"What was I to you, Prince Dio?"
Her voice cracked beneath the weight of the question.
"A doll, perfect for a Duke? Am I nothing but my face?"
Reise Worthon raised her trembling fingers to her cheek.
Her nails dragged across delicate skin once, then again, harder the second time, as though ruining the face everyone praised might finally prove that there was something beneath it worth seeing.
"Why her, and not me?"
Prince Dio merely stared.
There was no pity in his face. No anger. Not even disgust. Whatever emotion she had once hoped to draw from him was nowhere to be found.
"Perhaps," he said at last, his voice devoid of warmth, "if you were not so ruthless. So wicked. Then there might be room for you in my heart."
A liar.
Even if she had been an angel, even if she had devoted herself entirely to the church and spent her life performing every virtue expected of a noblewoman, he would never have loved her.
He would never choose her.
Only her.
A scoundrel. A scammer. A user.
Reise smiled at the Prince as though something inside her had finally broken. Perhaps it had broken years ago, and she had simply spent all this time pretending otherwise.
I am peerless. My family rivals the Crown itself, and yet a woman like me is tossed aside for a commoner.
Her smile widened.
What a scandal.
She stepped onto the balcony railing.
The evening wind caught her rose-gold hair and carried the long strands behind her like scattered petals. For the first time, something shifted in Prince Dio's expression.
Only slightly.
But Reise noticed.
It was already too late.
"You once said I was like a rose," she murmured. "That is why I came to love them. That is why they call me the Wicked Rose."
She offered him one final, bittersweet smile.
"Thank you for ten years of nothing, my love."
Then she let herself fall.
For one terrible second, Prince Dio did not move.
Horror finally dawned in his eyes.
The sound of impact echoed through the palace grounds.
And the Wicked Rose was torn apart.
—SNAP!
G6 shut the book.
"Fucking stupid."
She tossed it onto the concrete beside her.
Cold night air moved freely through the abandoned building, carrying the distant noise of the city through shattered windows and unfinished walls. Below, glass towers and narrow streets stretched beneath layers of artificial light.
Half a kilometer away, one of the finest clubs in the red district glowed beneath gold signage and tinted windows. Luxury vehicles disappeared through a private entrance while security personnel blended discreetly into the architecture.
Their target was inside.
A man whose reputation had rotted far beyond ordinary extortion.
Money was merely the cleanest part of it.
Businesses had been bled dry. Women were coerced, traded through favors, or silenced by men whose influence reached far enough to make complaints disappear before they ever became cases. Investigators knew his name. Prosecutors knew his name. Politicians knew his name.
That was precisely the problem.
He had become powerful enough that ordinary law could identify him, but not punish him.
Eventually, his file had climbed past investigators, past prosecutors, and past officials who still required evidence that could survive a courtroom. It had reached the level of authority permitted to admit that the public system had failed.
From there, the file went down.
Into the underworld.
Into GAO jurisdiction.
The Gemcardia Organization was not some random assassination syndicate hiding beyond the reach of governments. It was something darker and far more organized—a form of governance beneath governance, international in reach and independent of any single country.
The world above had police, courts, diplomats and prisons.
The world below had GAO.
It regulated the underworld, enforced its own jurisdictions, and accepted cases that lawful institutions could no longer resolve without tearing themselves apart. Political immunity, state protection, extreme wealth, institutional corruption—people who had made themselves untouchable beneath ordinary law eventually discovered that there were other laws beneath it.
When legitimate authorities exhausted every visible option, an authorized file could be transferred downward.
Once GAO accepted it, there was no trial left to conduct.
No arrest warrant.
No appeal.
Only an extermination order.
Tonight, that order belonged to G6.
Beside her, Pisces continued watching the club through a pair of binoculars.
From a distance, the device looked ordinary.
It was anything but.
Thin streams of data moved across the lenses while the system analyzed faces, heat signatures, body proportions and movement patterns, continuously comparing every person passing through the club's rear entrance against the information stored in the target file.
