The recording started with the doors crashing open. The servant jolted back. The Beast Knight filled the frame. Behind him, Eleana stepped in, pale hair catching the light, gown cutting a straight, sharp line through the space. Two neat ranks of knights dropped to their knees the instant her foot crossed the threshold. She didn't glance at them. She didn't knock. She moved like the stones were hers.
The image showed her pause and let her gaze sweep the room, fan loose at her side. From that angle, no one could argue whose territory she had entered. Elara sat on the bed, small and upright, watching. Even without sound, the tilt of Eleana's chin, the way she advanced, made the distance between them clear.
The glom flickered as time slipped. Eleana stood at the foot of the bed now. The fan opened and closed. Two figures faced each other, mouths moving, but the orb cared only for where they stood and how they moved. Elara's shoulders stayed still, hands folded in her lap. Eleana's fan snapped shut; her stance hardened; her free hand lifted, fingers spreading as power gathered invisibly along her wrist.
Then the part that mattered.
The glom caught Eleana's right hand halfway up, the gesture poised between command and blow. In front of her, Elara's body tipped sideways. There was no visible strike, no shove—just the unfavored princess sliding loose from the bed and hitting the floor. Hair spilled across the stone. Limbs landed at awkward angles.
The orb did not look away. Eleana remained standing over her, hand still raised. In the background the knights stayed where they were, kneeling, unmoving. No one reached for the girl on the ground. No one touched the sister whose hand hung in the air. It was a simple, ugly frame: power above, weakness below, and a ring of silent witnesses.
The light thinned and rolled back into the sphere. It dulled to clear glass again in the official's shaking hands. The illusion vanished, leaving only the real room—the same people, the same places—but now with the Emperor standing between them.
Eleana's face had lost all color. Empty fingers dug into her skirts, crushing the perfect folds. "The glom records only what it sees," she said, very quietly. "It doesn't show what she said to—"
"Enough."
He hadn't raised his voice, but the official flinched and almost lost his grip on the orb before catching it and dropping his forehead to the floor. The physician went even stiller than before.
Whatever words Eleana had planned—about disobedient beasts, about strange changes in her sister—died the moment the image faded. In the silence that followed, the Emperor's gaze shifted from the dimmed glom to his eldest daughter.
"Eleana."
Just her name. No title. No softness. The sound of it made three knights flinch, though they didn't dare lift their heads.
She straightened by instinct. "Father, this daughter—"
His eyes were on her now, and the rage in them was worse for how quiet his face stayed.
"So you," he said, each word slow and heavy, "as the eldest sister… not only failed to care that your younger sister is sick and barely out of bed…" His gaze flicked once to Elara still on the floor, then back to Eleana. "…you also chose to 'barge' into her palace without permission, and even raised your hand against her."
He did not shout. He didn't need to. The anger was in the way the air thickened, in the way the tiles at his feet cracked hair‑fine under his aura, in the way every man in the room tried to make himself smaller.
Eleana's fingers tightened in her skirt. "I did not strike—"
"The glom shows enough," he cut in, voice dropping colder. "Entrance without leave. A sick girl collapsing at your feet. Your hand raised. No one moving to help."
He let that picture hang between them, as sharp and inescapable as a blade.
The Emperor's gaze stayed on the now‑empty air a moment longer, then slid back to Eleana. Whatever warmth he usually felt for his brilliant eldest daughter had cooled; what he saw now was someone who had begun to believe herself untouchable. She was useful, yes. Dazzling, even. But if this scene had spread beyond these walls—one princess raised to be crown heir, another found crumpled on the floor beneath her hand—what would the court have thought of the royal bloodline? What would the empire have whispered about its future?
His eyes hardened. "From this day," he said, his tone flat and icy, "the Eldest Princess, Eleana Iulian, will remain confined to her own palace for one month. During that time, you will write on self‑discipline and proper royal conduct and copy it a hundred times. You will deliver every copy to me."
For a heartbeat, the room forgot to breathe. Confinement itself was not shocking; emperors had sent sons and cousins to quiet rooms since dynasties began. But to see 'her'—the assumed future Crown Princess, the one everyone already treated as half‑enthroned—publicly punished over the "normal and silent" Fourth Princess… that was different. In that moment, as the knights stared at the floor and even the physician's fingers trembled on his case, it was clear: the air in the palace was going to change.
On the other side of the room, Elara lay on the bed and, quite simply, went to sleep.
She had no interest in watching the rest of the performance. Eleana might be a vicious sister, but the Emperor was hardly better in her eyes. Even in her first life, as a mere CEO, she had known exactly what her employees were doing under her nose. And this man wanted her to believe that a father, and an emperor of a vast empire, had no idea what was happening inside his own palace? Bastard.
Besides, the longer she stayed awake and sharp, the more attention she would draw. A "delicate, half‑dead" princess who collapsed then calmly tracked every word would be suspicious. So when her vision blurred and this weak body finally demanded rest, Elara let her eyes close and sank into genuine sleep. Maybe this vessel really was as useless as everyone said; just punishing the eldest princess had left her exhausted.