Rebecca hated her.
Franziska knew it. Not because Rebecca had ever said so outright or hurled insults at her, but because every passing glance, every distant command, and every summons to the Chapel silently pieced together the same stark truth.
The first time the two of them met was the year they both turned five. Lady Catrina took Franziska by the hand and led her through the black stone archway of the fortress. Rebecca stood on the high steps, draped in a pristine white wool cloak, looking at her with eyes of brilliant gold that were cold to the bone. A five-year-old's eyes should have held curiosity toward a new friend, or at least a little pity for a gaunt orphaned child. But there was nothing in Rebecca's gaze. Only a hollow, bitter coldness and rejection.
“Who is this girl?”
“She’s your new little sister, Rebecca.”
“I don’t need a little sister.”
Those chilling words followed Franziska through the long years that came after, becoming a vague echo whenever she faced that highborn girl.
Even so, the Crozier estate had never let Franziska lack for anything material. Whatever Rebecca had, Franziska was given as well. From the spacious room flooded with sunlight from the east, to the curtains embroidered with glittering silver thread, the smooth white silk sheets, and the gorgeous dresses filling the cedar wardrobe—clothes she had once only dared dream of during fitful nights at the orphanage.
That excessive kindness once made an innocent Franziska believe that the gods had taken pity on her and blessed her. She believed the Crozier family truly wanted to raise her, while Rebecca was merely a cold young lady on the outside who still possessed a warm heart deep down. Franziska used to tell herself that if she behaved a little better, endured a little longer, never disobeyed Rebecca, and always completed every task assigned to her properly, perhaps this peaceful life would last forever.
That naive faith shattered completely on a sweltering summer day in the year Franziska turned seven.
That day, Lady Catrina held a small tea party in the rose garden behind the fortress for Rebecca and several close young ladies from the upper-ranking beast clans. The tea was brewed from newly blossomed morning roses, while rose-filled sponge cakes coated in sticky honey were neatly arranged on delicate gold-rimmed porcelain plates. Summer sunlight filtered through the cedar branches, scattering across the spotless white tablecloth like glittering scraps of silver.
Rebecca was, as always, the brightest center of the party.
She wore a layered black velvet dress, soft and mysterious as the clouds of night. A red velvet ribbon studded with sparkling gems adorned her platinum hair, while a blazing red rose carved with exquisite care from a single ruby was pinned to her chest. Her proud, sharp, overwhelmingly imposing beauty made the eyes of every child around her turn naturally in her direction with absolute adoration.
Franziska walked beside Rebecca as she always did, maintaining the silent distance of exactly one step behind her. Franziska’s dress had the same design and elaborate stitching, and even her hair had been carefully arranged by the maids according to Rebecca’s wishes. The only difference was its dull pale-blue color, meant to make the radiance of the Snow Leopard Princess stand out even more.
Under that skillful arrangement, the maids had transformed Franziska into an exquisite porcelain doll, but one entirely devoid of life. The noble girls at the party constantly surrounded Rebecca, chirping questions about her color coordination, the origins of her jewelry, and the secret that made the sisters look similar enough to be related while clearly highlighting the distinction between mistress and servant.
Franziska had been very happy then. Her innocent seven-year-old heart had danced in her chest at the thought that she was allowed to stand beside Rebecca because the princess truly wished to acknowledge her.
It was only when the sun began to sink westward, dyeing the clouds along the horizon red, that the party gradually drew to an end. Lady Catrina appeared with the maids, who carried special bowls of sweet soup prepared for each guest. Franziska was given a separate portion as well.
The soup was very sweet. It was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted in her life.
Yet immediately after the first sip, her entire body abruptly felt as though it were being consumed from within by an invisible flame. The pain did not stop at flesh or bone; it pierced straight into her soul, crushing her feeble awareness and resistance. Franziska collapsed, sinking into the deepest darkness.
When her consciousness flickered back, Franziska realized that she was lying on an icy stone bed placed in the center of the Chapel.
She did not know how long she had been unconscious or how she had been brought to this gloomy place. Surrounding the stone bed in terrifying silence were the fortress’s old physician, the Crozier family’s personal priest, Lady Catrina, Rebecca, and two close maids.
Not one of them asked whether she was in pain.
Nor did anyone explain why her hands and feet had been tightly bound against this freezing stone slab.
The old physician stood right beside her, holding a gleaming silver tray in both hands. On it lay a small knife, its razor-sharp blade reflecting the flickering oil-lamp light in a frigid streak.
Franziska struggled with every instinct of a small animal caught in a trap. She wanted to open her mouth and call for help, to beg for mercy, but only broken, voiceless sounds escaped her throat. The blood in her body seemed to freeze in the cold of the stone chamber. Cold sweat soaked her temples and the back of her dress.
Lady Catrina stood in the corner of the room and frowned faintly. She did not look directly at Franziska’s tear-drenched face, merely casting a silent glance toward the family priest.
The priest immediately stepped forward and raised a bony hand, drawing a small magic array of pale light in midair. Strands of spiritual power wrapped tightly around Franziska’s body, forcing her down against the stone bed and completely extinguishing her futile struggles.
Only then did the seven-year-old child understand the most terrifying thing of all: it was not the pitch-black room or the freezing stone bed. It was that no one in this room saw her as a person who needed protection.
