In a dark, narrow room, over a dozen girls slept on a large shared bed, crammed together so tightly that with every shift in position, someone had to make way for another's knees or elbows.
Most were twelve or thirteen years old. They lay curled beneath thin blankets, careful not to let any part of their bodies slip past the fabric, even though it was hard to find much warmth beneath it anyway.
“Quiet!” a muffled whisper echoed, and almost at that exact moment, a candle on the left wall flared to life with a faint, yellowish glow.
The girl lying closest squinted and pulled her blanket over her head, then kicked the companion sleeping next to her, evidently deciding her role in the morning wake-up routine was over. The next girl answered with a quiet grumble, rolled over, and sleepily nudged the next person with her foot, passing the physical prompt along until it reached the very end of the bed.
Elara Veyne only woke up when a stray heel shoved her against the wall. Her knee struck the hard surface with enough force to banish the last remnants of sleep, replacing them with a sharp ache.
She let out a soft groan, pulled her leg in, and sat up. She rubbed the bruised spot for a moment before she managed to remember why all the other girls were still lying down while she was expected to be up.
“Get moving… If you’re late, they’ll turn you into flower fertilizer,” her neighbor mumbled without opening her eyes, tucking her feet deeper under the blanket.
Elara reflexively touched the wound on her forehead. The sharp sting beneath her fingertips helped clear the last of the fog from her mind.
Pushing the covers aside, she carefully slipped out of bed and reached for the maid’s uniform hanging on the wall. She tried to dress quickly enough to avoid giving anyone an excuse for another kick.
The moment she stepped out into the corridor, a draft of cold air slipped under her collar. She adjusted the fabric around her neck and quietly closed the door behind her.
The passage curved in both directions. Doorways spaced out every few meters were illuminated by candles in wall sconces; their dim glow was just enough to see the path, leaving wide swaths of shadows in between.
Elara glanced to her left, toward her own shoulder. Hovering there was a small book, barely larger than her hand. Its dark red cover had a rough texture that resembled dried skin. Despite the corridor's gloom, she could see it just as clearly as she had the first time she opened her eyes in this world.
You’re still here…
The book had been with her for a few days now, floating silently by her left shoulder. But every attempt to touch its cover ended the same way - like reaching out to an image with no physical substance.
The other maids paid it no mind, even when it floated right in front of their faces. Elara’s cautious questions had only earned her a few irritated glares.
She had already tried talking to it like a system, asking it to open an interface, and even calling out for an AI, hoping one of those terms would trigger a response.
But she had received no answer. Eventually, she began to suspect the little book was just a hallucination brought on by her head injury - though its persistent presence made that explanation harder and harder to accept.
She couldn't spend her whole morning worrying about it, though. Whether she was staring at a magical artifact or a figment of her imagination, her duties as a maid remained painfully real.
Noxveil Spire was a tower of sorceresses. Ever since Elara found herself inside, she hadn't seen a single path leading to the outside world.
Every day around four in the morning, she had to start cleaning the eleventh through the thirteenth floors, scrubbing away all trash and stains before the candlelight shifted from a dim yellow to a bright white.
The head of the servants had explained the rules with enough detail to leave no room for convenient misunderstandings: a dirty corridor meant punishment, and a disobedient maid’s body could be chopped up and used as flower fertilizer.
Finishing her work too late was just as dangerous. An apprentice of magic encountered in the halls might decide the girl was better suited for a spell experiment than holding a mop.
At first, Elara had tried to brush those threats off as a way to scare children. But it only took a few days for her to realize there was no exaggeration. The residents of the upper floors angered unnervingly fast. They almost always acted as if every wasted second pushed them closer to something they desperately wanted to avoid.
The previous owner of her body had died because of one of them - struck in the head with a book so hard that she was later tossed into a storage room alongside the trash.
When Elara regained consciousness and crawled out with a bloodied face, the head maid stared at her like a ghost for a moment. But once she confirmed the girl was still breathing, she immediately assigned her new duties.
