As the world slowly revealed itself, my head continued to ache.
Somehow, my eyes could only capture the light.
Yes, light.
Everything in my vision seemed just too bright as if to blind me.
I couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening. I felt like a log, heavy and immobile, unable to control my body. My ears rang, and I felt the gravity shifting, a sense of nausea swirling through me, making it hard to keep it inside.
I heard voices, distant and muffled as if they were trying to enter my ears but couldn’t quite make it through. “…Wh…Miss…..El….a…..w..t……him?…”
“…Ca….th….du……”
The words were fragments, disjointed and incomprehensible. I tried to focus, to understand, but my mind was clouded, refusing to cooperate.
Then, at that exact moment, at the tip of my fingers, I felt a slightly soft touch. It moved, a gentle, reassuring presence in the chaos of my senses.
‘What is this?’
Following that touch, slowly, my vision began to return, though I still couldn’t make sense of anything.
Shapes and colors began to form, and gradually, the world around me took on a semblance of reality. With my vision returning, I was finally able to see the person beneath me.
Yellow hair was scattered all across the ground, and the eyes were deep blue like the ocean. Yet, those eyes were widened, filled with horror.
I struggled to comprehend the scene. The girl beneath me looked terrified, and I realized that I was lying on top of her, pinning her to the ground. My body felt heavy and unresponsive, but I managed to lift myself slightly enough to see the fear etched on her face.
“What…?”
I tried to speak, but my voice was a raspy whisper. I could feel the nausea intensifying, the disorientation still clouding my mind.
At that moment, the girl moved, her mouth opening.
“Get off me!” she cried, her voice trembling with fear. She pushed against me weakly as if she was trying to free herself. But it was not like I was doing anything to her either.
Her eyes were filled with tears, yet I didn’t know what was happening. With the scream I had just heard right now, my head was an even bigger mess with constant ringing.
–RING!
I mustered all my strength and rolled to the side, collapsing beside her. My vision swam, but I could see her more clearly now. She had yellow hair and deep blue eyes, features that seemed oddly familiar yet out of place.
Yet her bare skin was laid right before me.
‘Bare?’
As if my pondering had triggered them, at that moment, my senses picked up a feeling. The feeling of cold.
–SHIVER!
Yes, I shivered as if I was out cold.
‘It is cold?’
My body was freezing, as if the cold wind breeze had gone past it. Such a thing did not make any sense. After all, there was no reason for me to be in the cold.
At that moment, I realized something was wrong.
This sense of cold, as well as this sense of freezing. And the feeling of capturing everything in the air with my bare skin…..
That implied one thing. The fact that there were no clothes on my body at that moment.
Following that, I picked up another feeling.
A feeling of something lying over something soft instead of something rigid. It was pretty comfortable, even better than the beds I had ever been on.
‘Beds?’
This thought was followed by another realization.
I was not lying on the ground.
I was on a bed.
“YOU! WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE!”
At that moment, a loud voice woke me up from my thoughts. From the loudness of the voice, my body flinched without being able to make any sense of it.
The girl beside me also flinched, her body trembling. I turned my head toward the source of the voice and saw two people standing in the doorway. A young man and a woman.
The man had a regal bearing, his expression a mixture of rage and shock. The woman beside him had a cold, calculating look in her eyes, a smirk playing on her lips. Yet that expression instantly turned to something of confusion and pain, with her eyes widening.
But that face, it was so familiar.
A familiar face that I felt like I had seen a lot of times before.
“Who…?” I managed to croak out, my confusion growing by the second.
The man’s eyes blazed with fury as he pointed at me. “How dare you! You think you can disgrace me and my family like this?”
I stared at him, my mind struggling to piece together what was happening. The girl beside me, still sobbing, looked up at him with a mixture of fear and desperation.
“I… I don’t understand,” I stammered, my voice barely audible.
“You dare feign ignorance?” the man snarled. “You have the audacity to lay your hands on my fiancée, Elara? While being the fiancée of his own sister?”
‘Elara?’
The name hit me like a bolt of lightning.
I seem to be able to recall the name as if it was close to me. As if I heard this name before, as if I was aware of it. Yet, at this exact moment, I wasn’t able to understand any of those at all. My hand was spinning too much, and I couldn’t make any sense of any of those.
