The first word Cerydra learned was not “Mama,” nor was it “Papa.” It was “No.” It is said that that day, the court protocol officer tried to put that baby bonnet adorned with lace and pearls on her—it was the traditional style that all princesses of the House of Savoy were required to wear, with a history dating back to the eighteenth century.
Cerydra lifted those eyes that were an excessive shade of blue, reached out her tiny hand, yanked the hat off, and threw it on the floor.
Then she said: “No.” Clear, crisp, and carrying a sense of certainty completely at odds with her age.
The maids looked at each other in dismay, and the protocol officer’s face turned bright red.
When the news reached the King’s ears, King Victor Emmanuel III was in his study, studying the war reports sent back from the front lines.
In the summer of 1916, the Italian army launched its sixth offensive on the Piave River, and the casualty figures, like a constantly climbing curve, were printed starkly on the paper.
The King put down the war report and was silent for a moment.
“Let her be,” he said.
No one dared to mention the hat again.
And the winter of 1917 was exceptionally cold.
Caporetto.
At the end of October, this name struck the Quirinal Palace like a thunderbolt; the Italian Second Army had collapsed by that small river.
It was not a retreat, but a collapse—over three hundred thousand men were captured or dispersed, and the entire front line retreated like a torn wound.
Germany’s infiltration tactics and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s heavy artillery riddled General Cadorna’s defensive lines with holes.
In those days, Cerydra was only two and a half years old and could not quite understand what the adults were talking about.
But she remembered that the lights in her father’s study were on all night, every night.
She remembered Umberto—the twelve-and-a-half-year-old Crown Prince—standing in the hallway, listening with a pale face to the reports from the adjutants in hushed tones.
She remembered her sisters’ tears, and she remembered her mother, Queen Elena, kneeling in the private prayer room, not coming out for the entire night.
She also remembered that her father had suddenly aged significantly during those days.
Gray hairs had sprouted at King Victor Emmanuel III’s temples, and his back seemed a bit more hunched, but he never revealed any weakness in front of his children.
On the day Cadorna was dismissed, the King walked out of his study and saw his youngest daughter sitting on the hallway carpet, using wooden blocks to build a crooked castle.
He stopped and looked down at her.
Cerydra looked up; those blue eyes were too clear for a two-year-old child.
She reached out her hand and handed him a block.
The King squatted down, took the block, and placed it on the top of the castle.
“It’s going to fall,” Cerydra said, her Italian still carrying the slurred, milky tone of a toddler.
“It will not fall,” the King said, “I will make it stand.” At that moment, he saw something strange in those baby-blue eyes—not comfort, not adoration, but a quiet, almost scrutinizing gaze.
It was as if this little daughter of just over two years old was understanding the sentence he had just spoken in her own way.
The King stood up, walked back to his study, and picked up the war report again.
The front line finally stabilized at the Piave River; the British and French sent reinforcements, and the Americans also began mobilizing across the ocean.
Italy did not fall.
But the atmosphere in the Quirinal Palace had changed; the war was no longer a headline in distant newspapers, but a breath right at their doorstep.
Rationing began to be implemented, and the lavish dishes of the past no longer appeared on the royal dining table.
The King ordered that the ration standards for royal family members be kept consistent with those of the officers at the front.
Mafalda threw several tantrums over this; she was at an age where she loved beauty, and she could not stand bread without butter and soup with nothing but salt.
Yolanda accepted it silently, though she would occasionally mention the pre-war pastry chef with a nostalgic tone.
Umberto ate everything without a word, even wiping the plate clean with bread; he was using this method to tell everyone: if the soldiers in the trenches could only eat this, then the Crown Prince would do the same.
Cerydra was not a picky eater; she ate everything, and she ate it all clean.
This surprised the Queen greatly.
Queen Elena—this princess of Montenegro, a woman who once rode horses over mountains to visit wounded soldiers—saw something familiar in her daughter.
A lack of fussiness ingrained in her bones.
