Ulrika Vincent was three years old when she realized she was on a countdown to her own execution. Which was a deeply unfair burden for someone who still occasionally tried to eat rocks.
She sat on a plush carpet in her nursery, a room so opulent it felt like a physical assault on her memories. The carpet was thick enough to muffle a scream, woven with threads of gold and silver in patterns of delicate, flowering vines. She was surrounded by silk pillows, each embroidered with a different mythical creature, and wooden toys carved from fragrant, polished wood—a hobby horse with a flowing mane, a set of nesting dolls, a castle with turrets so smooth they posed no danger whatsoever. Her nanny, a kind-faced woman named Nanna Maeve, sat in a rocking chair nearby, mending a tiny sock with a needle and thread, humming a tune so cheerful it made Rika's teeth ache. Nanna Maeve thought her young lady was simply having a "quiet moment."
In reality, Ulrika was having a full-scale internal meltdown.
Three years, she thought grimly, the words a cold, hard stone in the pit of her new, soft stomach. Three years until I get falsely accused of cheating, publicly humiliated, and beheaded by a prince with the emotional range of a decorative spoon.
The novel, Dreaming Kiss, had been burned into her memory in uncomfortable detail. It was a best-selling romantic tragedy in her old world—famous for its sweeping ballroom scenes, dramatic love triangles, and the way it emotionally destroyed readers with its "bittersweet realism." Also famous for absolutely wrecking her favorite character. Rika, formerly the Queen of Blades, had found the tattered book in the ruins of a library, a rare piece of pre-apocalyptic fluff. She'd read it to a group of terrified orphans huddled in a basement, her voice raspy, partly to give them a world that wasn't made of concrete and sorrow, and partly because the sheer, unrelenting stupidity of the plot was a welcome distraction from the gnawing horror of her own life.
The plot, as it originally went: The sweet, naive heroine Selene Aureth arrived at the imperial court as a minor noble lady, her wide-eyed innocence a stark contrast to the cynical, jaded aristocracy. The cold, beautiful Crown Prince Lucien, betrothed to Ulrika, slowly found his icy heart melting in Selene's presence. The feared, misunderstood war hero Grand Duke Aric Solheim, a brooding giant with a tragic past, also fell for her. Cue tragic love triangle, political intrigue, assassination attempts, and endless misunderstandings that could have been solved with a single, honest conversation.
Meanwhile—Ulrika Vincent existed solely to suffer. She was introduced as Lucien's elegant, gentle fiancée, a political match designed to solidify his power base. She was beautiful, polite, and quietly, desperately in love with him. She trusted him completely. Then Selene showed up, her very presence a disruption. Lucien's attention drifted, his gaze lingering on the newcomer. Ulrika, a pawn in a game she didn't know she was playing, was framed with falsified love letters and planted jewelry. Lucien, blinded by infatuation and his own insecurities, accused her of cheating. Ulrika swore she was innocent, her pleas falling on deaf ears. No one believed her. Not her parents, who were terrified of losing imperial favor. Not the court, who loved a good scandal. She was stripped of her title. Her parents were disgraced. She was publicly executed, her head severed in a clean, efficient stroke that the author described as "tragically beautiful." Lucien, freed from his obligation, married Selene three months later. Aric, who had been the only one to voice quiet doubts, was branded a traitor for his trouble and died in a pointless border skirmish shortly after. Readers cried. Rika, formerly the Queen of Blades, had thrown the e-reader across the room and sworn vengeance on fictional men.
And now she was living it.
"Cool," she whispered internally, the thought dripping with a sarcasm so potent it felt like a weapon. "So I'm a toddler in a murder romance."
Her tiny hands, soft and useless as they were, clenched into fists. The effort was pathetic, but the intent was pure steel.
No. Not happening. She had not fought mutated horrors that clawed their way out of the earth's radioactive core. She had not detonated herself into the afterlife, turning her own body into a weapon to buy her people a few more seconds of life, just to die because of a dumb misunderstanding orchestrated by a author who clearly thought "plot" was a four-letter word. She had muscles to rebuild. She had skills to reclaim. She had fate itself to mug in a dark alley and leave for dead.
That night, Ulrika lay in her enormous canopy bed, staring at the ceiling. The bed was a monstrosity of carved wood and silk drapes, a fortress of comfort designed for a princess. Her body was small. Soft. Weak. Useless. She couldn't even sit up properly without wobbling, her head a heavy, ungainly orb on a neck made of straw. This was unacceptable. In her past life, she had been able to run five kilometers with a sword through her thigh and still kill twelve monsters before stopping to stitch herself up. Now she got tired from crawling across the ridiculously large nursery.
She needed a plan. A real one. Not just a vague desire to "not die," but a multi-stage, actionable strategy that would turn this helpless sack of potato into a weapon again. Her mind, once a tactical computer capable of processing a battlefield in real-time, began to work, drafting a training regimen that would have made her former drill sergeant weep with a mixture of pride and terror.
Step one: physical conditioning. This was the foundation. Everything else was built on this.
Phase 1: Toddler Level (Ages 3–6)
* **Balance training:** This was paramount. She would start with walking along the edges of furniture, then progress to garden stones, and finally, low walls. Assassin posture: low center of gravity, weight on the balls of her feet.
