stirred the girl’s white hair like frost shaken from pine.

In that moment, Mira saw the only color in the endless white: the girl’s eyes, twin drops of blood on a blank canvas.

It was the same color as the red dress behind the glass.

The girl turned. Her blood-red gaze met Mira’s, and in that heartbeat a tide of feelings flickered—things Mira would learn to name years later—then settled into concern and gentleness, like a lady from a storybook.

A knock came at the door, crisp as hail.

“Milady, have you seen Second Young Miss Mira? She ran off somewhere. We’re looking for her!”

Fear surged again, a cold wave in Mira’s chest. She twitched to flee, but the girl shook her head, a snowflake’s hush.

“No,” she called back, voice warm as tea. “Try the garden. People get lost there easily.” A soft smile curved her lips like a crescent moon.

Was it because she understood Mira’s fear and chose to help? Or because of those eyes, the color of the red dress? Mira didn’t know. When the girl crouched and stroked her hair like smoothed silk, Mira didn’t pull away.

That day she learned the girl’s name—Adelaide. She was the Douglas Family’s only daughter, and she was Mira’s “sister.”

But what was “sister”? Was it the one who saw her little sister’s leg cramp and lifted her into a bed soft and warm as a cloud? Or the one who shared her snacks like fruit in summer, then watched over her with a patient smile?

At Mira’s question, Adelaide tilted her head, thoughtful as a cat at sunlit glass. After a pause, she took Mira’s hand and hooked their pinkies like a tiny bridge.

“A sister is the one who becomes her little sister’s hero.”

Her voice felt like winter sunlight. Mira lay in bed and looked at her, and the slave’s days stretched behind her like a frozen road. She’d thought herself too numb to cry. But held in the girl’s arms, her tears slipped free, first a drip, then a brook.

She cried a long time, until she fell asleep in Adelaide’s embrace like a tired bird. A faint, clean scent wreathed her, and she dreamed at last: of lavender pillows from home, of lazy noon naps, of sweet peach juice and apples, a basket of summer.

All the good things seemed to return like swallows in spring. She felt no longer broken; with her sister beside her, big houses and maids turned harmless as clouds.

Yes, as long as her sister stayed by her side—

—Aaaahhh—

The memory shattered like glass. Pain roared back like a black tide, tenfold, a hundredfold. Mira screamed, jaw cramping until her cheeks felt torn.

“Director, she woke again!”

“Give me the anesthetic—the triple-dose.”

“B-but she’s past the maximum—”

“Give it to me!”

Mira’s bloodshot eyes tried to find the speakers, but her body was a nailed-down coffin. Iron chains pinned her, and she watched a needle lance into her arm—flayed, opened, smeared with blood like rust.

“So much blood lost, and she still regains consciousness…”

The voice hummed at her ear, bright with joy, like a scientist at a rare eclipse.

“This subject… might endure.”

Fluid slid through the tube into her artery; this time it wasn’t the mercy of sleep. Fire spread from the puncture to her heart, a river of flame under her skin. She stood a step from death’s gate; then water mana forced into her, replacing stalled blood like a flood through dry canals, dragging her back a hand’s breadth from the line.

She didn’t drop into sudden death; her body stopped shivering like a hunted rabbit. The price was a puppet’s stillness—she couldn’t move, but pain etched every nerve like frostbite.

She couldn’t even grit her teeth; she could only feel the blade kiss her chest, skin parting petal by petal, until cold, slick metal touched her life’s spring.

There—her heart.

Having her heart bared was beyond words, a sky with no air. It strained to thrum again, to pump blood to limbs carved and remade like broken branches spliced—yet it couldn’t. Filthy hands from the outer world clamped it like a vise, holding it only barely connected, guarding a candle’s worth of life.

The conscious ache of suffocation could flay a normal soul, but what followed dwarfed it like mountain to ant.

Cold metal began carving sigils into her heart-wall, magic cut into meat; each tear through myocardium ripped her soul, a veil torn from the wind.

She heard her soul keen, a hawk’s scream in winter, because her core self was being rewritten, as if everything that was Mira were denied like night erased at noon—a fear rooted deeper than bone, worse than any lash.

And yet, with body and mind at breaking, she thought not of herself but of that night of hellfire, the moment Adelaide stood before her, and a spear punched through her heart like a stake through ice.

Sister… is this… what you felt?

The thought bloomed like a thorned rose. Sharing her sister’s pain felt like penance turned blessing, as if this wasn’t punishment but a gift laid on an altar.

Yes. She deserved every stab and flame.

Back then she knew nothing; she dared think nothing—empty as a husk.

Only now did Mira understand what she’d seen in her sister’s eyes that first day.

But she understood too late, a sunset after the gate shut.

She’d taken everything from her sister, then stayed at her side as if entitled, even shamelessly claiming the place of “little sister,” begging for love like a beggar at a feast.

Mira coughed blood, a dark flower. Self-loathing, pain, guilt, fury—everything tangled like storm vines and became a fever, and her heart beat again like a drum in rain.

On that surge, she lived, a candle shaking but unextinguished, when all said she wouldn’t.

But she only lived. Nothing more.

When it ended and the pain ebbed like a receding tide, she stared at the black ceiling, and her heart felt missing a piece, a chipped moon.

She didn’t know what it was—until a white-haired old man stepped to her side like winter walking in.

The most powerful man beneath the king, Minister Rockridge, lifted a lock of Mira’s hair like plucking a thread of dawn.

The old black was gone; in its place burned the gold unique to the name Belior, sunfire poured over a night that had yielded.

“Good... very good...” came the minister’s voice from above, sifting down like warm ash.

Numbness hit first; Mira only stared at that streak of gold, as if a fishhook of light had caught her gaze.

In that instant, she finally understood what was missing, like a locked door clicking open in winter air.

—Mira Isabella Douglas had already died on the operating table, a candle snuffed under glass.