No one considered her head wound an excuse to rest, and she quickly learned it was better not to draw attention to herself any more than strictly necessary.
If I can walk, I can clean… Apparently, that’s all it takes to be considered fully recovered.
She stepped into the utility room next to the bedroom, grabbed a mop, a bucket, and a waste bin, then arranged everything on a small, flat cart.
Symbols were carved into its wheels, supposedly to muffle the sound so the rattling wouldn't irritate the hypersensitive apprentices. But when she had tried to examine the runes closely a few days ago, it only gave her a mounting headache.
This time, she just grabbed the handle and wheeled the cart out into the hall, suppressing a yawn as she began another morning in a place where even cleaning was a matter of survival.
The eleventh floor was dead silent, broken only by the slop of wet fabric sliding across the stone. Gradually, Elara’s shoulders relaxed as she focused on her work.
The plaques on the doors bore room numbers she could now read, thanks to fragments of the body’s previous owner’s memories slowly trickling in since her awakening.
It wasn't enough to understand the laws governing the Spire, but at least she didn’t have to guess if she was still on the right level at every turn.
She was wringing out the mop when a crying sound drifted from behind one of the doors - so quiet she almost mistook it for creaking wood.
Only the next broken sob made her lift her head. The candle flames on either side of the entrance flickered erratically, even though she didn't feel a breeze.
With each subsequent sound, the light dimmed and flared, casting elongated shadows across the wall. Elara tightened her grip on the mop handle. She adjusted her collar and lowered her gaze, reasoning that if someone on the other side needed help, a twelve-year-old maid with a bucket was in no position to give it.
I didn’t hear anything related to my job… Just wash the floor and keep moving.
She finished cleaning the section in front of that door faster than usual, careful not to leave any visible streaks, then pushed the cart toward the next stretch of the corridor.
Only when the crying faded away around the bend did she allow herself a deeper breath, though any lingering drowsiness was completely gone.
On the twelfth floor, a mess she had fully expected was waiting for her. One of the residents routinely threw garbage right outside her door. Between scraps of paper lay clumps of long hair and chunks of meat whose origins Elara had no desire to investigate. She unhooked the small dustpan from the bin and crouched down, trying to scoop everything up without letting it touch her bare skin.
As she turned to empty the dustpan, a faint scratching echoed behind her, followed by the drawn-out creak of a sliding door.
She glanced over her shoulder and froze. A narrow gap now existed where the door had been firmly shut moments ago. The darkness inside was so absolute she couldn't see the resident’s face or even a sliver of the floor. But just knowing someone might be watching her was enough to make the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up against her collar.
Elara slowly straightened her back and bowed her head, fighting to keep her hands from shaking. Running away could be taken as an insult, whereas staying put at least offered a chance that whoever was there would lose interest.
Within just a few days, she had learned that magic apprentices demanded respect, even when you weren't entirely sure they were standing on the other side of a door.
Any one of them could harm her with barely a thought. The full-fledged Magistras, meanwhile, stood so far above her station that she doubted she would ever even be allowed in their presence.
For several breaths, she waited in stillness, listening to the pounding of her own heart. But no voice or footstep emerged from the crack. She couldn't just stand there all morning, so she carefully set down the dustpan and grabbed the mop again, keeping the door in her peripheral vision.
She cleaned slower than intended, but when the curve of the hall finally shielded her from that dark interior, she picked up her pace. She pushed the cart up the sloping ramp to the next level, feeling a dull ache settling into her tense shoulders.
The thirteenth floor filled her with dread before she even reached the first door. She knew the number shouldn't matter; in her past life, she had never considered herself superstitious. But after waking up in someone else’s body and spending days surrounded by sorceresses, it was getting harder to laugh off her fears simply because she lacked a rational explanation for them.
There was also a rumor among the maids that the previous girl responsible for this corridor had died right here. Naturally, no one had bothered to give Elara the details before handing over the shift.
I’ve cleaned this place a few times already and nothing happened… If I finish fast enough, today will be exactly the same.