* **Grip strength:** Essential for climbing and weapon retention. She would hang from bedposts and table edges, increasing the duration until her fingers felt like they would tear from their sockets. Only when no one was watching, of course.
* **Flexibility:** To prevent injury and improve range of motion. She would stretch every morning and night, pushing her tiny limbs to their limits and then a little further.
* **Endurance:** The bane of her current existence. She would run endless laps around the manor corridors, building up her cardiovascular system from the ground up.
* **Core strength:** The center of all power. She would do sit-ups, leg raises, and planks, all disguised as "playing on the floor" or "wiggling like a little worm."
Phase 2: Child Level (Ages 7–11)
* **Sword basics:** She would begin with wooden practice blades, focusing on form, footwork, and basic cuts and parries. She would re-learn the language of the blade.
* **Footwork drills:** The foundation of all combat. She would practice shuffles, lunges, and pivots until they were as natural as breathing.
* **Sprint training:** Short bursts of explosive speed were more useful than long-distance running in a fight.
* **Climbing:** Trees and manor walls. She needed to be able to scale any obstacle quickly and quietly.
* **Controlled falls and rolls:** To mitigate damage from falls or being thrown. She would practice landing and rolling to dissipate impact force.
* **Breath control:** To manage fear, pain, and exhaustion. A warrior who couldn't control their breath was a dead warrior.
Phase 3: Pre-Teen Assassin Mode (Ages 12–15)
* **Actual weapon training:** Moving from wood to steel. Blunted weapons at first, then live steel when she was ready.
* **Stealth movement:** The art of being unseen and unheard. Moving through shadows, disguising her presence.
* **Target accuracy:** With thrown weapons, eventually a bow.
* **Hand-to-hand combat:** Grappling, joint locks, strikes to vulnerable points.
* **Pain tolerance conditioning:** Controlled exposure to pain, both physical and mental, to build an unbreakable will. Ice baths, controlled burns, holding her breath past the point of panic.
* **Poison resistance (tiny doses):** Because she was not an idiot. She would start with non-lethal, common herbs, building a tolerance under the careful supervision of a physician she could either bribe or blackmail.
She nodded to herself, a slight, determined movement of her head. Perfect. Absolutely unhinged. No notes.
Step two: political survival. She needed to avoid the Crown Prince at all costs. Which was hard, because in the novel, Ulrika was introduced to him at age six during a palace visit and immediately enchanted everyone with her "angelic beauty" and shy, demure nature. That was the first nail in her coffin. She would have to actively work against that.
* **Act boring.** She would cultivate an air of profound dullness. No charming anecdotes, no witty remarks. She would be as interesting as a plank of wood.
* **Avoid social events.** Fevers, sudden illnesses, a "shy" disposition—she would use every excuse to avoid balls, parties, and public appearances.
* **Develop a reputation as "quietly weird."** She would stare at walls for hours. Talk to herself. Develop strange, un-noble hobbies. She wanted people to think she was touched in the head, not a potential queen.
* **Stay out of the spotlight.** She would be the gray mouse in the corner, the noble daughter everyone forgets is even in the room.
* **Not become engaged to anyone with a tragic destiny.** This was the big one. No engagement to Lucien. No. Matter. What.
Step three: save Aric Solheim. Her favorite character. The "villain." The lonely war hero who got blamed for everything and died protecting the empire that hated him. In the novel, he didn't meet Selene until she was sixteen. But he met Ulrika once—briefly—when she was a child. He had given her a small carved wolf charm, a rough-hewn thing made with a soldier's hands, a gesture of awkward kindness. She remembered that scene vividly. He had knelt to her height, his armor scarred and dented, his face weary but kind. He had smiled awkwardly, a rare expression on his grim features, and said, "Stay strong, little lady." Then he left for the northern front. Then he died later, alone, misunderstood, and broken-hearted.
Rika's jaw tightened, a familiar, comforting anger rising in her chest. Not this time. She would meet him earlier. She would build a connection with him, a bond of genuine respect and camaraderie that went beyond the plot's design. She would make him care about her enough to live, to question his orders, to see the political trap for what it was. And if necessary—
She would absolutely ruin his emotional stability by seducing him later. For survival reasons. Obviously. A duke with a powerful emotional attachment to her was a duke who wouldn't let her be executed. It was a cold, calculated move, and she had no problem making it.
The next morning, Ulrika put her training plan into action. She waited until her nanny left the room to fetch her mid-morning snack. Then she climbed out of her bed, a task that involved rolling onto her stomach and pushing up with arms that felt like overcooked noodles. She immediately face-planted.
"…Ow."
She lay there for a full ten seconds, the plush carpet muffling her frustrated groan, reassessing her life choices. The universe had a truly sick sense of humor. Then she rolled over and started doing tiny, furious sit-ups. One. Two. Three. Her neck muscles screamed. Her abs, which were currently non-existent, refused to engage. Her arms gave out. She flopped onto the carpet, panting like a dying hamster.
This is humiliating. But she didn't stop. Every day after that, she pushed. She ran laps around the manor hallways, her little legs pumping furiously, until the maids complained about the "little hurricane" in soft slippers. She hung from banisters like a feral child, her grip failing after only a few seconds, dropping onto the plush runners below with a soft *thump*. She climbed furniture and fell off it constantly, learning the hard way that the floor was not her friend. She stretched until her tiny limbs trembled, holding each pose until she was shaking with effort. She practiced controlled tumbles in the garden, learning to roll and absorb impact, terrifying the groundskeepers who thought she was having seizures.
