Ellen stepped out of the room and caught two maids bolting down the hallway—clearly they'd been eavesdropping.
I didn't want to believe it, he thought, but after seeing that magic... I think I really am in a new world.
The manor was quiet. Too quiet for his liking. He grabbed a long coat from a hook near the door and made his way down to the garden.
A handful of children were playing near the hedges. The moment they spotted him, one boy pointed and shouted, "Run! The evil monster has appeared!" The rest scattered behind him, shrieking with laughter as they fled.
"Evil monster? What did I even do?" Ellen sighed.
"Don't mind them," a voice said from behind him. "They're just playing." An old man stood among the flower beds, watering them with a slow, practiced motion of his hand—no watering can in sight, just a thin stream of water curling out of thin air and settling over the petals.
"Ah, I don't really mind," Ellen said. "At least someone here still has the energy to run from a so-called monster."
The old gardener wrung his hands, visibly nervous. "Sir, if I may ask you something?"
Ellen straightened, doing his best to look like a man who had answers. "Go ahead. I'll do my best." Inside, he was already panicking—he didn't know the first thing about this world, let alone whatever this man was about to ask.
"I heard your engagement's been called off," the gardener said, watching Ellen's face carefully. "Is that true?"
Ellen blinked. Engaged? I was engaged? He had no idea what the man was talking about, but admitting that seemed like the wrong move. He cleared his throat instead. "Who told you that?"
"Everyone knows, sir. The maids have been talking about it all morning—that Lady Alessia was pregnant, and came here to call off the marriage."
Oh. So she was my fiancée. The pieces clicked into place, and for a moment Ellen just stared up at the sky, doing his best impression of a heartbroken man. "Well. What could I even do at that point?" he said. "I had to agree with her. It's not that big a deal, really."
The gardener hesitated, then gulped. "So—if you're single now—would you consider a date with—"
Ellen cut him off, clapping a hand on the old man's shoulder. "I respect the offer, but I don't swing that way."
The gardener's face went red. "I meant with my daughter. Mira."
Ellen bit down on his tongue. "Ah. Your daughter. My mistake." He cleared his throat and tried again, more carefully this time. "So, where is she?"
The gardener's whole face lit up. "So you'll consider it?"
"I mean, what's the harm," Ellen said, though he was far from sure. "But does she even know about this?"
"Follow me, sir." The gardener started walking, and Ellen fell in step beside him. "She's admired you since she was a child—you two used to play together, you know. Then your engagement was announced when you were both twelve, and she's been strange about it ever since. She's twenty-one now, and she's still like that."
Ellen pointed at his own chest. "Me? Really? I suppose that's just her rebellious phase, then."
The gardener shook his head. "Not at all. Last week we tried introducing her to a man so she could settle down and live a normal life. She ran off before the meeting even started. Her mother scolded her for it, but she wouldn't stop talking about some promise the two of you made to each other."
A promise, Ellen thought, his stomach sinking a little. I'm not even Ellen. I'm Rovelt. Is this even right, letting her hold onto something I have no memory of?
But there wasn't much else to do. He arranged his face into something suitably wistful. "She still remembers that? I thought she'd have given up on me by now, like everyone else."
"We're here, sir." The gardener stopped in front of a modest house with a small garden out front, bursting with color. In the middle of the flower beds, a girl crouched, carefully pulling weeds from around the stems.
Ellen looked at her, then back at the gardener, eyebrows raised. "How did someone who looks like you end up with a daughter who looks like that?"
The old man ignored the jab and called out to her. "Mira. I've brought him to talk about the promise."
Mira's head snapped up. She dropped what she was doing and ran over, beaming. "Ell! You're really here? How have you been?" She picked up a hoe leaning against the fence as she approached, swinging it loosely at her side.
Ellen felt oddly shy under her gaze. "I'm doing alright. How about you?"
Her expression shifted instantly—all the warmth draining out of it, replaced by something sharper. "The promise. What about the promise? Do you even remember it?"
Ellen said nothing.
Her face went red, though this time with anger instead of joy. "Don't tell me you forgot."
He scratched the back of his neck. "I... might have forgotten. Yeah."
Without another word, Mira turned and stormed into the house, leaving Ellen and her father standing awkwardly in the garden.
"I think she's upset," Ellen said after a moment. "Have you considered taking her to see someone about that temper?"
The old man only sighed and said nothing.
A few minutes later, Mira reemerged—carrying two real swords, one in each hand.
She tossed one to Ellen, who barely managed to catch it by the hilt. "The promise was a duel," she said. "Whoever bleeds first loses. If you win, I marry you. If I win, you convince your brother Richard to marry me instead."
Ellen leaned toward the old man and lowered his voice. "Who exactly is Richard? Everyone in this family looks the same to me."
"The one who's always walking around with the pink-haired woman," the old man whispered back.
Ellen's eyes widened as it clicked. Oh. That guy. The one I ran into in the hallway.
He rounded on the gardener. "Old man, I've been talking to you with nothing but respect, and this is a duel? You told me it was a date. And from the sound of it, she doesn't even want me—she wants my brother."
The gardener didn't stick around to answer. He turned on his heel and bolted, robes flapping behind him.
That left just the two of them. Ellen broke the silence first. "Tell me something, Mira. Do you love my brother?"
Mira's cheeks flushed red. "Yeah. I do."
"And do you love me?"
She laughed—not unkindly, but the kind of laugh you give when someone asks a question so absurd it circles back around to funny. "No offense, but I'm ranked second in swordsmanship in the entire academy. Love someone like you? Be realistic. Your brother's ranked first. I only kept up this whole 'promise' thing so I'd have an excuse to get him alone with me eventually."
Something in Ellen deflated, though he wasn't entirely sure why—this wasn't even his life, his memories, his promise to keep. Still, he managed a small nod. "I lose, then. I'll see what I can do about setting up a meeting between you two."
He turned to walk away.
That was when she moved—sword raised, lunging at his back in one clean motion.
Ellen never saw it coming. But something in him did.
His body reacted before his mind caught up, twisting aside from the blade without so much as a glance over his shoulder. It didn't feel like his own reflexes. It felt like something else entirely had taken the wheel—cold, precise, and terrifyingly fast. Later, he would learn its name: the Anima Index. In that moment, he only knew that his hand had already closed around her wrist, and that the world had gone very quiet.
He heard the crack before he understood what it meant. Her arm bent wrong, hanging useless at her side. She screamed—a raw, disbelieving sound—but the thing wearing Ellen's body didn't stop. It gripped her by the face and drove her head into the wall. Once. Blood sprayed across the flowerbeds she'd been tending minutes earlier.
She tried to speak. Tried to raise her good arm in some last, desperate defense. None of it mattered. Whatever was in control wasn't listening, wasn't seeing her as a person anymore—only as a threat that needed to stop moving.
Ellen was still in there, somewhere, screaming without a voice, watching his own hands do something he had no power to stop.
When he came back to himself, the garden was gone. So was Mira. So was the old man's house.
He was standing alone in a narrow alleyway, and he had no memory of how he'd gotten there.