It looked like his coat had been thrown on hastily, collar half-raised, his hair slightly messy. He stood still for a moment, scanning the sky like he was confirming something he already feared.
Then his eyes found Akhile.
Then, without a word, both of them looked outside through the glass wall. The red crack was more defined now.
"There's an anomaly in the system which has been detected," Nathaniel began. "I don't know what it is yet. My technicians are trying to figure it out."
Nathaniel's entire posture changed, returning to his normal composure.
He rose immediately, crossed the room, and tapped the glass wall hard enough to make it blink.
"Diagnostics ran a blank, but I think they won't find anything," he said. "My suspicions lead me to the blood moon."
Akhile's eyes widened. That's when she remembered her brief encounter with Princess Cora. Her strange dream. Or as it was, she was in a coma.
Nathaniel stared at her, pretending to cooperate on the sofa, lying on her back. Her beauty was striking, even in sickness. He smiled, half a smile.
"What's with the smile?" asked Akhile.
He didn't respond.
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
Tobias assumed it was the physician.
A tall woman entered hastily, clutching a tablet. It was one of the technicians.
"What have you found?" Nathaniel asked, immediately diverting his attention to her.
The woman didn't even glance at her screen before answering.
"There were no glitches recorded, sir. The main system is fine."
Nathaniel's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What did the workers see?" he asked.
The technician hesitated just long enough to be coherent.
"Some reported a… red streak. Across the sky. But the system shows no peripheral fractures."
"No fracture," Nathaniel repeated.
"Yes, sir."
The contradiction lingered in the room like an unwanted guest.
A thing that shouldn't be a problem.
Nathaniel turned away from them and walked to the window overlooking the estate courtyard.
He didn't like superstitions. He preferred data and facts, a tacit explanation.
Outside, the maroon sky looked normal again. The power was back on. The system interruption lasted all but 5 minutes.
His voice dropped, low and sharp, when he spoke again.
"Run the diagnostics again and find out what happened," he said. "And do not say 'normal' to me twice in one day."
"Yes, sir," the technician replied.
Nathaniel stayed at the glass wall after she left.
Akhile had sat up again to hear the technician's feedback. Nathaniel shot her a dirty look, and she slowly lay back, reluctantly, without saying a word.
"Princess Cora, the Physician is here for you," said Tobias.
Akhile didn't respond.
A stocky man in a suit entered and quickly tended to her.
In the midst of everyone fussing around her, she caught a glimpse of her reflection on the glass wall.
And that's when she saw it. There was someone else.
It was Princess Cora.
Her reflection stared back at her. Her green eyes, copper-coloured curls, the familiar shape of Princess Cora's face.
She wasn't in the reflection.
This whole time, Akhile had only seen herself in the mirror, even though it was Cora's body.
"Princess Cora…what are you doing here?" she whispered under her breath.
The overlay was subtle, like a ghost caught between frames. Like two realities trying to occupy the same surface.
She lifted her hand and pressed her palm to her head.
The second reflection vanished instantly, as if her touch erased it.
Akhile froze.
She had called out Princess Cora in her strange dream earlier, and she wasn't there, only her voice.
Princess Cora was here…with her.
No longer within her.
It was then that Akhile realised that the crack in the sky may have brought back the Princess.
She gasped.
Princess Cora is here.