Her parents were baffled.
"Is she… training?" Elara whispered one evening, watching through a crack in the door as her daughter repeatedly tried to do a headstand against a wall, falling over each time with a grunt of determination.
Her father, Lord Rowan Vincent, a man of quiet dignity and military bearing, frowned. "I think she's trying to escape gravity."
They hired a tutor, a stern woman who specialized in educating the children of high nobility. Ulrika, bored with the lessons on letters and numbers, picked up a wooden stick to fidget with. The tutor admonished her. Ulrika, in a fit of pique, accidentally used perfect sword footwork to evade the tutor's grasping hand, spinning and moving with a fluid grace that was utterly alien to a three-year-old. The tutor stared, her face pale, then gathered her things and resigned on the spot, muttering about demons and ill omens.
At night, she lay awake, replaying the novel in her head. The ballroom scenes, glittering and cruel. The betrayal, sharp and public. The courtroom humiliation, her fictional self's pleas ignored. Lucien's cold, dismissive eyes. Aric's desperate, too-late arrival. Her own fictional self's execution, a neat, tidy end to a messy inconvenience. Her fingers curled into the fine silk sheets.
"I'm not dying," she whispered fiercely, the words a promise to the universe, to herself, to the ghost of the Queen of Blades. "Not for him. Not for this plot. Not for anyone."
She stared at the dark ceiling, a vast, empty canvas. Three years. That was her deadline to avoid the prince. Ten years to save the duke. And a lifetime to steal the happy ending she had been denied twice.
Ulrika Vincent smiled, a small, sharp, dangerous expression that didn't belong on the face of a three-year-old. The romance novel didn't stand a chance.
----
Training Montage: Ages 3–6
Ulrika Vincent turned her panic into cardio. Which, honestly, was very on brand for a former apocalypse warlord.
Age 3: The Year of Constant Falling
At three years old, Ulrika's body was about as coordinated as a sack of potatoes. This offended her on a spiritual level. Every morning, right after a breakfast of mush that tasted like paste, she waddled into the long manor hallway, set her tiny hands on her hips in a gesture of defiance she'd seen her father use, and declared war on physics.
Her first training objective: balance. She started with the edge of the plush runner in the hallway. One foot in front of the other. Slow. Careful. Assassin posture: low, focused. She made it exactly three steps before her center of gravity betrayed her and she face-planted into a decorative vase. The vase, luckily, was unharmed. Her lip was not. The maids screamed. Ulrika popped back up with a bleeding lip, wiped her face on her ridiculously soft sleeve, and tried again.
She walked along low garden walls, the stone rough against her bare feet. She climbed benches and hopped off them, learning to bend her knees to absorb the shock. She practiced standing on one leg until she toppled over like a drunk flamingo, much to the amusement of the peacocks. Every fall made her angrier. Every bruise made her more determined. By the end of the year, she could walk a narrow railing along the garden fence without falling, her arms outstretched for balance, her expression one of intense concentration. The staff called her "fearless." Her mother called her "stress incarnate."
Age 4: The Year of Grip Strength and Stair Domination
At four, Ulrika moved on to upper body strength. She started hanging from furniture. Bedposts. Banisters. Curtain rods. Door frames. She fell off all of them. A lot. The maids caught her dangling from the chandelier in the grand foyer once, her little fingers white with strain. They screamed again. Ulrika, refusing to admit defeat, held on for another ten seconds before letting go and landing in a heap on the ridiculously soft carpet.
She climbed the manor staircase ten times a day. Up. Down. Up. Down. Her little legs burned. Her lungs ached. By the end of the year, she could sprint up the stairs without tripping, taking them two at a time. She could hang from a wooden beam in the rafters of the barn for a full thirty seconds, a feat that baffled the stable hands. She could open heavy oak doors that were supposed to be "too heavy for a child," using a combination of leverage and sheer, stubborn will.
Her father watched this in silent horror. "Is… is she feral?" he whispered to Elara one night, as they watched their daughter do pull-ups on a low-hanging tree branch.
Elara nodded gravely. "I believe so, my love. I believe so."
Age 5: The Year of Endurance and Weaponization of Toys
At five, Ulrika added endurance training. She ran. Everywhere. Around the manor. Through the gardens. Down the hedge maze, memorizing the path after getting lost only twice. Up the hills behind the estate, her small legs pumping, her breath coming in ragged gasps. If she was awake, she was in motion. The stable hands began taking bets on how long it would take her to tire herself out. They lost every time.
She started lifting things. Flower pots. Books. Small stools. Once, a decorative statue of a swan. She dropped it on her foot and cried for exactly five seconds before gritting her teeth, standing up, and continuing her exercises.
She began weapon training. With sticks. With broom handles. With rolled-up carpets. She practiced swinging in controlled arcs, her movements precise and economical. Footwork. Stances. Imaginary enemies that looked suspiciously like mutated horrors. The staff started finding "training dummies" everywhere. Pillows stabbed full of holes. Hay bales decapitated. A very traumatized scarecrow that looked like it had been through a war.
