Chapter 12: The Heroine Who Saved the Kingdom

“Sometimes, fools believe they see the truth. But in reality, it is only an illusion they are incapable of interpreting otherwise.”

Returning to the academy was like plunging into icy water after a fire. The walls of Sumerenn, saturated with the scent of blood and dream magic, were replaced by the sterile, almost ringing calm of Duality. Night had already cast its dark veil completely over the land, and only the dim light of lamps in the corridors picked our weary silhouettes out of the gloom.

We walked in silence. Evelina moved slowly, almost mechanically; her shoulders, usually perfectly straight, were almost imperceptibly slumped. Each step came with a visible effort, as if the invisible weight of the horror she had endured was pressing down on her, trying to bend her to the ground.

When we reached the door to her chambers, the quiet but final click of the lock as the royal guardswoman closed the door behind us sounded like a thunderclap in the silence. Evelina, without looking at me, walked to her chair and, without turning, froze, staring into nothingness.

“Thank you, Artalis,” she finally said. Her voice was hollow and lifeless. “Leave me. I… I need to think. Alone.”

I understood that words were out of place here. She needed neither words of support nor my presence. She needed only silence and a vacuum in which she could reassemble the fragments of her world.

“Until we meet again, Your Highness,” I said quietly, before leaving her chambers.

Exiting Evelina’s suite, I silently glanced at the guardswoman, who stood like a silent sentinel by the door, a wall concealing her mistress’s vulnerability from all.

I walked slowly down the stone corridors of the dormitory, still analyzing the recent events, when I felt another’s curious gaze upon me. Ignoring it, I continued on, and as I reached my floor, a familiar voice called out.

“Wait…” It was Ren’s voice, uncharacteristically broken and a little louder than it should have been at this hour.

I turned. She stood in the semi-darkness, snatched from the shadows by the dim light of a lamp. Her fiery red hair was disheveled, the collar of her mantle rumpled, and her face was pale, almost transparent. In her silver eyes were not tears, but something heavier—a frozen storm that had been prevented from breaking free.

“I… wanted to talk. About something,” her words sounded almost like an excuse as she came closer.

I remained silent, observing the chaotic, small movements of her fingers as they fidgeted with the edge of her mantle.

“First… I have to thank you… For Nova not being expelled.” She took a few more steps toward me and stood opposite, looking up at me. “Thank you for that. It’s very important to Nova. And she is very dear to me, you simply cannot imagine how much.” She paused. “Even… even if things are difficult and wrong between us right now. Even…” her voice trembled slightly. “Even if we don’t have the right to be… together…” Finishing her words, she lowered her eyes.

“Those were the Prince’s conditions, not mine,” I replied calmly. “You do not need to thank me. I did what I thought was necessary.”

“Is that so,” Ren smirked, but there was no warmth in her smile. “Perfectly rational. Are you always like this? Straight as a line? Cold as a surgeon’s scalpel?!” She looked at me with a challenge and unconcealed anger.

“Are you dissatisfied that things have been settled?” I asked, not taking my eyes off her.

She shook her head. “Not exactly…” she replied, then froze, as if trying to formulate a thought. “Tell me, Arta, do you read romance novels?”

“Romance novels?” I repeated. “No, I prefer to read something more serious,” I lied, not because I wanted to, but because human categories of reading had never been relevant to me.

She sighed. “So you don’t read them at all, do you? In that case, I suppose you won’t understand me.” She looked at me with a faint thoughtfulness. “It’s just… you know, it’s strange. Before, everything was different.”

“What was ‘everything’?” I clarified, deliberately feigning a serious expression.

“Before you,” she looked me straight in the face. “When I first enrolled, everything was going according to the script. Clean. Smooth. Everything as it should be. And then… you appeared.”

I tilted my head slightly, understanding that she might now let slip something about the book from Fermecanima. “According to the script?”

She bit her lip. “Forget it. It’s just that I once read… a book. Everything was the same in it. Almost. The academy, the legacy, the ancient houses, the magic. And even… a heroine who looked like Nova,” she finished nervously.

“And why are you telling me this?” I asked, a note of cold curiosity in my voice.

“Umm… It’s just that usually in such novels, all the characters are there. Everything is thought out, you see?” She paused. “The heroine, the villainess, the love interest… But you…” she narrowed her eyes slightly. “You clearly don’t fit into any archetype.”

I said nothing, just waited for her to continue, and the seconds of silence were filled only with the sound of our breathing.

“You know, in that book… Nova… or rather, the heroine who looked like her, was the hero. She went through war, betrayal, revolution. All for one goal. For the crown that rightfully belonged to the crown princess.” She paused, as if checking if she could continue. “And I… I always dreamed of being by the side of such a heroine, helping her… I read that book as if I were a part of it myself!”

“You speak like a person who has lived this story many times,” I noted dryly, understanding that I should not ask her direct questions.

“Sometimes it seems that way to me too. It feels that way to me, too. As if the author never finished the story and forgot to write me in.” She smiled. “I so dreamed of getting into this story… To live a beautiful life, full of feats and love.”

Her words sounded like an irony, for she had already lived more than one life with Nova and had never once allowed her to fulfill her destiny.

