As Crystal and her maid turned the corner in the underground corridor, they met them face-to-face.
Raven, Miralyn, and Lyra—the three daughters of the House of Valen, one of the most powerful noble families in the Kingdom of Asterion. Their father, Lord Valen, served as the King's Hand, the chief advisor and right hand to the crown itself. In terms of political influence, only the royal family outranked them.
Crystal looked at the three sisters standing before her, and her eyes immediately turned cold and frosty. The temperature in the corridor seemed to drop several degrees as her gaze swept over them, assessing, evaluating, remembering things from a life they hadn't lived yet.
Seeing this sudden shift in Crystal's demeanor, Miralyn noticed. Her expression changed slightly—just the barest flicker of surprise or perhaps recognition crossing her features. It was so subtle that no one else would have caught it.
But Crystal noticed. She always noticed the small details, the micro-expressions that revealed what people were really thinking behind their social masks.
Raven walked forward with a smile on her face. It was the kind of smile nobles wore when they were about to say something cutting, something designed to hurt while maintaining plausible deniability about their intentions.
"Wow, if it isn't the spoiled girl of the kingdom herself," Raven said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Crystal Aserra, in the flesh. Even after your spectacular failure to win the second prince's attention, even after you embarrassed yourself so thoroughly that the whole capital was talking about it, people would think you'd be at home resting. Recovering from the humiliation, you know?"
Raven paused, her smile growing sharper.
"But let me guess—are you here looking for another way to win Noah's heart? Perhaps shopping for love potions or buying information on his preferences? How... dedicated of you."
As she talked, a small cruel smile appeared on her lips. She looked at Crystal, whose face did look a bit pale still, residual effects from her earlier attempt to force open her Chaos World. Raven probably interpreted the pallor as embarrassment or shame, which only seemed to encourage her.
Meanwhile, Lyra stood slightly behind her sisters, looking at the confrontation but clearly lost in her own thoughts. Her expression was distant, troubled in a way that suggested her mind was elsewhere entirely.
Crystal looked back at Raven for a long moment before responding. When she spoke, her voice was calm, almost conversational.
"Lady Raven, last time I checked, you were also at that gathering trying to win over the second prince. In fact, if I remember correctly, you spent most of the evening positioning yourself in his line of sight and laughing rather loudly at things that weren't particularly funny."
Crystal smiled as she said this, and Raven felt something cold in that expression. It wasn't the smile of an embarrassed teenage girl. It was something else, something harder and more dangerous than Raven had expected.
"So why don't we just be honest and conclude that we both have feelings for the prince?" Crystal continued, her smile not wavering. "We're both trying to get him into our beds, after all. No point in pretending otherwise."
As Crystal was talking, Mari looked at her lady with growing horror. What was she saying? People could hear this! There were servants and other nobles in the corridors, and Crystal was just... just admitting to improper intentions out loud where anyone could witness it!
But to Mari's absolute horror, Crystal wasn't finished. In fact, she took her shamelessness to an entirely new level with her next words.
"I mean, I was at least able to get the second prince alone in a room," Crystal said, her tone almost thoughtful. "But you, Raven... you haven't even been touched by him, have you? Never been close enough for him to so much as take your hand. So perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to judge my methods when yours have been even less successful."
Hearing this, Raven was shocked speechless. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. The sheer audacity of what Crystal had just said—implying intimate contact with Prince Noah, suggesting that Raven had failed where Crystal had succeeded—it was beyond anything Raven had expected.
Even Miralyn, who maintained a cold expression in nearly all circumstances, looked shocked. Her purple eyes widened fractionally, her carefully controlled mask slipping for just a moment.
And Lyra, who had been lost in dark thoughts about various methods of ending her own miserable existence, changed her mental trajectory entirely when Crystal's shamelessness peaked. She stared at Crystal with something like awe mixed with disbelief.
Everyone around them in the corridor fell into stunned silence. Servants stopped in their tracks. A few other nobles who'd been passing through froze, unsure if they should pretend they hadn't heard or if they should be taking notes for later gossip sessions.
Mari, moving faster than she normally would, quickly grabbed her lady's arm.
"My lady, we have to go," she said urgently, trying to pull Crystal away from this social disaster before it got even worse. "Right now. Please."
Crystal looked back at Mari, then looked back at the three daughters of Lord Valen. Before allowing herself to be led away, she delivered one final statement.
"Raven, next time I would appreciate it if you did not talk to me with that tone again. We're both nobles of this kingdom, after all. A little mutual respect would be appropriate."
Her voice carried no heat, no anger. Just cold, calm certainty that made the statement somehow more cutting than any heated retort could have been.
Raven just scoffed, the sound loud and dismissive. Then she turned and walked away in the opposite direction, her posture stiff with barely controlled rage.
Her sisters followed. Miralyn moved with her usual fluid grace, her expression returning to its normal cold neutrality. Lyra trailed behind, still processing what had just happened.