Her sword instructor was hired early, a retired soldier named Master Finn who thought he was teaching a little girl how to properly hold a foil for etiquette lessons. He took one look at her stance—a low, balanced fighter's crouch—and quietly asked Rowan if his daughter had been possessed by a demon general. Rowan just sighed and doubled the man's pay.
Age 6: The Year of Stealth, Speed, and Mild Terror
At six, Ulrika added stealth. She learned how to walk without sound. Across wooden floors, testing each board for creaks. Across gravel, placing her feet carefully to avoid the crunch. Across dry leaves, a skill she practiced for weeks until she could move like a ghost. She practiced holding her breath, first in the bathtub, then in the cold stream behind the estate, pushing past the burning in her lungs. Controlling her heartbeat, forcing it to slow after a sprint. Moving between shadows in the garden at dusk, becoming one with the darkness.
She climbed walls. Trees. The outer fence. She fell off the fence once and broke her arm. The pain was sharp, familiar. She didn't cry. She just looked at the bone sticking out at a funny angle, sighed, and asked the physician if the cast could be weighted. The doctor, a man of science and logic, quit on the spot, citing a sudden need to pursue a career in theology.
She practiced rolling. Landing. Recovering into a fighting stance. She shadowboxed invisible monsters, her movements fluid and deadly. She timed her sprints, racing against the sun. She started training at dawn and again at dusk, her body a finely tuned machine of childhood desperation.
Her stamina exploded. Her reflexes sharpened. Her balance became unnatural. Her parents staged an intervention.
"Sweetheart," Elara said gently, kneeling in front of her daughter, who was in the middle of a one-armed plank. "Why are you doing all of this?"
Ulrika stared into her mother's worried eyes, her own gaze clear and unflinching. "I don't want to die," she said simply.
They laughed. Nervously. They thought it was a phase. It was not a phase.
By age six, Ulrika Vincent could:
* Run five kilometers without stopping
* Scale a manor wall in under a minute
* Perform perfect forward rolls and recover instantly
* Land silently on stone from a height of six feet
* Hold a plank for two minutes
* Outrun the guard dogs (a source of great consternation for the kennel master)
* Beat grown men at arm wrestling (a game she played illegally with the stable hands)
She still looked like an angelic porcelain doll. Golden hair. Big blue eyes. Soft cheeks. Everyone called her beautiful. No one noticed the predator hiding behind the cute, shy smile. At night, she collapsed into bed, muscles burning, bones aching in a way that felt like a victory. And she smiled. Good, she thought. If fate wants me dead, it's going to have to work a lot harder than that. Three years closer to the prince. Ten years closer to the duke. And she was no longer a helpless side character. She was becoming a weapon again.
Training Montage: Ages 7–11
Ulrika Vincent turned seven and immediately decided childhood was a waste of valuable training time.
Age 7: The Year of Formal Training and Scandalized Tutors
At seven, her parents finally hired her a proper sword instructor. Master Torren was a retired knight with a scar across his face and the patience of a saint. He lasted three weeks.
On day one, he handed Ulrika a wooden practice sword and showed her a basic guard stance. She mirrored it perfectly, her feet planted, her weight balanced, her grip firm.
He frowned. He demonstrated a beginner footwork drill, a simple advance and retreat. She completed it flawlessly, her movements economical and precise.
He blinked. He corrected her posture, tapping her lower back to straighten it. She corrected his, pointing out that his weight was too far forward, leaving him vulnerable to a leg sweep.
"…How do you know this?" he asked cautiously, his hand resting on the hilt of his own sword as if for comfort.
"I read it in a book," Ulrika lied with angelic sincerity, her blue eyes wide and innocent.
He gave her a look that said he did not believe her for one second. He was a man who had seen combat, who had faced down charging cavalry, and the look in this child's eyes was more unsettling than anything he had ever seen on a battlefield.
She trained two hours a day with him, then another four on her own. Stance drills. Cutting angles. Balance control. Controlled sparring. She also continued her personal regimen. Morning sprints. Evening stealth walks. Grip training with weighted ropes she'd commissioned from the blacksmith. Breath control exercises before bed.
By the end of the year, she could disarm adult trainees twice her size, using their own momentum against them. Master Torren requested a raise. And a flask of brandy to be delivered to his quarters at the end of every session.
Age 8: The Year of Climbing, Throwing, and Mild Illegal Experiments
At eight, Ulrika decided she needed ranged combat skills. She started throwing things. Rocks. Knives. Apples. Once, a very offended cat named Patches. (She apologized. The cat forgave her. Eventually. After she brought it a dead mouse as a peace offering, which horrified the staff but greatly impressed Patches.)
She practiced aim with chalk targets on barn walls, her accuracy improving daily. She learned to throw with both hands, making herself ambidextrous. She began archery training with the longbow, a weapon that was almost as tall as she was. The bowyer laughed when she first asked for one. He stopped laughing after she hit the center of the target on her third try. She could hit a moving target by spring.
She also started controlled pain tolerance conditioning. Ice baths in the winter. Cold river swims in the spring. Standing barefoot on gravel until her feet were numb. Carrying heavy buckets of water from the well to the stables until her arms trembled and her back screamed in protest.