The man’s focus shifted to the girl beside me. “How could you do this to me, Elara? Why have you done this to me? Why?” His voice broke, tears welling up in his eyes.
Elara, still trembling, looked up at him. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what’s happening or how I ended up here. This isn’t what it looks like. You have to believe me.”
The man’s face hardened. “How can I believe you when everything is open like this? How can I trust you now?”
The woman beside him stepped forward, her expression one of feigned sadness. “Sister, how could you do this to me with my own fiancé?”
The girl named Elara’s eyes widened with horror. “Isolde, I didn’t! I didn’t do anything.” She pleaded desperately, her voice cracking. “Please, you have to believe me.”
And that standing girl who was somehow familiar to me, Isolde, shook her head slowly, her lips curving into a mocking smile. “I wish I could, Elara. But the evidence is right here. How could you betray me like this?”
Elara’s pleas grew more frantic. “This is a setup! I don’t know how I got here. Please, you have to believe me!”
But the man shook his head, stepping back. “I can’t. I can’t believe you anymore.” His voice was filled with a mixture of heartbreak and fury.
I lay there, my mind reeling, unable to grasp the full extent of the situation. The room seemed to spin around me, and the words exchanged felt surreal, like something out of a nightmare.
“What is this?”
At that moment, another voice echoed. A voice that wasn’t as callow as others. A voice that was deep.
Following that a sense of dread washed over me, more intense than anything I had ever felt before. It was as if death itself had come for me. The feeling was surreal, paralyzing. I tried to hold back the sense of nausea rising inside my stomach.
But that feeling was not unfamiliar. It was as if I had felt such feelings before as if this external pressure applied upon me was not a rare occurrence to me.
The deep voice spoke again, commanding and powerful. “What is happening here?”
A tall, imposing figure entered the room. His presence was overwhelming, radiating authority. The man looked to be in his late forties, with stern features and eyes that could pierce through steel. He carried himself with the weight of responsibility and power.
The room fell silent as everyone turned to face the newcomer. The man’s eyes widened as he took in the scene before him. It was clear he was not expecting to witness such a thing.
“This is the Duke,” someone whispered, the words barely audible over the tension in the room.
The Duke.
Of course. That type of title looked befitting of him, I subconsciously thought. Yet, to me, he was just another figure in this bizarre, incomprehensible scenario.
Or was he?
Because I felt like I also knew him. It seemed like even if my memory was hazy, the unconsciousness still recognized him from the start.
He surveyed the scene, his expression hardening. “Explain yourselves,” he demanded, his voice low and dangerous.
The prince spoke first
‘The prince?’
How did I know he was the prince? I could not answer that at all. It didn’t matter either.
The prince’s voice trembled slightly. “Duke, I found your daughter Elara in bed with him…… She has betrayed me and our family.”
Elara, still crying, shook her head vigorously. “Father, please, you have to believe me. I don’t know how this happened. I swear I didn’t do anything.”
The Duke’s gaze shifted to Isolde, who looked back at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Sister, how could you do this to me with my own fiancé?” she repeated, her voice laced with sorrow.
Yet, there was something unsettling about that voice that I couldn’t put my fingers down. That feeling was so tense that I felt like my nausea rose once again.
The Duke’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me. The fierceness in his eyes was so intense that, at that moment, I felt something.
Two eyes immediately covered my whole very being, and I felt like snakes crawling upon me.
“Kurghk-!”
It got hard to breathe, let alone think. However, that feeling disappeared in a split second. Yet, even then, I could no longer hold it in.
The sense of nausea just spilled.
“Orghk-!”
–SPILL!
The disgusting liquid spilled to the ground.
“Disgusting…”
“What a disgrace….”
I could hear some people talking. They were not even keeping their voices to themselves at all.
“Guards,” he said, his voice steady and cold. “Take both of them away.”
Elara protested, her voice filled with desperation. “Father, please! I didn’t do anything! This is all a mistake!”
But no one believed her. The guards moved forward, grabbing both of us. As they dragged me away, one of them hit me hard on the head.
Pain exploded in my skull, and everything went black.