The old physician bent over her. The gleaming silver blade slowly and decisively drove straight into the left side of her chest.
THUD!
A cruel burst of pain tore through her chest, leaving Franziska more lucid than she had ever been. She felt each violent contraction of her tiny heart, each drop of hot blood dragged from her chest by magic, flowing along the silver blade before pattering into a jade bowl carved with the Snow Leopard insignia, already purified and waiting.
The physician quickly added a few drops of thick black liquid medicine and a pinch of fine powder that gave off a strange, glittering light. After stirring it thoroughly with a spoon, he reverently raised the bowl and offered it to Rebecca.
Rebecca accepted the jade bowl from the physician. She lifted it to her lips and drank every drop of the bitter, blood-scented liquid without blinking once.
Franziska lay on the stone bed, looking at that face through tear-blurred eyes and soul-rending pain. The beautiful face of the older sister she had once admired and tried every day to please now held nothing but a calmness bordering on cruelty.
“How long will it last?” Rebecca asked, her clear voice not wavering in the slightest.
“Three days, Your Highness,” the old physician replied with a bow.
“Then take more next time.”
Franziska’s consciousness began sinking into the bottomless abyss of darkness.
Only at that moment did Franziska finally understand in stunned horror that everything she had received up to then had been assigned a cruel price: preserving Rebecca’s life.
To the Crozier family, the arrival of a White Deer child with healing abilities like hers was nothing less than a gift delivered at exactly the right time.
At the age of three, after her White Deer bloodline awakened, Franziska possessed the finest healing ability among all the children accepted by the Temple at the time. Priest Albert had once gently told her that she would undergo her official induction ceremony and become an acolyte when she turned five.
However, just three days before her fifth birthday, Lady Catrina Damaris Crozier had made a grand appearance at the Temple to complete the adoption formalities. The lady insisted that Franziska was still too young to become an acolyte and continue living apart from her family.
Priest Albert had tried to object to the very end. But ultimately, in the face of House Crozier’s influence and agreements, Franziska’s induction ceremony was postponed until she turned fifteen. She officially became the second daughter of House Crozier, the nominal beloved daughter of the Black Leopard clan, and was absolutely forbidden from returning to the Temple until she turned fifteen.
Fifteen.
Franziska clung to that number as her only support for survival through all those humiliating years. This year, she had just turned thirteen. If she could patiently wait two more years, she would become an acolyte, then continue her studies until she rose to the position of priestess.
By then, the people in the territory would no longer look at her with the contempt reserved for a freeloader, and the Crozier family would no longer be able to manipulate her life at will.
At least, she had stubbornly believed in that future so she would not collapse.
But then that faith had been shaken to its very roots.
After that diabolical tea party, Franziska was no longer permitted to move freely around the estate without an escort. Whenever Rebecca’s illness flared up or her toxicity erupted, Franziska was taken through endless corridors, from the auxiliary building to the black wooden door at the far end of the fortress.
No one explained what she was about to endure.
Nor did anyone ask whether she consented.
It was still the same now.
The moment she heard a servant announce that she had to go to the Chapel, the horrifying memory from when she was seven surged back in a torrent. But the overwhelming fear had never given her any chance to avoid it.
“Miss?”
The maid’s cold call pulled Franziska out of the dark current of memory.
The route from the auxiliary building to the Chapel was so winding and long that anyone setting foot in the Crozier estate for the first time could easily get lost. Franziska kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, biting her lip as she silently followed her guide, trying to ignore the contemptuous looks and whispers clinging to her from both sides of the walls.
To keep herself from collapsing beneath the trembling rising through her, she began counting the purple irises carved in relief along the stone walls.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Three hundred.
Each number she counted silently helped her temporarily forget the heavy footsteps, the vicious whispers, and the icy sensation crawling down her spine.
At the five-hundredth iris, her steps faltered before the enormous black wooden door at the end of the corridor.
Two snarling leopards with raised claws were carved in relief across the heavy door, their fierce eyes seeming poised to devour anyone who approached. That familiar image alone was enough to make Franziska’s heart pound frantically in her chest.
Fear had burrowed into every cell and sinew of her body long ago... before she had even grown old enough to understand the cruelty of the human heart.
“Princess Rebecca is waiting inside. Miss, stay here until you’re called.”
The maid’s voice was mechanical. Without waiting for Franziska to reply, she pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside.
Click.
The door closed behind the maid, leaving Franziska standing alone in the desolate corridor.
A moment later, from behind the closed door, came the faint sound of a porcelain bowl touching down on a stone table.
Very softly.
But Franziska recognized it at once.
That year, after drinking the entire bowl of blood drawn from Franziska’s heart, Rebecca had also set the jade bowl down on the table with that same cold, bitter sound.
The memory of the freezing silver blade, the sealed stone bed, and the pain that had pierced her soul surged up again, sharp as though neither time nor endurance had ever buried it.
Franziska clenched both hands at her sides, forcing herself to keep her back straight.
This time, she was no longer the innocent, harmless seven-year-old who had lain motionless on the stone bed and endured everything. She was thirteen now. She understood the price of every drop of blood in her body, and she was no longer completely blind to what the Crozier family had done—and was still doing—to her.
Yet with the black wooden door of the Chapel looming before her, Franziska still felt her chest tighten. Trembling, she wondered whether she was truly strong enough to step into the place where her nightmare had begun.