She tested poison resistance. Very carefully. Tiny, homeopathic doses of herbal toxins used in medicine, things that would cause a stomach ache or a rash. She kept meticulous notes, tracking her reactions. She made herself throw up when she overdid it. Her physician, a new, younger man, began scheduling emergency meetings with her parents, his face pale and his hands shaking. Her parents installed locks on the apothecary. Ulrika, by now an accomplished lockpick, simply picked them.
She learned lockpicking. They cried.
Age 9: The Year of Stealth, Espionage, and Breaking into Everything
At nine, Ulrika escalated into full stealth training. She practiced moving through the manor at night without waking anyone, a ghost in her own home. She mapped guard rotations, timing their patrols with a pocket watch. She memorized the location of every squeaky floorboard. She learned how to climb into her own bedroom window from the outside, a skill she used to "sneak out" to train at night.
She pickpocketed her tutors as a "reflex drill," lifting handkerchiefs, coins, and once, a nobleman's signet ring, which she returned to him with a blush and a stammered apology, playing the part of a clumsy child. They stopped carrying anything valuable on their persons.
She practiced disguises. She cut her hair shorter, tying it back in a way that made her look like a page boy. She learned to change her voice, lowering its pitch and adopting a regional accent. She memorized court etiquette not to follow it, but to weaponize it later, knowing every rule so she would know exactly how to break them for maximum effect.
She began eavesdropping on noble gossip, hiding behind curtains and under tables. She learned who hated whom. Who was sleeping with whom. Who was plotting minor treason. She wrote it all down in coded journals hidden in a loose brick in her fireplace. Her governess caught her reading a spy report upside down and resigned, citing a sudden "sensitivity to ink."
Age 10: The Year of Combat Realism and Almost Getting Arrested
At ten, Ulrika insisted on sparring with real weapons. Blunted ones. But still. She trained against three opponents at once, her wooden sword a blur of motion. She learned hand-to-hand combat from a mercenary her father hired, a grim woman named Anya who had fought in the border wars. Joint locks. Choke holds. Nerve strikes that could incapacitate a man twice her size. She learned how to fight dirty, using sand, a well-placed kick to the knee, anything to gain an advantage.
She studied battlefield tactics, reading old military histories. She practiced ambush drills in the forest, using the terrain to her advantage. She set traps, snares and pitfalls, and fell into her own pit trap once, breaking two ribs. She climbed out, gritting her teeth against the pain, and kept training.
She started night patrols around the estate for "threat detection." One night, she apprehended a real thief, a skinny young man trying to steal silver from the pantry. She disarmed him, tied him up with his own belt, and delivered him to the guards. The guards were deeply confused. Her father grounded her for a month. She climbed out her window that same night and went back to training.
Age 11: The Year of Professional-Level Insanity
At eleven, Ulrika's training schedule became terrifying.
Dawn: five-kilometer run.
Morning: sword drills with Master Torren.
Midday: academic tutoring (which she aced, using her tactical mind to memorize history and politics).
Afternoon: stealth and climbing.
Evening: sparring with Anya.
Night: breath control and meditation.
She added weighted clothing, a vest with small, sewn-in lead plates that she wore under her dress. She trained blindfolded, relying on her other senses. She practiced underwater breath-holding in the estate lake. She trained with moving targets, having the stable hands throw fruit for her to slice in mid-air. She mastered archery, able to hit a flying bird. She learned horseback combat, standing on the saddle of a galloping horse like a circus performer.
She began training with real assassins hired secretly by her father for "self-defense." They were the best money could buy, cold-eyed killers who thought they were just teaching a noble girl some tricks. They taught her how to kill. Where to strike for a quick, silent death. How to use a garrote. How to poison a drink without being detected. She didn't use the knowledge. Yet.
By the end of the year, Ulrika Vincent could:
* Outfight most adult knights in a duel
* Scale castle walls like a spider
* Move silently across gravel
* Hit a coin at 50 meters with an arrow
* Hold her breath for 4 minutes
* Disarm armed opponents with her bare hands
* Break into locked rooms in under 30 seconds
* Intimidate grown men without speaking
She still looked like an ethereal angel. Delicate. Elegant. Radiant. No scars visible. No muscles obvious under her fine dresses. Everyone called her "the jewel of House Vincent." No one knew she could kill them in under ten seconds.
At night, she stared at the ceiling and whispered: "I'm ready for you, *Dreaming Kiss*." The novel did not reply. But fate began to sweat.
***
**Training Montage: Ages 12–15**
Ulrika Vincent turned twelve and decided that "prodigy" was not good enough.
Age 12: The Year of Violence-Adjacent Excellence
At twelve, Ulrika officially outgrew every instructor her father had hired for her. Master Torren retired for real this time. "I have taught knights for forty years," he said, staring at her in quiet terror after she disarmed him three times in a row. "I am no longer qualified to teach your daughter anything except perhaps moral restraint."
Ulrika moved on to real combat training. Not "noble lady self-defense." Not "sparring etiquette." Actual lethal technique. She trained with:
* Bladed weapons of all kinds—sabers, rapiers, scimitars.
* Dual daggers, a style that suited her speed and aggression.
* Spears and polearms, for reach and crowd control.
* Chain weapons, like the kusarigama, a brutal and difficult weapon.