Crystal also walked away with her maid, Mari practically dragging her toward their reserved private room.
When Raven reached her underground room and the door closed behind them, rage was boiling inside her. The air around her literally began to heat up, her fire-element cultivation responding to her emotional state. The temperature in the room climbed several degrees, making it uncomfortably warm.
Lyra, despite knowing she probably shouldn't, decided to speak up. She walked toward her elder sister carefully.
"Sister, you should be careful while talking to Crystal Aserra," Lyra said quietly. "Remember what Father warned us before we left. The Asura Clan is not to be antagonized unnecessarily. Their military—"
She couldn't continue because Raven moved with sudden violence. Her hand shot out and grabbed Lyra by the neck, lifting the smaller girl up off the ground. Lyra's feet kicked uselessly as Raven's fingers tightened around her throat, cutting off her air supply.
"Who are you to talk to me like that?" Raven snarled, her face twisted with fury. "Who gave you permission to lecture me about anything?"
Beside them, Miralyn just stood there watching the scene unfold. She looked at her two sisters with a distant expression, clearly lost in thought about something else. About Crystal's behavior, perhaps. It had felt strange, different from the Crystal that Miralyn knew. She would have to report back to Noah about this. He'd want to know about any changes in Crystal's behavior patterns.
The air in the room was thick with tension as Raven continued to tighten her grip on Lyra's neck. The younger girl's face was turning red, then purple, as oxygen deprivation set in.
"Remember this," Raven hissed, bringing Lyra's face close to her own. "You are not my sister. Not my blood. You're just a mistake made by my father, nothing more. A bastard child from some affair that he was forced to acknowledge. So how dare you question me? How dare you try to lecture me about proper behavior?"
Raven's voice rose with each word, her cultivation aura flaring.
"And besides, you are a Chaosless human. A defect. A broken thing that can't even cultivate properly. You have no right to speak to me as an equal, let alone to give me advice!"
With that final statement, Raven threw Lyra across the room with cultivator-enhanced strength. The girl's body hit the far wall with a sickening thud. She crumpled to the floor, and blood rushed out of her mouth from internal injuries caused by the impact.
Raven stood there breathing hard for a moment, then turned and stormed out of the room without another word, slamming the door behind her so hard the frame cracked.
As Lyra lay on the floor trying to breathe through the pain, trying to get up despite her injuries, Miralyn walked over calmly. She reached down and grabbed Lyra's hand, pulling her younger sister up to her feet with surprising gentleness given what had just happened.
"You know her temper," Miralyn said quietly, her voice neutral. "And you still tried to lecture her. Really, Lyra? What did you think would happen?"
Lyra didn't respond. She just stood there swaying slightly, one hand pressed to her ribs where the impact with the wall had likely cracked something.
Miralyn looked at her for a moment longer, then smiled. It wasn't a warm smile, but it wasn't entirely cold either. Something complicated that Lyra couldn't quite read.
"Just be careful," Miralyn said simply. Then she too turned and left the room, closing the door much more quietly than Raven had.
Lyra stood alone in the private room, blood still trickling from the corner of her mouth, ribs screaming with pain. She slowly sank back down to sit on the floor, leaning against the wall she'd been thrown into.
This was her life. This was what being the bastard daughter, the Chaosless failure, meant in the Valen household.
She closed her eyes and tried not to cry.
Meanwhile, Crystal had reached her own private room in the underground section of the Enchanted Palace. As she entered, closing the door behind herself and Mari, she remembered something important from her past life.
Miralyn Valen. Her trusted advisor and second-in-command when Crystal had been Queen of Asterion. The woman she'd confided in, shared secrets with, relied upon for counsel during the most difficult decisions.
It turned out Miralyn had been feeding Noah information the entire time. Every secret Crystal had shared, every plan she'd discussed, every vulnerability she'd revealed—all of it had gone straight to Noah, who'd used that intelligence to systematically destroy everything Crystal cared about.
The betrayal had cut deep when Crystal had finally discovered it, right near the end. Miralyn hadn't even seemed apologetic, just calmly explained that her loyalty had always been to Noah first, that she'd been his agent from the very beginning.
Crystal's face settled into that cold expression again as she processed these memories. Her eyes went distant, calculating.
Mari entered the room behind her lady and immediately noticed that look. That cold, hard expression that made Crystal look years older than her actual age. It was the same look Mari had seen several times now since Crystal had woken from her injury.
Mari found herself asking a question silently, not out loud but in the privacy of her own thoughts:
Who was this woman standing before her?
Because this wasn't the Crystal Aserra that Mari had served for years. The spoiled, pampered young miss who cared about parties and dresses and winning Prince Noah's affection.
This was someone else. Someone harder. Someone dangerous.
Mari didn't know what had changed, what had happened during that brief unconsciousness to transform her lady so completely.
But standing there looking at Crystal's cold expression, at the calculating look in her eyes, at the way she held herself with quiet threat...
Mari was beginning to think that maybe she didn't want to know the answer.