"Your taste in tragic romance creeps me out sometimes," Pisces remarked without lowering the binoculars.
G6 ignored him and opened the sniper case at her feet.
She inspected the rifle with practiced precision, checking the lens, barrel, magazine and smart rounds before settling it against her shoulder. Everything was where it belonged. Everything was clean. Everything was reliable.
Unlike the protagonist of that stupid book.
"It's just weird," Pisces continued. "A Reaper hooked on cheap romance. Or are you just bitter because it's impossible for yo—"
He stopped.
His posture changed instantly.
"Target's on the move."
The book ceased to exist in G6's mind.
She dropped into position, one knee touching the concrete as the rifle settled against her shoulder. Her finger remained outside the trigger guard while her breathing slowed.
Below, the rear doors of the club opened.
Four men emerged.
All wore dark clothing. Three had sunglasses on despite the late hour, and masks concealed the lower halves of their faces. One stood in the center beneath a black umbrella.
Same height.
Same build.
Same posture described in the file.
A fourth man followed behind him, his dark coat concealing most of a red suit underneath. From this distance, he looked like nothing more than another guard.
Pisces adjusted the binoculars.
"Visual acquired."
G6 shifted the scope by a fraction.
"Target for appraisal."
A short pulse sounded through her earpiece.
The operator answered almost immediately.
"Target confirmed. Proceed."
G6 narrowed her eyes.
Paranoid bastard.
The masks and sunglasses were not surprising. Their target knew his information had circulated. Someone had warned him, or he had simply bribed the right person.
Either way, he knew assassins were coming.
He had prepared.
G6 breathed in and held it.
"Locked in."
—BANG!
The smart round tore through the distance.
The man beneath the umbrella jerked backward and collapsed onto the pavement. The umbrella tumbled beside him.
Chaos followed instantly.
Security scattered. Someone shouted. A woman screamed. Weapons appeared far too late to matter.
G6 remained behind the scope for another second.
The body was down.
No movement.
"Mission complete. G6 signing—"
"Wait."
Pisces's voice cut sharply through her earpiece.
G6 stopped.
Something in his tone was wrong.
"What?"
He did not answer immediately. The binoculars moved as he tracked the surviving men below.
The three guards had broken formation. One stumbled backward in panic and collided with another.
The man in red.
His sunglasses were knocked from his face.
They struck the pavement.
For less than a second, his features were completely exposed.
Pisces's binoculars caught them.
The device reacted instantly.
Data flooded across the lenses.
"Shit."
The operator's voice erupted through G6's earpiece.
"MISSION ONGOING! APPREHEND THE MAN IN RED!"
G6's expression went still.
Very still.
She returned to the scope.
The man in red was already moving toward a waiting vehicle.
"Explain."
"The deceased individual failed post-impact genetic confirmation."
G6's brow lowered.
The smart round had penetrated the body and collected a microscopic tissue sample upon impact.
It had found no match.
"The face matched."
"Visual similarity remains high. Genetic identity does not."
"That isn't an explanation."
A brief pause followed.
Then the operator answered.
"High probability of deliberate facial replication."
G6 stared at the dead man.
"Plastic surgery."
"Likely. The deceased subject appears to have been surgically altered to resemble the primary target."
Pisces continued tracking the fleeing man.
"Same height. Similar build. Same haircut. Even the jaw was reconstructed."
G6 looked from the dead decoy to the man in red.
The implication was obvious.
Their target knew his face was circulating.
He could have changed his own.
Instead, he had altered someone else's.
Someone with a similar enough frame to survive distant inspection had been surgically turned into a disposable substitute, dressed and positioned beneath an umbrella for one purpose—to take the first bullet.
G6's expression cooled.
So you butchered another man's face because you didn't want to ruin your own.
Her finger tapped once against the rifle stock.
Fucking narcissist.