* Hidden needles, dipped in various paralytic agents.
* Throwing knives, which she could launch with deadly accuracy from either hand.
* Improvised weapons (hairpins, forks, books, teacups, emotional trauma).
She demanded real opponents. Her father, now deeply regretting his life choices, hired a company of mercenaries to spar with her. They laughed at first, at the little girl in the silk dress. They stopped laughing after she disarmed the first one, flipped the second one onto his back, and knocked out the third with a silver tea tray.
She started free-climbing cliff faces behind the estate. Without ropes. She fell once, a twenty-foot drop that would have killed a normal person. She broke her ankle in three places. She climbed back down anyway, using only her arms. The healers cried. She started parkour training across rooftops in the nearby town, a blur of motion that the locals mistook for a ghost. She misjudged a jump once and crashed through a greenhouse ceiling, landing in a bed of prize-winning roses. The gardener resigned.
She began underwater combat drills in the lake, sparring with Anya while holding her breath. She stayed under too long once, pushing her limits. She passed out. Was resuscitated by Anya, who was now more terrified than impressed. She apologized politely. Went back in the next day.
Her reputation among the staff evolved from: "Our lady is energetic." to "Our lady is an unholy terror."
Age 13: The Year of Psychological Warfare and Court Trauma
At thirteen, Ulrika added social manipulation to her training. She began attending court functions. Not to flirt. Not to network. To practice lying convincingly. To read the room. To understand the battlefield of politics.
She learned how to:
* Fake sincerity with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
* Weaponize vulnerability, using her perceived weakness as a shield.
* Gaslight politely, making people doubt their own memories.
* Extract secrets without people noticing, using leading questions and feigned disinterest.
* Smile while threatening someone's entire bloodline, her voice a soft murmur that promised pain.
She practiced micro-expression reading, learning to spot the fleeting tells of a lie. Tone control. Eye contact dominance. She traumatized:
* A viscount by casually listing his hidden debts and the names of his mistresses over a glass of punch.
* A duchess by implying knowledge of her affair with a stable hand, a fact she'd learned from her eavesdropping.
* Three princes by out-drinking them and not slurring once, her mind still sharp and calculating.
* A royal advisor by finishing his sentences for him, then correctly predicting the outcome of a political maneuver he'd been planning for months.
She eavesdropped on political meetings, hiding in tapestries and behind thrones. She started a blackmail archive, a collection of secrets that gave her leverage over half the court. She never used it. Yet.
She trained in poisons for real now. Actual lethal doses. Antidotes. Delayed-effect toxins. Gas dispersal methods. Skin-absorption agents. She tested them on herself in controlled conditions, with Anya standing by with the antidote. She nearly died twice. The court physician developed a full head of gray hair and a nervous twitch.
Age 14: The Year of Comparison and Rage
At fourteen, Ulrika finally snapped. She stood in the estate's underground training chamber, a secret room her father didn't know about, drenched in sweat and blood, breathing hard after defeating six armored mercenaries in under two minutes. She should have been satisfied. She wasn't.
She closed her eyes. And compared herself to her former life. Queen of Blades Rika. Her old reflexes had been faster, honed by a world where a split second meant the difference between life and a messy death. Her strikes had been cleaner, more efficient, designed to end a fight in the minimum number of movements. Her stamina had been inhuman, fueled by desperation and constant danger. Her pain tolerance had been absurd, a wall of indifference she had built brick by agonizing brick. Her kill speed had been terrifying.
Right now? She was good. She was elite. She was monstrous by noble standards. But she wasn't her.
She slammed her fist into the stone wall. The stone cracked. "…Pathetic," she whispered, her voice hoarse.
She collapsed to her knees, shaking with a cold, familiar rage. I used to fight fifty mutated horrors without slowing down. I used to run through artillery fire, the explosions a soundtrack to my survival. I used to bleed and laugh about it. And now I'm tired after six men?
Her hands trembled. Her vision blurred with tears of frustration. "No," she snarled. "No. I am not peaking at 'impressive noble girl.' I am becoming a goddamn nightmare again."
She doubled her training. No—tripled it. She added:
* Weighted armor 24/7.
* Gravity-enhanced magic fields, courtesy of a court mage she blackmailed.
* Sleep deprivation training, staying awake for days at a time.
* Fasting endurance drills.
* Sensory deprivation chambers.
* Extreme cold exposure, training in the frozen north in winter.
* Extreme heat exposure, training in the scorching southern deserts in summer.
* Pain compliance training with actual torturers, ex-interrogators who knew how to inflict agony without leaving a mark.
* High-altitude breath training on the highest mountain peaks.
* Combat while injured.
* Combat while blindfolded.
* Combat while poisoned (with antidotes on standby).
She stopped taking rest days. She trained until she vomited. Then trained more. She trained until her muscles tore. Then used healing magic to mend them. Then tore them again. Her healers staged an intervention. She locked the door and kept going. Her father threatened to disown her. She climbed out her window and went to the mountains for three weeks, surviving with nothing but a knife and her wits.
She came back leaner. Sharper. Colder. Her eyes held a glacial stillness that unnerved everyone. Everyone was scared of her now.