“She is not like a princess,” the Queen said to the King one time, with no reproach in her tone, but rather a hint of a smile.
“She is like you,” the King replied.
The Queen smiled; this was the first time the King had seen her smile since Caporetto.
The war ended in November 1918.
Italy had won.
Trento and Trieste returned to the Kingdom, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.
The day the news of the armistice reached Rome, the entire city fell into a frenzy.
People poured into the streets, waving the tricolor flag and singing the national anthem.
On the balcony of the Quirinal Palace, the King and Queen, along with their children, waved to the crowd.
Cerydra was held in Umberto’s arms, looking down over the railing.
She saw the sea of people, saw the flags surging like a tide, and saw the tears and laughter on the faces of those who had endured three years of war.
Her hair flew in the autumn wind—that head of white hair was gradually growing longer, and the tips were dyed a faint blue, like the reflection on the surface of the sea in winter.
This was the hair color of the game character “Cerydra” from her past life’s memories.
She spent a long time accepting the fact that this body was growing into the likeness of that game character.
White hair, blue eyes, delicate features, and that innate, elegant posture that seemed carved into her very bones and blood.
The court protocol officer once tried to teach her to curtsy—the standard etiquette that all princesses of the House of Savoy were required to learn—Cerydra watched it once, did it herself, and it was even more standard and elegant than the officer’s demonstration, as if she were born knowing how.
But once she finished, she refused to do it a second time.
“It’s too much trouble,” she said, and she was only three and a half years old then.
The protocol officer almost fainted.
In the spring of 1919, Cerydra was four years old.
Her hair had grown to her shoulders, and that touch of blue had become even more obvious, as if someone had secretly dyed the tips of her hair with the color of the Adriatic Sea.
Her features gradually opened up, and her exquisite contours made everyone who saw her unable to resist looking a few more times.
Those blue eyes were especially unique—not the dark brown common to the House of Savoy, but a very pale, bright blue, like northern glaciers melting into the southern European sunshine.
Some old ministers said privately that this little princess did not look like someone from this era.
No one could clearly explain the meaning of this sentence, but everyone felt it was inexplicably accurate.
At four years old, Cerydra began to display some traits that puzzled everyone.
She did not like being served by others.
When a maid tried to help her dress, she would shake her head, clumsily buttoning the buttons herself; if she buttoned them wrong, she would undo them and start over, never tiring of it.
She wanted to eat by herself, walk by herself, and tidy up her toys by herself.
Once, a maid tried to carry her from the garden back to her room—because she had stepped in a puddle and her skirt hem was stained with mud—Cerydra struggled to get down to the ground and looked at the maid seriously with those blue eyes.
“I have feet,” she said, “I can walk myself.” The maid almost cried, not out of grievance, but because the little princess’s expression when she said this was too solemn, like an adult stating an unquestionable law.
Yet at the same time, she was incredibly elegant.
Yolanda’s piano teacher once saw Cerydra outside the piano room—she had just turned four and a half—sitting on the piano bench, her little hands pressing randomly on the keys.
But her back was straight, the angle of her hanging wrists was just right, and her posture was as beautiful as a Renaissance oil painting.
The teacher was stunned for a long time, and later said to Yolanda: “The way your sister sits in front of the piano is better looking than many people who have practiced for ten years.” Cerydra heard this, and she looked down at her hands—small, fair, and with nails neatly trimmed.
She thought: That’s because I played for over ten years in my past life.
But she said nothing.
Among all her siblings, Umberto was the one who came to see her most often.
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince had now grown into a thin, lean youth.
In the year or so since the war ended, he had become even more silent than before, and there was an extra layer in those eyes that resembled his father’s—not melancholy, but a kind of quiet contemplation.
He was training at the Turin Military Academy and would return to Rome for every holiday.
The first thing he did upon returning to the Quirinal Palace was always to go find Cerydra.
He brought her gifts.