Below, the real target threw open the rear door of the waiting vehicle.
Pisces's binoculars continued processing.
"Facial geometry against the original file is almost exact. Ear structure too. That's him."
The operator confirmed it.
"Primary target probability: ninety-nine point eight percent."
The man in red glanced back once before climbing into the vehicle.
The car accelerated away.
G6 stood.
"He's running."
She left the rifle where it was.
Pisces would recover it. There was no reason to drag a long-range weapon through a pursuit.
"Secure the route."
"Roger."
G6 ran.
Her boots struck concrete as she crossed the rooftop, gathered momentum and launched herself from the edge.
The grappling gun fired in the same motion.
A black cable shot across the gap and hooked into the concrete of the neighboring building. The line snapped taut, catching her weight and throwing her into a wide arc over the street below.
Headlights passed beneath her.
Traffic.
Several floors of empty air.
G6 released at the peak of the swing and landed hard on the next rooftop, rolling once to absorb the impact before rising without losing momentum.
"Pisces."
"Vehicle heading east. Two blocks ahead."
She vaulted an air-conditioning unit.
The fleeing car flashed through the street below.
G6 fired the grappling gun again.
The hook caught. The line tightened, and she swung across another gap before releasing onto the next building.
The target accelerated.
G6 did not follow the road.
Roads were predictable.
Buildings were faster.
She cut diagonally through the district, using each structure only long enough to steal momentum from it before moving to the next. The black cable snapped taut between buildings as she swung, landed and ran without hesitation.
For a moment, the vehicle disappeared behind a tower.
G6 landed on a narrow ledge.
The rifle was gone now.
She needed her own eyes.
"Activate zoom on my left lens."
"Zoom activated."
Her vision tightened.
The city pulled closer.
Headlights sharpened. License plates became readable. Moving silhouettes behind windows resolved into individual bodies.
The fleeing vehicle appeared several streets ahead.
"There."
She moved again.
Grapple. Swing. Release.
"You're gaining," Pisces said.
"No shit."
G6 landed, sprinted across another rooftop and vaulted a low wall without breaking stride.
The vehicle turned through another junction.
She tracked it through her ocular zoom.
Direction. Speed. Road layout.
Possible escape paths.
After watching one more turn, she understood.
"He's heading toward the three-way intersection."
Pisces checked his map.
A moment later, he answered.
"You're right."
G6 changed direction immediately.
She stopped following the car.
She intercepted it.
The next grapple caught high on the corner of a glass building. G6 swung around the structure, body nearly horizontal before she released and allowed the momentum to throw her across the gap.
She landed on the next roof, took three running steps and jumped again.
The building beyond sat lower. She dropped onto it and continued forward.
Then she saw the church.
Old stone rose between the surrounding modern structures, standing at the head of a three-way intersection. One road approached directly toward the front while two others branched away on either side.
The target's car was coming down the central road.
Straight toward it.
G6 smiled.
Found you.
She fired the grapple one final time.
The hook caught high against the church structure.
The cable tightened.
G6 launched herself from the rooftop and swung across the street before the reel pulled her upward. Her boots struck stone near the roofline, one hand catching the ledge before she hauled herself over.
The cable retracted with a metallic hiss.
G6 straightened atop the church.
The car was still approaching.
Fast.
But she had beaten it there.
She drew her pistol.
"Pisces."
"Still tracking."
"Confirm."
His binoculars locked onto the moving vehicle from farther behind.
The target's face was visible through the windshield now.
No sunglasses.
No mask.
No decoy standing in front of him.
G6's left eye zoomed.
Distance collapsed.
There.
The face from the file.
The original.
"Target for appraisal."
A pulse crossed her vision.
"Primary target confirmed."
G6 raised her pistol.
Wind moved across the church roof while the car raced toward the intersection.
She adjusted her aim.
Distance and velocity. Glass. Angle. Movement.
