The candlelight in the corridor flickered with no wind.
The mansion was quiet too quiet. Polished obsidian floors reflected her bare feet as she walked. Portraits of her ancestors loomed on both sides, their eyes too sharp, their shadows too long.
She kept walking. Her hands trembled.
Something was off.
At the far end of the corridor, a silver door pulsed softly. Her childhood bedroom.
She stepped through.
And they were all there.
Seated at the long dining table. Her siblings, her father, her nurse, the hound, the maid who went missing last winter.
Dead or missing, yet somehow… here.
At the head of the table, her mother stood, skin pale, gown dripping with shadow like oil on water.
Her voice shattered the silence:
"Kill Kael Vernier. He is tampering with fate."
The room blinked into blackness.
Her body fell.
Ilya gasped awake, drenched in sweat, nearly knocking over the rusted lantern beside her.
Heavy canvas pressed around her like a coffin. The suffocating heat of the Australian wastelands had soaked her skin and hair in a sheen of steam.
Her violet eyes glinted in the dark. Sharp, calculated, cold. Her face was beautiful but not in a safe way.
The kind of beauty that makes people lower their guard right before they die.
Dark brows, slightly arched. Smooth bone structure, but with a wolfish angularity.
Lips a little too calm. Eyes that didn't trust light.
She panted, looking around the tent.
"It was just a dream"
[SYSTEM BOOTING…]
A glowing blue screen materialized before her eyes, casting eerie light over her features.
Her breath caught.
"What the hell is that?"
The floating interface pulsed. Alien glyphs rearranged into words.
> [Initializing Directive…]
[Relicbound Protocol: FATEBREAKER CLASS]
[Prime Directive: Locked]
[Current Mission: UNKNOWN]
Ilya reached out and tried to swipe it away.
Her fingers collided with resistance.
The air shimmered around her hand like a forcefield.
"What the actual hell..."
No matter what she did, the screen wouldn't vanish.
It just… watched her.
She pushed through the flap of the tent and stepped into the early dawn.
Orange light bled through the broken skyline of rusted towers and mutated trees. The Australian Outskirts.
She stretched slowly, bones cracking, breath slow and measured.
Behind her, the wind carried ash and quiet.
She moved into a slow kata muscle memory drilled into her during her childhood in the Ruined Estates a discipline born of noble blood and savage necessity. Each motion flowed like water, but struck like bone.
She glanced at a shattered mirror shard stuck in a burnt tree trunk.
For a moment, she just stared at herself.
Then, as if pushed by memory, she whispered:
"Mother's eyes. Father's cruelty. And my siblings' graves... I didn't choose any of it."
She stood still.
"Kael Vernier...(MC of my other book) Who the hell are you?"
Suddenly a twig snapped.
Her eyes narrowed.
She didn't turn. Her fingers curled slightly, tensing.
A low growl. Wet breath. Pads stepping over sand.
Behind her, emerging from the smoke-winds of the Outskirts.
A Mana Wolf.
Its silver fur shimmered faintly with runic patterns.
Its mouth opened, revealing dark blue flame between its fangs.
It shouldn't be here. Not this deep into the wasteland.
Not unless something had drawn it.
And as it growled louder.
The system chimed again.
> [Optional Objective: Kill the Alpha-Class Mana Wolf.]
[Reward: +1 Unknown Stat | +1 Fragment of the Forgotten Oath]
END OF CHAPTER 1