Lowering her head, she started scrubbing the floor, trying to focus on the rhythmic sweeps of the mop. Still, the uneasy sensation of being watched from just beyond her line of sight refused to fade. Every so often, she glanced at the candles to check the color of their flames, then rolled the cart forward, making sure not to miss any grime along the baseboards.
When she reached the third door on the right, blood began to seep out from beneath its lower edge.
Elara stopped the mop mid-sweep and pulled her foot back. She watched the thick, bright crimson liquid pool across the stone, filling the cracks and inching toward the center of the hall. Almost immediately, a heavy, metallic copper scent hit her, making her throat tighten. But right before the stain reached the cart’s wheels, its leading edge went still.
For a moment, she just stared at the puddle, hoping something else would happen to give her a clue whether she should run. The door remained shut. However, she was all too familiar with the head maid's orders. There were zero exceptions made for the type of mess or how it ended up on the floor.
If I leave this here, they’ll say I didn't do my job… Maybe I can just mop up the blood from this side and avoid getting close to the door.
Gripping the handle, she cautiously slid the mop forward. But before she could even take a step, the small book by her shoulder suddenly darted in front of her face, springing open with a dry rustle.
Elara froze, momentarily forgetting even the stench of blood. For the past few days, the object hadn't reacted to a single plea or physical touch, yet now its pages were turning entirely on their own.
A sudden surge of hope washed over her, though she didn't yet know if this new development meant help or just another deadly mystery she didn't understand.
So you can actually do something after all… If you’re going to help me, there really couldn’t be a better time.
The book settled on a blank page. Lines of dark text began to materialize. Elara shifted her gaze to read them, still keeping a watchful eye on the unmoving puddle.
May 21st, Year 314 of the Lunar Calendar.
While cleaning the corridor, you noticed blood seeping from beneath a door. Though the sight alarmed you, you took a step forward, remembering that failing your duties could turn you into flower fertilizer.
You attempted to wipe the stain away, but with every sweep of the mop, the pool of blood grew. Ultimately, you looked down and realized its source wasn't the floor, but your own body.
The following day, another desiccated corpse was found among the trash of Noxveil Spire.
Elara jerked back so sharply she slammed her hip against the cart, nearly tipping the waste bin. She leaned on the mop to catch her balance and stared down at her hands, half-expecting to see the first signs of the grotesque fate written on the page.
Her skin was unbroken. Her legs were still holding her up. The blood lay a few steps away, exactly where it had stopped before the writing appeared. Elara swallowed hard and reread the final line, feeling her earlier spark of hope turning into a dreadful chill creeping beneath her clothes.
Is this a warning about what I’m about to do?
If I touch that blood, will I really end up like it says?
She had no immediate way to verify the book’s credibility, but she certainly wasn't going to test it by performing the exact action that was supposed to turn her into a dried-out husk.
Even if the artifact was somehow trying to trick her, bypassing the puddle seemed far more reasonable than willingly checking if it could accurately predict the future.
Slowly drawing the mop back, she gripped the cart handle and steered it closer to the opposite wall, doing her best to maximize the distance between herself and the crimson pool.
She had only managed to push the wheels a tiny fraction when the text on the open page shifted again. Her eyes darted straight back to the book.
Terrified by the warning, you left the blood on the floor and decided to bypass the soiled area.
That very same morning, the head maid summoned you to explain why you failed to finish your work. The next day, a fresh batch of fertilizer was delivered to the greenhouse.
Your new, foul-smelling form proved exceptionally useful for the flowers.
Elara halted the cart. She stared at the final sentence for a long time, pressing her lips together so tightly they started to ache. She turned her head toward the stain, glanced at her mop, and looked back at the open book. After days of total silence, it had clearly decided to make up for lost time.
Damn it… If I clean it, I die right here, and if I leave the blood, they’ll kill me for slacking off.
Since you’ve finally started talking, how about you also show me what I’m supposed to do to survive until tomorrow?