Everything reduced itself into one clean solution.
What a pain in the neck.
Her finger settled against the trigger.
"Locked in."
—BANG!
The windshield burst.
The driver jerked violently.
Tires screamed against the wet road as the vehicle swerved, clipped the barrier and spun sideways.
Metal folded.
Glass scattered.
BOOM—CRASH!
The car slammed into the stone divider.
Smoke rolled upward while traffic behind it stopped in confusion. Horns erupted. People screamed.
G6 kept her pistol raised.
Her ocular display remained fixed on the wreckage.
One second passed.
Then—
"Biometric termination confirmed."
G6 lowered the weapon.
This time, no mistake.
"Mission complete."
She paused.
"G6 signing out."
For a moment, the city simply continued beneath her.
Neon reflected across wet streets. Smoke rose from the wreckage. Somewhere in the distance, sirens had begun to scream.
One man had ceased to exist.
The world had barely noticed.
G6 stepped from the church roof with her arms spread.
For one brief second, she seemed almost weightless.
Like something made for falling.
Unlike Reise Worthon, however, G6 knew exactly where she would land.
Her name was Akira Gemstone.
Codename: G6.
The sixth Gemstone assassin to inherit the title of Reaper.
Among the Gemstones, a number was never merely a codename. It marked succession. The numbered heir was raised with the expectation that one day they would take the head of the Gemstone household—and with it, command of the Gemcardia Organization.
G6 had not merely been trained to kill.
She had been trained to inherit.
The title of Reaper was not bestowed for elegance, nor mercy. It belonged to a weapon polished far beyond what was expected of ordinary human beings.
Marksmanship. Close combat. Swordsmanship. Surveillance. Pursuit.
A body conditioned until reaction could precede thought, then augmented until technology itself had been woven into flesh.
Raised among killers who had survived long enough to retire, competence had never been optional.
It was the minimum.
Once a name appeared on G6's list, death did not knock.
It entered.
「APARTMENT」
"G6, this book feels ancient, yet the story is so similar to modern novels."
Pisces sat comfortably on the couch, turning another yellowed page beneath the apartment lights.
The book looked completely out of place in his hands. Old leather, old paper, and a story that seemed as though it belonged inside a sealed archive rather than a luxury modern apartment.
"Right?"
G6 stood in front of the refrigerator.
"I don't even know why I was drawn to that stupid book."
She pulled out two beers and closed the refrigerator with her hip.
Her gaze passed over the counter and stopped briefly on two small vials sitting near the shelf.
Ah, right. My vitamins.
Without giving it much thought, she picked one up, shook out a pill, swallowed it and washed it down before carrying the beers toward the couch.
Pisces continued flipping through the book.
"And the way it ended with the villainess dying, yet the title is The Wonder of a Wonderful World? It's kind of unsettling."
G6 dropped onto the couch beside him.
"You kill people for a living."
She cracked open her beer.
"Hearing you call something unsettling is more unsettling than the book."
Pisces frowned.
"The commoner and the Prince are such a common storyline, though."
"It's trash."
G6 took a drink.
"I dislike the heroine."
"That is because you're always on the side of darkness."
"What does a kingdom already at its peak need with some convenient 'Blessing of Prosperity' anyway? They already had the Three Pillars handling the kingdom."
Pisces stared at her.
"You remember far too much of a book you supposedly hate."
"I remember everything I read."
"That does not make it normal."
"Your face isn't normal."
Pisces sighed.
A few minutes later, he stood and pulled on his jacket before offering the book back to her.
"Don't fall asleep with the television on. Have pity for the one who pays the bill."
G6 turned the volume higher.
"Can't hear you."
"G6."
Louder.
"IT'S DEAFENING!"
She drank her beer.
Pisces glared at the television, then at her.
To the world, G6 was a legend.
To Pisces, she was a sharp-tongued twenty-one-year-old drunkard and professional freeloader who seemed determined to bankrupt him through electricity alone.