**Age 15: The Year of Becoming a Monster Again**
At fifteen, Ulrika Vincent crossed a line. She hired assassins. Not to kill anyone. To hunt her. They didn't know that part. She paid them a king's ransom to "test her defenses." They were the best in the empire, a shadowy syndicate called the Serpents. They tried to abduct her in the capital, a bold daylight attack. She dismantled all five of them in under forty seconds, using a fork, a hair ribbon, and a well-placed kick to a groin. She left them tied up in a fountain with a note that said, "Try harder."
She practiced live battlefield simulations. Explosions. Smoke. Chaos. Screaming. She forced her body to fight under sensory overload, her mind a calm center in the storm. She re-learned her old muscle memory, the instincts of the Queen of Blades merging with the skills of the noble assassin. Her speed increased, becoming a blur of motion. Her strength doubled, her blows capable of denting steel armor. Her reflexes sharpened into something inhuman, her body reacting before her conscious mind even registered the threat.
One night, she sparred against a grandmaster swordsman, a legendary duelist who had never been defeated. He surrendered after five minutes, his sword on the ground. Then he cried. Then he asked her not to kill him.
She practiced assassination routes through the imperial palace. She mapped every blind spot. Every escape path. Every guard shift. She could reach the Crown Prince's bedroom in under ninety seconds, leaving no trace. She didn't. Yet.
She finally compared herself again to her former self. And this time—
She smiled. Not fully equal. But close. Very close. Close enough to terrify fate.
By fifteen, Ulrika Vincent could:
* Kill armored knights barehanded.
* Survive in the wilderness indefinitely.
* Run 20 kilometers without slowing.
* Hold her breath for 7 minutes.
* Fight blind, deaf, and poisoned.
* Dodge crossbow bolts at close range.
* Climb vertical walls with no equipment.
* Disappear in crowds.
* Break people psychologically in under 30 seconds.
* Survive fatal wounds long enough to finish a mission.
She still looked like a porcelain doll. Golden hair. Radiant skin. Gentle smile. Everyone called her "the empire's treasure." No one knew she could end the empire in a week.
She lay in bed one night, staring at the ceiling, muscles aching in a familiar, comforting way. "…Still not enough," she whispered. Three years until the prince. Five years until the duke. And she was almost ready to fight the plot itself. Almost.
***
Training Montage: Ages 15–16 — The Ritual and the Breaking Point
Ulrika Vincent turned fifteen, stood in front of a full-length mirror in her private training chamber, and felt… mildly annoyed. Which was a problem.
She was fast. She was lethal. She was inhuman by noble standards. But she wasn't her yet. She closed her eyes and summoned the memory of her past body. Queen of Blades Rika. The way her muscles had coiled like steel cables, dense and powerful. The way her reflexes had moved before conscious thought, a pure, unthinking instinct for survival. The way pain had been an inconvenience, not a limitation. The way her mind had processed threats, terrain, and kill angles in the same instant, a tactical overlay on reality.
Ulrika opened her eyes and stared at her reflection. Tall. Elegant. Beautiful. Deadly. …Still weaker. Still slower. Still limited by a body that had been born soft, noble, and unscarred. She had pushed this body to its absolute peak, its biological limits. And it wasn't enough.
She exhaled sharply. "Annoying," she muttered. Not furious. Not despairing. Just irked. Which was worse. Fury was fuel. Despair was a catalyst. Annoyance was a sign of a dead end.
The Decision
She didn't rage this time. She didn't spiral. She didn't double her training again. She did something far more dangerous.
She went to the forbidden wing of the imperial archive, a place where knowledge was locked away not because it was evil, but because it was too powerful. She broke three magical seals, each one a complex ward that would have incinerated a lesser mage. She stole seven grimoires on soul magic, body transference, and forbidden rituals. She bribed a lich, promising it a phylactery made of imperial gold. She threatened a dragon, not with a sword, but with the knowledge of its true name, which she'd extracted from a dusty tome. She acquired blood-ink, soul-crystals, divine chalk, and a mirror made from void-glass, a material that did not reflect light, but consumed it.
Then she locked herself in her underground sanctum and drew a ritual circle on the floor that made the ambient magic of the entire estate shriek in protest. The lines were complex, interwoven with sigils of power and binding, drawn in her own blood mixed with the blood-ink. The circle was a masterpiece of forbidden art.
The ritual was illegal in twelve countries. Heretical in five religions. Theoretically impossible. Categorized as "Guaranteed Ego Death or Catastrophic Soul Fragmentation" in the margins of the grimoire.
Ulrika read the warning label. Nodded once. And proceeded anyway.
The Ritual of Recall
The ritual was designed to imprint past-life physical and cognitive parameters onto a reincarnated soul. It had never worked. Because no one had ever survived it. The soul, when confronted with the full, unadulterated data of a previous existence, especially one as violent and traumatic as Rika's, invariably shattered.
Ulrika sat cross-legged in the center of the circle, stripped to a thin ritual gown, her skin carved with glowing runes that would anchor her soul to her body. She placed her hands on the void-glass mirror. The surface was cold, colder than death. And spoke her old name.
"Rika."
The air screamed. The mirror cracked, not from physical force, but from the sheer psychic pressure of her will. Her vision exploded into a thousand overlapping memories. The apocalypse. The smell of blood and smoke. The weight of her sword. The faces of her squad, dead and gone. The final, white-hot light of the bomb.