I was about to ask her new questions, but she interrupted me, not even letting me open my mouth.

“And then… then you came.” She poked me in the chest with her finger. An aggressive and inappropriate gesture for academy students. “You showed up here, not according to the script! Not according to the laws of the genre… Like… a blade plunged into the middle of a chapter.”

“Is that so?” I sighed ironically, gently removing her finger with a light movement of my hand. “Do you really consider me guilty of the fact that your novel is so unlike real life?”

“Yes, exactly!” She raised her voice by half a tone. “YOU! You came like an editor who rewrites other people’s fates! Do you even understand what you’re doing?!”

“Do I understand?” I deliberately shook my head. “It seems to me that you yourself should grow up and understand that not all of life is measured by novels.”

Ren snorted contemptuously. “It seems you don’t understand anything at all! Do you understand that talking to you is tantamount to talking to an empty space?” she hissed. “Do you even understand that it’s because of you that I’m not with Nova?!”

“Because of me? Perhaps Nova herself is to blame for that?” I remarked ironically.

“Artalis!!!” Ren rolled her eyes. “Hear me! If you hadn’t become the mage-guardian, Nova would have, and everything would have been different!”

“Ren, you’re talking some kind of nonsense. Do you understand that you can’t live by book genres?” I answered coldly. She was encroaching on CL’s territory, and I had to pretend that she was just saying something foolish, and I didn’t believe it.

“I’m not talking nonsense, Arta!” Ren exclaimed. “I… I…” she broke off her thought. “Alright, forget it, it’s impossible to talk to you. You’re like a wall, no empathy, no acceptance.”

“You’re asking for empathy? And why should I be empathetic to you? For accusing me of being some kind of book hero or what?!” I asked, raising my voice slightly to achieve the desired effect.

“No! You’re an editor!” she babbled, grabbing her red hair.

I remained silent; there was no point in answering this, but I did not take my eyes off her, watching her every movement and the increasingly flashing chaotic sparks.

“Answer me honestly,” she whispered. “You’re… not from this world, are you? I’m not talking about status or origin. I’m talking about… your place here.”

“As you know, I am a foreigner from the Tarvarian Empire,” I replied with an intentional smile. “And yes, it’s a completely different world there.”

“You’re at it again?!” Ren cried out. “Do you understand that I’m not talking about Illumora!”

I deliberately raised an eyebrow, pretending not to understand what she was talking about.

“Not about Illumora?”

She pressed her lips together, exhaled, and continued. “You know, in love stories, an antagonist always appears, and he rarely stays on the sidelines. First, he observes, then he intervenes, and then—everything around already belongs to him.”

“So you have assigned me the role of the antagonist,” I stated, my voice devoid of emotion.

“Exactly! And believe me, you’re not just an antagonist. You’re the worst of all possible options!” her eyes flashed for a moment. Not with rage, but with a barely perceptible determination. “Too smart, too cold, too indifferent even now! This isn’t normal!” she exclaimed again, then added in a half-whisper. “I still believe that stories can be rewritten. Even if you’re not the one writing them…”

She took a step back. But now not out of rage or fear, but because she had decided to end the conversation herself.

“I’m not going to fight you, Arta. But I’m not going to yield either.”

“In that case, don’t get in your own way,” I said calmly, as a statement of fact, not as a challenge.

She nodded and smirked with displeasure. She was about to leave, but after taking a few steps toward the stairs, she stopped and looked at me again.

“And still… in that book,” she said, “you really weren’t there, which means you’re just like me.”

I tilted my head to the side and looked at her as she stood by the turn, almost merging with the shadow.

“No name. No hint. As if you’re… a script error. Or a late edit that someone made to an already printed text,” she muttered.

“Ren, as I said, we’re not in a book,” I answered dryly, understanding that her emotional claims would be of no use

“Every time I look at you, I start to doubt whether I’m in the right story,” she said with displeasure.

“If I say once again that life is not a story, will that mean anything to you?” I clarified ironically.

She shook her head. “No, Arta. This is a story, and I never forget stories. It’s just…” she paused. “It’s just that some kind of glitch happened here…” her eyes gleamed in the darkness.

“A glitch?” I tilted my head. My voice remained even, but the intonation shifted, turning the question into a precise probe, for this term was not from the world of Illumora. “A strange word for a fairy tale.”

Ren flinched, but just a little—like a person who realized they had let something slip. She immediately tried to hide it behind a joke:

“Well… maybe it’s just a habit. Sometimes… terms pop into my head. Funny ones. Old ones. Made up. We all read something, right?”

I didn’t answer. Silence was the best way to let a person drown in their own guesses.

She stepped back a few paces.

“So, who were you in this story after all?” I took a step forward, graceful and deft. “And what does this strange word ‘glitch’ have to do with it?”

Ren swallowed. “I was who I wanted to be!” she crossed her arms. “And you should ask fewer questions, know-it-all! Good night!” she shouted and disappeared around the corner, not wanting to continue the conversation.

I remained standing in the dormitory corridor and only a minute later did I head toward my room to rest from the long journey.