His senior.
His partner.
And, occasionally, the greatest threat to his monthly bills.
He reached the door, then paused.
G6 noticed without looking at him.
"Watch your eyes."
"Don't be cold. I just wanted to say…"
His hand rested on the doorknob.
"Be careful. You might end up as the villainess in a story like that."
G6 kept her attention on the television.
"If I were," she said, "it would be their doom."
Pisces shook his head and left.
The door clicked shut.
Silence should have followed, but the television continued screaming into the apartment.
G6 took another drink.
The ancient book sat within arm's reach.
She ignored it.
For now.
❈.❈.❈
Birds.
G6 heard them before she opened her eyes.
The chirping was too close and far too clear.
Then sunlight touched her face.
Warm.
Wrong.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
Her body reacted before consciousness fully returned.
She seized the wrist, twisted and turned in one movement, dragging the figure forward and pinning her against the mattress.
A terrified gasp escaped beneath her.
G6's knee came down beside the woman's body while one hand controlled the wrist. Her other hand moved instinctively toward the place a weapon should have been.
Nothing.
No knife.
No gun.
No weapon at all.
G6 opened her eyes fully.
A young woman stared up at her, dressed in enough frills to upholster a funeral carriage.
"What the fuck…"
The woman trembled.
G6's grip tightened.
"Who sent you?"
The voice that came from her throat was wrong.
Light.
Soft.
Delicate.
G6 froze.
Before she could process it, footsteps approached the doorway and another woman appeared, dressed in similarly ridiculous clothing.
"My lady? What's wrong?"
G6's attention snapped toward her.
Two people.
One doorway.
A large unfamiliar room. Balcony. Windows.
No visible weapons.
Unknown location. Unknown threat.
And, judging by the voice that had just come out of her mouth, an unknown body.
"What the fuck is this?" G6 demanded.
That soft voice came out again.
Her expression darkened.
"Your kink? Fetish?"
She looked over their layered dresses.
"You want to wear that to your funerals?"
The two women stared at her.
Neither seemed to understand what she meant.
G6 slowly released the wrist of the woman beneath her and stood.
Only then did she properly look around.
The room was enormous.
Gilded furniture sat beneath heavy curtains. Intricate carvings covered nearly every visible surface. Fabric seemed to exist everywhere, layered over furniture, windows and even the ridiculous four-poster bed.
Everything was painfully ornate.
Everything looked decidedly medieval.
There was no television.
No electric lighting.
No visible camera.
No firearm.
No Pisces.
No logical reason for any of this to exist.
For one second, G6's guard slipped.
Where the fuck am I?
She looked down.
Her hands were wrong.
Smaller. Paler. Delicate.
G6 flexed her fingers once, then again.
Everything responded normally.
No tremor. No delay. No distortion.
"Talk."
Both women flinched.
"Where is this?"
Again, that voice.
Too soft.
Too feminine.
Too wrong.
"Whatever do you mean, Lady Reise?" the woman near the doorway asked.
G6 stopped.
Reise.
The name landed cleanly.
Recognition followed.
Not because she believed people could wake up inside novels. She did not.
But because she was a Reaper, and every detail she had read remained stored in her memory with uncomfortable precision.
G6 turned toward the full-body mirror several feet away.
Her blood went cold.
The Wicked Rose of Worthon is a delicate, beautiful woman. Rose-gold hair. A face like a porcelain doll. Her eyes are as beautiful as moonlight caught in winter frost.
The description surfaced almost word for word.
And the reflection matched.
Rose-gold hair framed a face that did not belong to her. Grey eyes stared back from porcelain-pale features too delicate to resemble anything G6 had ever seen in her own mirror.
Beautiful.
Fragile.
Foreign.
The woman reflected before her was a stranger.
And G6 knew exactly who she was.
Reise Worthon.
The Wicked Rose.
The pathetic bitch who jumped off a balcony.