Pain hit first. Not normal pain. Not physical pain. Existential pain. Every nerve ignited. Every bone rewrote itself, becoming denser, stronger. Her muscles tore apart and reassembled, fiber by fiber. Her heart stopped. Restarted. Stopped again. Her brain flooded with tactical overlays, battlefield instincts, combat heuristics that hadn't existed in this world. She felt her old reflexes slam into her current nervous system like a freight train, forcing new pathways, burning away the old.
Her body convulsed. Her screams cracked stone. Blood poured from her eyes, her nose, her ears. Her soul tried to leave, to escape the overwhelming agony. She grabbed it with her will and dragged it back in, forcing it into the crucible of her body.
"Mine," she snarled through broken teeth.
The ritual circle detonated. The entire manor lost power, every magical light and enchantment fizzling out. Three mages fainted two kilometers away. A saint in a distant monastery had a religious vision of a screaming angel and quit the holy orders to become a farmer.
Ulrika Vincent collapsed in a crater of molten stone. Alive.
The Result
She woke up two days later. Naked. In agony. Smiling.
Her body felt wrong. Heavier. Denser. Tighter. Every movement coiled with explosive power, a constant thrum of energy beneath her skin. She stood up. The floor cracked under her feet. She flexed her fingers. The air popped. She took one step. And accidentally shattered a steel practice dummy with her shoulder.
Her reflexes were back. Not memories. Not approximations. The real thing. Her reaction time had dropped below human limits, her body moving before her eyes could even register the stimulus. Her pain threshold had returned to absurd levels; the lingering agony of the ritual was just a nuisance. Her cognitive processing speed had tripled, her mind now a true tactical computer. Her muscle fiber density had skyrocketed, her body a tapestry of fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers woven into a perfect whole. Her stamina had become monstrous.
She laughed. It came out unhinged, a little bit crazy. "…Okay," she breathed, her voice a low, resonant rumble. "That's more like it."
Post-Ritual Training: The Horror Show
Then she trained. Harder than before. Much harder.
Phase One: Structural Reinforcement
Her new body could output more power than it could safely contain. So she reinforced it.
* Bone density training via repeated controlled micro-fractures and healing magic.
* Tendon strengthening via high-resistance isometrics, holding impossible weights.
* Joint stabilization drills, pushing her limbs to their angular limits.
* High-impact fall conditioning from increasing heights, starting at twenty feet and working her way up.
* Impact tolerance training (getting hit by logs, rocks, and eventually, a small, trebuchet-launched projectile).
She shattered both femurs. Twice. She healed them with a grimoire of regeneration magic she'd "borrowed." Kept going.
Phase Two: Power and Speed Calibration
She tested her new limits.
* Sprinting against wind magic, the gales pushing her back.
* Weighted armor increased to absurd levels, the metal plates thick enough to stop a cannonball.
* Gravity magic turned up until walking hurt, each step a monumental effort.
* Jumping drills from cliff edges, clearing distances that should have been impossible.
* Vertical leaps onto castle rooftops, a blur of motion.
* Timed obstacle courses through burning buildings.
* Dodging live crossbow volleys, the bolts a storm of death around her.
* Outrunning horses.
* Outpacing arrows.
She snapped a tendon. Reattached it with magic. Continued.
Phase Three: Combat Re-synchronization
She reprogrammed her muscle memory.
* Sparring with twenty mercenaries at once.
* Live-blade duels with master swordsmen.
* Blindfolded combat.
* Combat in total darkness.
* Combat under hallucinogenic poison.
* Combat underwater.
* Combat while on fire (controlled).
* Combat while bleeding.
She killed a training golem, a magical construct of iron and stone, in three seconds. The engineers cried.
Phase Four: Mental Warfare Reinstallation
She restored her assassin cognition.
* Threat prediction drills, reacting to multiple simultaneous attacks.
* Tactical scenario simulations, fighting entire battles in her mind.
* Battlefield memory mapping, remembering every detail of a chaotic engagement.
* Psychological resistance training, resisting torture and mind magic.
* Sensory overload conditioning.
* Sleep deprivation weeks.
* Fasting endurance weeks.
* Meditation under pain magic.
She hallucinated her old squad once. She said goodbye. Then trained harder.
The Final Comparison
Three months after the ritual, Ulrika stood in her training chamber again. Sweat-soaked. Blood-spattered. Breathing evenly. She closed her eyes. And compared herself again. Queen of Blades Rika.
This time—No irritation. No disappointment. No rage.
She was not just equal. She was better. Stronger body. Cleaner reflexes. Smarter brain. More magic. Less emotional hesitation. More restraint. More control.
She opened her eyes. "…Huh," she said. "I overshot."
The Aftermath
The staff was traumatized. The healers refused to enter her wing. Her father started sleeping with a sword under his pillow. Her mother prayed daily. Three assassins retired and moved to a remote island. Two knights requested reassignment to the frozen north. One dragon left the country, citing a "sudden desire to see the world."
Ulrika Vincent, age sixteen, sat on her bed and calmly cleaned blood off her hands. Her deadline was still coming. The Crown Prince still existed. The Duke still hadn't met her. The plot still thought it was in charge.
She smiled. It was not. Not anymore.