Not the dolls or dresses that princesses usually liked, but little things he bought on the streets of Turin: an ancient Roman coin, a smoothly polished stone from the Alps, an old book he had read himself.
Cerydra would arrange these things neatly on the windowsill of her room, like a small museum.
“Do you like these?” Umberto asked one time.
“I do,” Cerydra said, “They are real.” Umberto did not fully understand this sentence, but he remembered it.
Sometimes, he would hold Cerydra and sit on a garden bench, telling her about Turin, about the training at the military academy, and about the ancient wars he had read about in books.
Cerydra listened quietly, occasionally asking questions that surprised him.
“Why didn’t Hannibal attack Rome directly after crossing the Alps?” When the four-year-old child asked this question, Umberto was silent for a full ten seconds.
“Because he did not have enough siege equipment.” He answered seriously, as if talking to a peer, “And his army suffered heavy losses while crossing the mountains and needed to rest.” Cerydra nodded, as if thinking about this answer.
Umberto looked at her and suddenly smiled.
That was the most relaxed he had smiled since the war ended.
“You will definitely surprise everyone in the future,” he said.
Cerydra did not answer; she leaned her head on her brother’s shoulder, looking at the roses blooming in the garden.
The May sun passed through the gaps in the branches and leaves, casting dappled light and shadows on the ground.
She remembered a May in another world, that night she was pulling cards on her phone.
A ten-pull yielded ten Cerydras; she still remembered the posture of that character on the screen, holding a scepter and wearing a crown.
White hair, blue dress, a stern gaze.
And now, she was becoming her.
Not just the appearance, but something deeper.
That instinctive sensitivity to order, that natural affinity for “laws,” that elegance in her bones and that rebelliousness in her bones—they were slowly growing within this small shell, like a seed, waiting for the moment to break through the soil.
In the winter of 1920, Cerydra was five years old.
On Christmas Eve, the King gave each child a gift.
Yolanda received a string of pearl necklaces, Mafalda received an evening gown shipped from Paris, and Umberto received a hunting knife engraved with the family crest.
Cerydra received a cane.
It was short, just right for a five-year-old’s palm.
The shaft was made of dark wood, polished smooth and warm, and the top was inlaid with a chess piece carved from crystal—the King piece.
The crystal refracted tiny rays of light under the candlelight, like a solidified star.
“I chose this myself,” the King said, watching his little daughter take the cane, “I don’t know why, but the first time I saw it, I felt it should belong to you.” Cerydra held the cane, her fingers closing over the crystal King piece.
The edges of that chess piece fit against her palm, as if it were born to be held by her.
She looked up at her father.
The King saw something at that moment.
In his daughter’s impossibly blue eyes, there was a steadiness that transcended her age.
Not the innocence of a child, not the sophistication of someone precocious, but a true, bone-deep calmness—like a chess player overlooking the board, who has already seen all the possibilities before making a move.
“Thank you, Father,” Cerydra said.
She lowered her head to look at the cane in her hand, looking at the crystal King piece at the top.
Her short white hair hung on both sides of her cheeks, and the blue at the tips of her hair shimmered slightly in the candlelight.
Outside the window, it was snowing in Rome.
This was the last snow of 1920, softly covering the dome of the Quirinal Palace, covering the ruins of the Roman Forum, and covering all the scars and glory of this Eternal City.
Cerydra held the cane, standing in front of the window.
Her chess game was slowly unfolding.
And the twenties in Italy were also rushing towards everyone, carrying the post-war frenzy and undercurrents.
The black shirts of the Fascist Party were gathering in the north, Mussolini’s name began to appear in the newspapers, and the anger of veterans and the fear of the middle class were fermenting on this ancient land.
In the King’s study, the reports on social unrest were getting thicker day by day.
Cerydra knew all of these things.
She had read about this history in the textbooks of her past life.
And now, she was standing at the center of history.
At five years old, she gripped the cane tightly, and the crystal King piece reflected the snow flying outside the window.
There was still a long way to go.