A laugh nearly escaped her.
You've got to be kidding me.
Behind her, the two women remained motionless.
Still watching.
Still unknown variables.
G6 turned.
"Get the fuck out of this room unless you want to die."
The voice may have been delicate.
Her glare was not.
The women stumbled backward and disappeared through the doorway so quickly that one nearly caught her heel against the frame.
G6 listened until both sets of footsteps faded down the hall.
Only then did she turn back toward the mirror.
This was not her face.
Not her body.
Not her world.
Her fist moved.
—CRASH!
Glass exploded beneath the impact.
The sound tore through the bedroom and echoed down the halls outside.
G6 stared at the fractured reflection.
Blood gathered over her knuckles.
Real blood.
Real pain.
She opened and closed her hand.
Sharp sting. Warmth.
No delay.
No dreamlike distortion.
She scoffed and dragged the bleeding hand through her rose-gold hair.
"The pain is fucking real."
Hurried footsteps approached.
Her door flew open.
A maid wearing eyeglasses stood in the doorway, breathless.
Unlike the others, she did not look frightened.
She looked worried.
G6 noticed the difference immediately.
The maid's eyes dropped to the blood covering her hand.
"MY LADY! WHAT IN THE WORLD HAPPENED?!"
She rushed forward.
Too close.
G6 slapped her reaching hands aside with the back of her injured hand.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The maid froze.
Her expression changed—not merely shock, but recognition colliding with confusion.
"W-what do you mean, my lady? Tina—who else?"
Tina.
Another fragment surfaced.
A peaceful garden.
Reise turning toward the bespectacled maid beside her.
Tina, this garden is peaceful, no?
G6 remembered the line.
Ah. That maid.
She opened her mouth, then stopped.
Something beneath the pillow caught her eye.
A book.
Every instinct she possessed reacted before reason could explain why.
G6 shoved Tina aside—not hard enough to injure her, only enough to move her out of the way—and pulled the pillow aside.
There it was.
Old leather.
Ancient pages.
The same impossible object she had left behind in another world.
The Wonder of a Wonderful World.
Her stomach lurched.
Not fear.
Something uglier.
The sensation of reality becoming unreliable.
"Of course."
Her laugh held no humor.
"Of fucking course."
Static suddenly pierced her ears.
G6 flinched as pain detonated behind her eyes. Both hands pressed against her temples, smearing blood into her rose-gold hair.
Then came a whisper.
Thin.
Weak.
Desperate.
It would be great if I was not her…
G6 stopped breathing.
"What the hell is happening?"
"My lady, are you quite alright?"
Tina remained close, but no longer tried to touch her. She watched G6 carefully, like someone approaching an injured animal that still had teeth.
G6 ignored her.
Her chest felt wrong.
Too tight.
Her breathing accelerated despite every instinct ordering it to stop.
Control it.
She inhaled slowly, held it, then exhaled.
Again.
The body refused to cooperate.
Apparently, this delicate thing considered fainting a valid response to stress.
"Lady Reise, please speak." Tina's voice softened. "Are you upset because His Highness has not visited?"
His Highness?
G6's eyes narrowed.
That royal ass?
Then something heavy pressed against her chest.
Sadness.
Deep and humiliating.
Not hers.
G6 knew it immediately because she would rather bite through her own tongue than ache over some man refusing to visit her.
What the fuck is this?
The feeling remained.
Borrowed grief living inside borrowed flesh.
A ghost in the machine.
G6 sat on the edge of the bed and dragged both hands down her face, leaving faint streaks of blood across Reise's delicate features.
I can't breathe.
No.
Think.
She lacked information. The environment was unknown, the body was unknown, and whatever circumstances had brought her here were beyond anything she had been trained to process.
For a moment, it was simply too much.
Am I inside the novel I was reading?
Absurd.
Impossible.
She rejected the thought immediately.
Then forced herself to consider it anyway.
