Next, my sister began to scold me.
"What is wrong with you?" Katarina approached me with a rhetorical question laced with poisonous insult.
"Sorry?"
"Where is your honor? Blinding him, seriously?"
"He disarmed me, though," I said, trying to fight back.
"After you humiliated yourself, then tried to use magic in a duel of blades!"
"He also used magic..." I shrank, she's not wrong to be honest, but who really cares? At the end of the day, the better fighter wins. And I won. The end.
"You're an idiot. He had you beat in sword skill and magical expertise. You were only barely faster and used underhanded tricks to win."
"Aren't you supposed to be on my side, Sis? Because damn."
"You moron, I am on your side. And that's why I'm scolding you right now."
"Eh?"
"Listen, Sora. You're talented, you really are. But I've never seen you put in more effort than you need to; it's always the bare minimum, and then you rely on underhanded tricks to win. There will come a day when that will fail you."
She momentarily paused, letting her words carry in the tense air between us. The skin between her brows creviced, and her jaw tightened before her next words escaped from between her pink lips.
"I don't wanna see your dead body, Sora..."
I don't understand. Why would I die?
Why would I die, huh? Well, that didn't age well. I snorted.
"What do you want me to say, Kat? That I'm sorry? I won't do that again?"
"...yeah."
"Well fuck that, I'm better than every knight in this damn kingdom, and I'll be damned if you expect me to apologize for it!"
I snapped, letting my voice carry with the kind of rashness I immediately regretted. Never before have I raised my voice at my sister.
"I'm not sorry! And I will absolutely do it again!"
Yet still, I continued yelling.
A few tears formed in the jade of her eyes, a few tears tinged with sadness and pity.
"Why?!" She screamed, though her voice was less loud and more pained, the voice of a teary young maiden. She wasn't necessarily crying. Not full-blown at least. But it was enough to hit my heart with a touch of heaviness that pulled my posture into a slight slouch.
Before I could respond, her heels clattered off the marble floors as she shoved me aside and stormed out of the hall, leaving me all alone in the ceremonial hall.
Not even two minutes later, I was here, standing in the same spot with a hole through my chest, reminiscing over the past hour of my life like an idiot.
Thud.
The last thing I heard after I fell forward and hit the ground was the deafening, guttural screams of pure emotion. Screams that came from the person I shared the very same womb with. My own twin sister, whom I shared every heartbeat with, my own twin sister whom I entered this world with, her scream was so raw it brought a tear to my eyes, my eyes, which carried my vision. My vision, which slowly turned crimson red with blood before black, as the blindness slowly overtook me.
A strange, distant laugh fluttered in my fading mind.
I wonder who it was that killed me.
Oh well. Dad will handle it.
It's a shame... it looks like I'm going to miss my date with that hot brunette, what was her name again?
It's quite cold.
It doesn't hurt.
Who knew that death was painless?
But from the fleeting final moments of my own life, I found myself somewhere else. With someone else.
In my arms lay a woman.
Her brown hair and gentle face, once soft-looking, were heavy and darkened with blood. Blood that stained my very own two hands. It stuck to her cheeks, to her neck, to my fingers as I held her closer. Her deep red eyes were fixed on nothing, wide and lifeless, reflecting a world swallowed by chaos behind me. The ground shook. Shouts. Fire. Vangardia?
I looked around. I was standing in the streets of Vangardia's royal capital, not too far away from the ceremonial hall where my knighting was held. The ceremonial hall I was just at?
Who… was she?
What am I seeing?
Why am I holding her like she's the most important person in my life?
Is she… dead?
My voice wouldn't come. My thoughts wouldn't settle. My arms tightened around her on their own, a desperate instinct I didn't understand.
Who is she to me?
What's happening to me?
Wasn't I... dead?
My trembling hand rose and brushed her cheek. Her skin was cooling. Soft. Too soft. My thumb passed over a small beauty mark just below the corner of her left eye—an intimate detail I should not have known, should not have touched.
Yet somehow… somehow. It hurt.
As if I'd touched this face before.