***

I was about to enter my room, but it seemed the conversation with Ren had attracted an unexpected observer.… Perhaps the reason was that the conversation had turned to the book “The Heroine Who Saved the Kingdom”? Or was the reason that I had asked too many unnecessary questions? In any case, her scent manifested before I began to speculate about the anomaly imposed by CL on this book.

Chaotic-Light materialized unexpectedly. Not in a flash, not in a shower of sparkles—simply as a fact, written into reality retroactively. This time, she smelled of damp clover, but slightly scorched. Like grass onto which hot wax has been spilled.

“You know, you leave interesting scents behind you, little Arta,” a voice sounded from behind. “Conversations, scents… traces. Everything fits you too perfectly. Just… like a scripted role. Only… for whom was it written? Perhaps you’ve heard of… well, let’s say, the author Ren mentioned? L. Alterius? Does that ring a bell?”

I turned. Lazaria stood barefoot on the cold stone floor, in her unchanging white cloak, under which one could guess skin the color of a morning dawn. In her hands, she held a chalice with a transparent, sparkling nectar that smelled of ambrosia.

“L. Alterius?” I repeated, understanding that she had decided to play her trump cards. An interesting but pointless move. I answered too quickly for her to draw any conclusions. “No. But I suppose it’s someone important, if the goddess of fertility herself mentioned him?”

“No.” Her voice was like a purr, covered in a thin layer of frost. “I felt it. The conversation was… fragile. Like glass before it falls. Ren is cracking. You are cracking. And I? I’m catching the moment when the real thing crawls out of the cracks… Interesting… And most importantly—delicious!” She licked her lips.

Then she approached, slowly, like a predator, her rhythm a lulling threat.

“I suppose… you like fair games?” she smiled. “But are you being so honest with me that a cutie like me should be honest with you?” she puffed out her cheeks and deliberately turned away.

Then she sharply turned, her glowing white eyes boring into me, trying to read what was hidden behind my body. She ran a finger along the wall, and a glowing trail remained on the stone—like lines of text, but in a language that does not exist.

“I’m tired of your cold phrases! Why haven’t you smiled at me once?! It pisses me off!” she stamped her foot. “Your phrases like ‘You can’t live by book genres,’ ‘A person who has lived this story many times,’ and other blah-blah-blah… what are you even talking about?!” she flashed her eyes, then sharply looked at the ceiling, and then back at me.

“And what’s wrong with those phrases? Is it really normal when someone tells you a meaningless book script?” I deliberately shook my head to reinforce the desired effect.

“Oh, sweetie… you don’t even know who you are right now… Or rather, you don’t understand who you’re talking to, do you?” she narrowed her eyes. “Or do you understand, but pretend you don’t? Or do you *not* understand, but pretend you *do*? Or are you pretending to both understand and not understand at the very same time?” she froze a few steps away. “You hide behind such cold phrases that you break my heart! You remind me of someone in this, but… perhaps you really are the editor that cutie Ren mentioned?”

I remained silent, and her words were absorbed—not into my mind, but into the structure surrounding me.

“You see, I…” Lazaria took a step closer. Her scent changed. Now it was hot cocoa and pepper. “I adore it when girls think they control their own bodies. Their own fate. Their own role. But you… you don’t just think. You’re sure. And that’s already sexy. Almost like a challenge.”

Her palm almost touched my chin. “I know you’re afraid. Not for Catherine. Not for Ren. You’re afraid that one day someone will come… and say, ‘You were never real.’”

“That’s not true,” I objected calmly.

“Oh, and you’re already denying it! Lovely!” she licked her lip. “I’ve seen an infinite number of people. They thought they were feeling. You—think you’re not feeling. And that’s why… I’m here. Because you are the most delicious chaos that doesn’t realize it’s chaos.”

She pressed closer, not touching, but warming.

“You can be anything: an editor, a heroine, a villainess. But do you know who you were before you appeared in this text?”

A pause hung in our conversation, and I looked directly into her glowing eyes.

“No one,” she said almost affectionately. “You weren’t there. Not in the book, not in memory, not in a bookmark. You are a glitch. But I have to give you credit, you’re a beautiful, exciting, new glitch.”

She sharply turned, looked somewhere down the corridor, and then, freezing for a second, turned back.

“You’re lucky, Artochka, that I don’t know who you really are yet,” she said, tilting her head to the side too unnaturally for a normal person, then sharply straightened it back. “And yes, I’m not… reading you. I’m figuring you out. And remember, Artochka… I haven’t started playing seriously yet.” Lazaria stepped back a few paces. Easily and gracefully, and her scent changed once again—to the smoke of incense and fresh wax. “I’ll leave you a gift.” her hand drew a spark, from which a paper bird hatched, folded in a complex, impossible origami geometry. “It can’t sing. Only… listen to other people’s lies.”

The bird landed on my shoulder and froze.

“Next time,” she whispered, “I won’t talk. I’ll just… touch. And you’ll understand how alive order can be… when it ceases to be order.”

She disappeared in sparks. The origami bird crumbled to ash, and only the scent remained, which did not disappear—a broken pomegranate and a breath on my chest.