Alright. Hypothetical. Be rational.
Her injured hand stung.
Pain was real.
The room remained stable no matter how many times she looked away.
Nothing dissolved.
Nothing shifted.
No hallucination behaved this cleanly.
Her mind moved backward through every explanation it understood and discarded them one by one.
Then Pisces's voice surfaced from memory.
Annoyingly enthusiastic.
Listen, G6. This guy is an ordinary office worker in his previous life, but he died and reincarnated as a slime.
G6 went still.
The conclusion arrived before she wanted it to.
"No."
Her face lost color.
"I…"
The word barely escaped.
"Died?"
For the first time in her life, Akira Gemstone—G6, the Reaper—could not produce a useful thought.
She simply sat there.
「FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER」
G6 remained on the bed while Tina knelt before her and carefully cleaned the wound across her knuckles.
She barely noticed.
Her mind had gone somewhere else entirely.
Did I die?
The question repeated.
If she had, then how?
G6 reconstructed the apartment from memory.
Door. Windows. Security.
Pisces leaving.
Television.
Beer.
No sign of intrusion.
Did someone infiltrate the apartment?
Impossible.
She would have noticed.
Pisces?
Her expression hardened.
Did Pisces betray me? Kill me?
She rejected the idea almost immediately.
Foolish.
GAO did not breed traitors casually, and Pisces had never given her reason to suspect him.
Then what?
She replayed the final hours again.
Completed hit.
Apartment.
Book.
Beer.
Counter.
Two vials.
G6's eyes narrowed.
One had contained her ordinary medication.
The other—
Her stomach dropped.
The stronger medication left over from her Milan injury.
Morphine.
The label appeared in her memory with humiliating clarity.
She had reached for the wrong vial.
Swallowed the pills.
Then immediately drank alcohol.
No checking.
No hesitation.
No thought.
Professional disgust struck so violently that fear disappeared beneath it.
G6 stood abruptly.
Tina startled backward.
"I fucking killed myself with my own inadequacy?"
The room went silent.
G6's expression barely changed.
Inside, however, she was screaming.
Not from grief.
From embarrassment.
The great G6.
Reaper of the Gemstone line.
Not killed by a rival assassin.
Not caught in an elaborate trap.
Not betrayed, tortured or even shot.
She had apparently managed to eliminate herself through a mistake so basic that a trainee deserved to be beaten for making it.
Morphine.
Alcohol.
A combination she absolutely knew better than to treat carelessly.
G6 stared at nothing.
Too much inadequacy.
I disgust myself.
Whether that was truly how she had died was impossible to prove from here, but at that moment it was the only explanation she possessed—and it was humiliating enough to make her want to die a second time.
❈.❈.❈
Later, G6 sat at the tea table in silence.
The balcony remained within view.
She deliberately stayed away from it.
Tina had suggested walking through the gardens, but G6 refused. Wandering through an unknown estate filled with unknown people while she had no clear understanding of exits, defenses or threats was not a leisurely walk.
It was stupidity.
Information first.
Movement later.
She reached for the ancient book.
For now, it was the only thing in this world she could directly connect to something she understood, even if she hated every page of it.
Had the real Reise been reading this?
A novel within a novel?
Is the author's ghost fucking with me?
G6 stared at the cover.
"Fuck, alright."
She opened it.
"I take it back. This book is not stupid."
She waited.
"Fucking wake me up from this nightmare."
The pages turned beneath her fingers.
Blank.
She stopped.
Turned another.
Blank.
Another.
Nothing.
The story she had read was gone.
G6 flipped backward, then forward again.
Still nothing.
Then ink appeared across the first page.
Fresh strokes formed directly before her eyes.
G6 stopped breathing.
"One rose wears borrowed red. Pluck it. Bury it.
The real one grew where gardens forget to look—between ribs, beneath floorboards, inside the pause before your next breath.
The fake rose bleeds to lure you.
