[POV Liselotte]

  Waking up was not a gentle transition, but a brutal collision with reality.

  I opened my eyes, and the first thing that greeted me was not the infinite snow nor Tiara’s eternal garden, but a ceiling of carved oak wood adorned with floral motifs I did not recognize. Sunlight filtered through heavy green velvet curtains, slicing the room’s dimness into golden bands where dust danced zily. The silence was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic crackling of a firepce that kept the chamber at a pleasant temperature—an ironic contrast to the gcial cold I still felt deep within my bones.

  I tried to move, but my body felt as heavy as if it were made of molten lead. An involuntary groan escaped my throat when I attempted to prop myself up on my elbows against the silk mattress.

  "Lotte… Lotte? By the gods, finally!"

  The voice came from my right. I heard the sound of a chair being dragged urgently, and a second ter Leah’s face appeared in my field of vision. She looked exhausted; deep shadows ringed her blue eyes, and her usually immacute hair was slightly disheveled. Still, the joy that lit up her features when she saw me conscious was so genuine that I felt a stab of guilt.

  "Leah…?" My voice sounded hoarse, as if it had not been used in decades. The words scraped their way out with difficulty. "Where… where are we?"

  Leah sighed and sank down onto the edge of the bed, gripping my hand with a strength that betrayed her relief. "We’re at the castle, in one of the royal chambers of the east wing. My father insisted on bringing you here as soon as the situation at the quarry became… unmanageable."

  I blinked, trying to organize the fragments of my memory. Archmage Makor, the widening rift, the Aether Armor, the priests in white robes… "How much time has passed? What happened to the experiment?"

  Leah lowered her gaze for a moment before meeting mine again. "You’ve been asleep for three full days, Lotte. You wouldn’t wake up. The Tower mages said your magic core entered some kind of forced hibernation. You scared me half to death."

  "Three days?" The surprise gave me the impulse to try to sit up abruptly, but it was a catastrophic mistake.

  The instant my back left the pillow, an explosion of pain detonated in my skull. It felt as if someone had struck an anvil inside my head with a bzing hammer. The room began to spin violently, the stone walls seemed to melt, and a sudden wave of nausea forced me to squeeze my eyes shut, clenching my teeth to keep from screaming.

  "Don’t move!" Leah ordered, gripping my shoulders and forcing me back down. "The royal physician said your brain suffered a mana overload. You need time for your energy channels to stabilize. Please, Lotte, rest."

  I let myself fall back against the pillows, breathing shallowly, waiting for my heartbeats to stop pounding against my temples. "I’m sorry… I just… I didn’t expect to be gone that long."

  "Stay still," Leah whispered, tucking the bnket over my chest. "I’ll go tell Chloé and the others. She hasn’t wanted to leave the door to this room, but my father forced her to go eat something half an hour ago. She’s going to lose her mind with joy when she knows you’re back."

  I nodded weakly, unable to form more words while the headache persisted like a dull echo. Leah gave me one st look filled with tenderness and concern before leaving the room quietly, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  And that was when the weight of what Tiara had revealed truly began to sink into my mind.

  I stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the throbbing pain. Tiara… Terra. The spirit of my former world. Her words echoed in my head with a crity that terrified me. Gaia and Liliath are not goddesses. They were human.

  That revetion changed everything. Whirikal, the demon realm, the holy wars… it was all a stage set by two immortal, bored beings who had found a way to py at being deities using the lives of Lyre’s inhabitants. I remembered the face of Priest Sis at the quarry, his blind fanaticism toward a "Goddess" who, according to Tiara, was nothing more than a usurper of pnetary power.

  I thought about this world’s history, about the fragments I had read in the royal library and the chronicles Ronan sometimes mentioned. There was a recurring legend, one told to children: the story of the "Heroes from Another World" who, centuries ago, had defeated an ancient Demon King to save humanity.

  According to the books, they were a group of young warriors blessed by Gaia. But the chronicle ended strangely: it said that after the final battle, only one of the heroes returned to the pace, and that shortly afterward, he too vanished without a trace, ciming no nds or titles.

  A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

  "They didn’t disappear…" I murmured to myself, my voice breaking. "They were discarded."

  If what Tiara said was true, those heroes were probably companions from my previous life, or from lives simir to mine, torn from their worlds by Gaia to fulfill a specific role in her game. Once the "final boss" was defeated and the entertainment ended, the goddesses simply wiped the board clean.

  For a moment, the image of my former cssmates on Earth crossed my mind. Their faces, now blurred by time and the distance between dimensions, filled me with a deep, aching sadness. Had they ended up somewhere in this world? Had they died fighting in a war they didn’t even understand, believing they were serving a sacred cause?

  I clenched my fists beneath the sheets. Anger began to repce the sorrow.

  Still, after a few minutes of mencholy, I shook my head mentally. There was no point in grieving what might have been. Edward Celium died in that fire, set in motion by Liliath’s strings. That life, those bonds, were now part of an unreachable past. I was no longer Edward. I was Liselotte. And even if my soul carried Earth’s memories, my present was here—in this castle, with a princess who had just recimed her home and a wolf-girl who depended on my strength.

  "I won’t be a pawn," I swore silently. "If Tiara gave me this blessing, if I have the power of a pnet flowing through my veins, I won’t let Gaia or Liliath decide when my story ends."

  I forced myself to take a deep breath, visualizing the power of ice within me. I no longer felt it as an external tool, but as an extension of my own will. Tiara said Leah was the key to awakening Lyre’s true spirit. Leah, who had been kidnapped by demons—likely moved by Liliath—and who now returned to a pace full of conspirators guided by Gaia.

  Leah stood at the center of the storm of both goddesses.

  I remembered the promise I had made to Leah that night in her room. My promise to be her guardian, to protect her not out of royal duty, but by my own choice. That promise, which had once felt like a personal and adventurous decision, now took on a cosmic dimension. Protecting Leah was not just saving a friend; it was protecting this world’s hope against its false deities.

  The headache began to ease slightly, as if my resolve itself were helping my body assimite the residual energy.

  I heard hurried footsteps in the hallway outside. The door flew open, and Chloé rushed in almost at a run, her wolf ears fttened back with anxiety and her tail whipping in a whirlwind of relief. Behind her, Leah smiled, watching as she practically threw herself toward my bed.

  "Lotte! Idiot, idiot Liselotte!" Chloé excimed, stopping just short of jumping on me, sniffing the air desperately. "You smell like… you smell like something very old. Your magic… it changed. I thought you had crossed to the other side."

  "I’m still here, Chloé," I said, managing a small smile as she took my hand, checking that it was warm. "I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere."

  I looked at the two of them: the princess the gods wanted to use, and the wolf-girl the world had cast aside. Tiara had given me the power of ice not to freeze the world, but to halt the strings of the puppeteers.

  "Leah, Chloé," I said, with a seriousness that made them fall silent at once. "We have a lot to do. The experiment at the quarry was only the beginning. Things are going to change from now on, and I need us to be more united than ever."

  Leah stepped closer and pced her hand over mine and Chloé’s. "Whatever you saw during that colpse, Lotte… we’ll face it together. You’re my guardian, but you’re also my family. We won’t leave you alone in this."

  I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth of their hands. Edward Celium would have been proud of the woman I was becoming. The goddesses’ game had just encountered an anomaly they never expected.

  "I accept the challenge," I whispered to myself.

  The winter of Lyre was about to grow much colder for those who believed they owned it.