Death was supposed to be cold, silent, and empty. That was how Rei had imagined it throughout her career as "The Ghost," a legendary assassin whose name was whispered only in fear by the high-ranking elites of the underworld.
But the reality? Death felt like being struck by a truck full of crystals and then dragged through a narrow keyhole.
Rei tried to open her eyes. Her vision was a blur. The first thing to assault her senses wasn't the smell of gunpowder or the copper tang of blood she was accustomed to, but the soft aroma of lavender and sandalwood. The sunlight filtering through the silk curtains felt like needles piercing her pupils.
"Ugh..."
The sound escaped her throat. It was weak, small, and—wait a second. Rei flinched. That wasn't her voice. It was the voice of a teenage girl who sounded as though she had never screamed a day in her life.
Rei tried to rise, but her body felt heavy and limp. With great effort, she forced herself to sit up on a plush bed large enough to accommodate five people. She stared at her hands. Small, pale white, with slender fingers devoid of a single scar. No calluses from a pistol's trigger, no marks from a blade's edge.
"What on earth is this?" she muttered, her voice clearer this time.
The massive oak doors at the end of the room creaked open. A middle-aged woman in a stiff maid's uniform entered, carrying a silver tray. The moment her eyes met Rei's, the tray crashed to the floor.
"Lady Seraphina!" the woman shrieked, tears instantly welling in her eyes. "You're awake! Guards! Someone call the Duke! The Young Lady is conscious!"
Rei—or whoever this girl was—could only sit frozen. Seraphina? Duke?
Within seconds, the room was swamped. People scurried about; a doctor in strange attire checked her pulse, and a towering man in full military regalia burst through the door. He had shimmering silver hair and a scar along his jaw, yet his piercing eyes were currently trembling with emotion.
"Sera..." the man whispered, his voice hoarse. He immediately pulled Rei into an embrace with enough strength to nearly crush her ribs. "Don't ever... don't you ever do something so foolish again. I nearly went mad with the thought of losing you."
Rei froze in his arms. Her killing instinct screamed at her to reach for a knife beneath the pillow—which, of course, wasn't there—and drive it into the man's throat. However, something held her back. A sudden wave of foreign memories slammed into her mind.
The Aethelgard Empire. The Northern Territory of Argentos. The youngest daughter of Duke Frederick von Argentos.
And the most painful part: the memory of the original Seraphina—a frail, lonely girl who had desperately tried to end her life by drowning herself in an icy lake, simply because she felt like a burden to her powerful family.
How pathetic, Rei thought coldly. You had everything and you chose to die? In my world, people kill just to eat the next morning.
Once the commotion died down and she was forced to swallow various herbal concoctions that tasted like sewer water, Rei—who now had to get used to being called Sera—was finally left alone in her room.
She immediately climbed out of bed and walked toward a large, gold-framed mirror in the corner.
A beautiful young girl stared back at her. Her hair was white as snow, her skin almost translucent, and her eyes were a vivid blue, like a winter sky. The face was breathtaking but appeared incredibly fragile, as if a mere gust of wind could shatter her.
"So, this is me now?" Sera touched her cheek. "An aristocratic princess who's an invalid?"
She tried to clench her fist. Weak. Pathetically weak. Rei, the legendary assassin, felt a surge of disgust toward her new body. To her, a body was a weapon. And right now, her weapon was a piece of decorative junk.
However, as she focused her mind, she felt something strange pulsing within her bloodstream. Something dark, cold, and immense. It wasn't just ordinary magic.
The Ghost Aura.
Seraphina's memories spoke of a legendary, forbidden power within the Argentos bloodline that rarely manifested. A power said to be capable of annihilating an entire battalion, but at the cost of the user's lifespan.
"Interesting," Sera smirked thinly. The expression looked out of place on Seraphina's sweet face; it was the smile of a predator. "At least I'm not completely defenseless."
Two weeks passed. Sera used that time to gather intelligence. As a former spy and assassin, eavesdropping was a foundational skill. Although the servants believed she was merely "recovering," Sera was actually mapping the entire castle layout and her father's military strength.
One night, she decided to slip out. She needed to know the limits of this body.
She donned leather attire she had found in an old storehouse—practice clothes her brothers had used as children. With movements that were still slightly awkward, she managed to climb out of her second-story window and leap onto the branch of a large tree below.
Thud.
Her landing was a bit shaky, but silent. She moved through the shadows toward the military training grounds behind the castle.
There, under the cold moonlight, she saw her father, Duke Frederick, in deep conversation with a young man with jet-black hair and an intimidating aura. Alaric von Xerxes.
"The Emperor is growing suspicious, Frederick," Alaric's voice was heavy and cold. "He feels your position in the North is too strong. The Argentos are no longer just protectors of the border; you are seen as a threat."
"I have given my entire life to this empire, Alaric," Frederick snorted. "My sons are on the front lines. What more does he want?"
"He wants your head on a gold platter," Alaric replied expressionlessly. "And he will do anything to get it."
Sera, hiding behind a stone pillar, narrowed her eyes. Political conspiracy. Classic. In her old world, the contracts she received most often came from people like this Emperor—men terrified of losing their comfortable seats of power.
Suddenly, Sera's ears caught a faint sound. The brush of metal in the distance.
It didn't come from her father's direction, but from the forest behind the castle gates.
Assassins.
Rei's instincts screamed. There were more than ten of them. They moved with high efficiency, using cloaks that refracted the moonlight for camouflage.
Sera looked toward her father and Alaric. They were still immersed in conversation, oblivious to the fact that death was closing in. Frederick might be a great general, but he was accustomed to open warfare, not cowardly strikes from the shadows.
"Damn it," Sera cursed under her breath.
Her body wasn't ready for a fight. Her heart was pounding too hard just from running this far. But if she did nothing, her father would die tonight, and the peaceful life she had just acquired would vanish before she could even enjoy it.
Sera closed her eyes. She tried to reach for that cold sensation she had felt in her blood days ago.
Wake up, she commanded herself. You said you wanted a quiet life, Rei? To live in peace, you must ensure no one can disturb you.
Suddenly, the temperature around Sera plummeted. A thick black vapor began to seep from her pores. Her blue eyes slowly turned pitch black, absorbing the surrounding light.
This wasn't magic. This was the manifestation of death itself.
Sera grabbed an old practice dagger lying on a nearby weapon rack. The moment her hand touched the blade, the metal was enveloped in a violently vibrating black aura.
A black-clad assassin lunged from behind a tree, preparing to release a poisoned arrow toward Duke Frederick's back.
Sshhhkt!
Before the arrow could fly, a shadow moved faster. The small dagger pierced the assassin's throat with gruesome precision. The man didn't even have time to make a sound before his body was dragged into the darkness of the bushes.
Sera stood over the corpse, gasping for air. Her chest felt as though it were on fire. This power truly drained her life force.
"One," she whispered.
She looked toward the nine others who were now beginning to realize something was wrong. Sera twirled the dagger in her hand with a fluid, expert motion ingrained through decades of experience.
"Let's see how the assassins of this world compare to The Ghost."
That night, under the cold Aethelgard sky, Rei made her debut. Not as a fragile princess, but as a killing machine that would make the traitors regret ever touching the House of Argentos.