The real rose already knows your name."
—Witherby, Messenger of All Seers
G6 stared at the message.
Once.
Twice.
Her expression flattened.
What the fuck is this riddle supposed to mean?
She read it again.
Fake.
Real.
Rose.
Why do I sense it's trying to say I'm either fake or real?
A long silence passed.
"Ugh."
She leaned back.
"Who cares."
G6 touched the page.
The ink smudged beneath her finger.
It was not wet, but somehow, it moved.
Before G6 could make sense of it, a hot pulse throbbed behind her right ear. Her hand rose automatically as the sensation came again—burning and strangely familiar.
She grabbed a hand mirror and turned her head.
There.
Behind Reise Worthon's right ear was her tattoo: a chained rose no larger than her thumb, the mark of the Reaper.
Her promise.
Her curse.
G6 touched it carefully. The skin burned beneath her fingertip exactly as it once had before a hit, and her eyes narrowed.
A tether.
Or a brand.
She lowered the mirror and looked again at the open book before her.
The room was still unfamiliar. The face reflected in the fractured glass still did not belong to her.
But the tattoo was hers.
And somehow, the book had followed her here too.
G6 leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Exhaustion had finally begun to settle deep into her bones.
So.
The book and the tattoo are mine.
Everything else is someone else's problem.
Fine.
First, survive.
Then figure this shit out.
Darkness eventually pulled her under.
❈.❈.❈
When G6 opened her eyes again, she was standing inside the same room.
And yet, something about it was wrong.
Moonlight spilled through the balcony doors, washing the furniture in pale silver. The air felt heavier than before, strangely muffled by the stillness surrounding her.
A woman dressed in white stood beyond the balcony doors.
Reise.
G6 knew it without needing to see her face.
She seemed to be watching from somewhere that was neither fully inside the room nor entirely outside it, present only enough to witness what unfolded.
Reise stood at the balcony, staring down toward the garden.
Two figures were below.
The moment she saw them, something in her expression gave way. Her shoulders seemed to lose what little strength they had been holding, and a single tear slipped quietly down her cheek.
There was so much longing in that look that even G6 could feel the weight of it.
Reise remained there for several seconds before slowly stepping away from the balcony.
She returned to the room, where the darkness seemed to swallow her almost immediately.
Then something on the table caught the moonlight.
A small glass vial.
G6's attention sharpened.
Reise picked it up.
Her hands were steady.
"This will be my last good night."
She drank.
G6 stared at her.
Then Reise turned.
And looked directly at her.
G6 went still.
That should have been impossible.
Reise smiled.
It was not kind, but it was not sad either.
It looked almost like recognition.
Like she had been waiting for this moment.
Like she knew exactly who stood before her.
Like she was welcoming someone she had expected all along.
Something about that smile made G6's instincts tighten.
It was too knowing.
Almost pleased.
As though Reise knew—
her.
—SNAP!
G6 woke with a gasp.
Her hand moved first, followed immediately by her eyes.
Room.
Door.
Window.
Balcony.
No immediate threat.
Her breathing steadied as quickly as she could force it to.
The dream had ended.
Reise's smile had not.
It remained fixed somewhere in the back of her mind, irritatingly clear.
G6 stared into the darkness.
Somehow, she felt mocked.
The confusion that had followed her since waking in this world slowly cooled, settling into something she understood far better.
Anger.
Her gaze shifted toward the fractured mirror.
Reise Worthon's face stared back at her—rose-gold hair, grey eyes and delicate features that still felt completely foreign.
But the expression belonged to G6.
Hard.
Unforgiving.
The tattoo behind her right ear pulsed once beneath her hair.
G6 touched the spot instinctively and remained silent for another moment.
Then she exhaled.
"Fine."
Her voice was low, steady again.
"You want the Wicked Rose?"
Her eyes hardened.
"I'll show you thorns."
LOCKED IN.
— To Be Continued… —