Morning came pale and slow.
Frost glazed the windows in thin veins, turning light into a faint shimmer that bled across the wooden floor. The house smelled of soup and burning pine.
Maria's voice drifted faintly from the kitchen, humming a tune Violet remembered from her first life—a lullaby about safe harvests and warmer nights. It sounded the same, but nothing was the same.
Violet sat at the table, a quill in her small hand, parchment spread before her. The letters were uneven; the ink froze at the tip from the cold. She didn't care. The plan had to live somewhere outside her head.
First Princess's conquest will be when I am 8 which would make the remaining Beastkins move, making east exposed, then Beastkin would be able to come to the village from the North-west of the kingdom.
The list looked too clean for what it meant.
Blood, betrayal, war—boiled down to tidy words on yellow paper.
She pressed the quill harder until it tore the page.
No mistakes this time.
Garrett entered, boots thudding softly on the wood. "You're up early again."
"I couldn't sleep," she said. Her voice came out flat, distant.
He studied her for a moment. "You've been saying that a lot lately."
Violet forced a smile. "Dreams."
He grunted, poured himself tea, and sat across from her. The firelight caught the edge of his scar. "You're thinking too much for a child."
I'm not a child.
The thought stayed unspoken. She watched the steam coil from his cup like a ghost rising and said instead, "I just want to help. Next time the beasts come, I'll be strong."
He looked up at that. "You're seven, Violet."
"I know."
Silence filled the space between them. Only the crackle of wood spoke. Garrett sighed, rubbed his temples, and said the thing he always said when he didn't know how to argue—"Talk to Maria. She'll understand."
Later that day, Maria brushed Violet's hair by the window, humming again. The sound was warm, gentle, and unbearably fragile.
"Your hair's getting long again," she murmured. "We'll trim it before Calla visits."
Violet's chest tightened. She caught Maria's wrist mid-motion. "No. Don't tell her."
Maria blinked. "Don't tell her what, littlebird?"
"That I'm better. That I don't cough anymore. That I can run."
Confusion clouded Maria's face. "Why would I hide something good?"
Because good things die when mother knows about them.
Violet swallowed hard. "Please, Mama. Promise me."
Maria hesitated—then smiled the way mothers do when they think a child is imagining monsters. "Alright. I promise."
That night, Violet wrote again by candlelight.
Ink blots dotted the parchment like old blood. She wrote the words train, hunt, watch, learn, and circled them again and again until the paper tore.
I can't change everything, she thought. But I can move before they do.
She imagined the Beastkin den to the north, where the woods thickened and the air smelled of iron. She remembered the first time she had seen their firelight flickering across the snow.
Two years until they come.
Her fingers trembled with energy that wasn't quite fear.
Days turned to weeks. Winter thawed in slow breaths.
Violet trained when no one watched—small things first. She lifted stones until her arms burned, whispered spells until her throat ached, traced mana threads across the frost on the window until the glass hummed.
When Garrett caught her practicing once, she laughed it off. "It's a game."
He frowned but let it pass.
Maria worried she was becoming restless. "You used to play with dolls, remember?"
"I grew bored."
The words cut like tiny knives, but Violet didn't flinch.
She had no space left for play.
In the evenings, she charted the future.
The First Princess's Conquest. She could still see through the eyes and words of Vael, the fires swallowing the northern valleys, hear the screams of tribes burned for loyalty they never gave. Vaelric's face surfaced through the smoke—silver eyes dimming as the blade fell.
She pressed her nails into her palm until she felt skin split.
Not this time.
She drew a crude map on the floorboards with charcoal—marks where the Beastkin raids would start, where the royal scouts would first appear, where she needed to be before everything collapsed.
Her small hands shook, but the lines were sure.
One evening, Garrett found her staring at the half-burned map.
"What's this?" he asked.
Violet blinked. "A story."
He grumbled. "Then it looks like a sad one."
"It has a happy ending," she lied.
He tousled her hair. "Then keep writing, little hunter."
His trust hurt more than any blade ever had.
****
Violet's PoV
I remember the smell before the fire—the wet soil, the way snow hissed when it touched the forge. I remember Vael's eyes reciting the pain. I remember Calla's voice—soft, patient, rehearsed—telling me everything would be fine right before she tore my world apart.
I am seven now. My hands are small again. My voice still trembles when I lie. But inside, something older moves—a wound that learned to speak.
Every day I wake up, I tell myself it was a nightmare. Then I touch the mark on my wrist where the chains were, and the lie dies.
So I plan. I plan because planning is the only way to breathe.
Then the Princess first, then Beastkin and then her...
When the time comes, I won't beg. I'll make them beg.
***
Spring arrived with reluctant color. The forest softened; rivers thawed; travelers returned to the roads.
That was when the merchant came.
A thin man with a patchy beard and too many stories, pulling a wagon that creaked like an old skeleton. Garrett bartered for salt and iron nails; Maria bought fabric; Violet lingered by the wheel, pretending not to listen.
"Rumours has it, first princess is planning something, while Beastkin movement have been seen near the north ridge," the man said. "Small bands, maybe scouts. Strange marks on trees. Some folks say they're gathering again."
The words hit her like a blade drawn slow.
Too early. Two years too early.
Her heartbeat stuttered. The timeline's already shifting.
She forced her voice steady. "Are they dangerous?"
The man laughed, a thin nervous sound. "Only if you wander too far. But don't you worry, little miss. The capital's keeping watch. Empress been sending envoys already."
She smiled—small, polite, childlike—and walked back inside, each step echoing like the tick of a clock counting down to war.
That night, she didn't write anything.
She stared at the blank parchment until dawn and whispered to herself,
The future's changing. So must I.