“—and furthermore, Evelyn, your petty jealousy has become an embarrassment to the Crown!”
The voice was loud, resonant, and carried the distinct, nasal cadence of a young man who had never once been told to shut up.
I blinked, waiting for the harsh white glare of my monitor to fade. Instead, the blur resolved into vaulted marble ceilings, stained-glass windows casting fractured crimson light across a polished stone floor, and a floating, golden chandelier humming with raw mana.
No monitor. No mechanical keyboard beneath my fingers. Just the suffocating squeeze of a whalebone corset digging into my ribs and the scent of expensive, overly floral perfume.
Directly in front of me stood a boy of about eighteen. He had immaculate golden hair, piercing blue eyes, and a white-and-gold ceremonial uniform with enough braided epaulets to strangle a horse.
Prince Julian Solaris. First heir to the Asterian Empire. Base charisma: 85. Intelligence scaling: dismal.
And currently, he was pointing a white-gloved finger directly at my nose.
“Do you have nothing to say for yourself?” Julian demanded, his voice echoing across the Grand Atrium of the Royal Academy. Around us, a semicircle of uniformed students watched in hushed, gleeful anticipation. “Harassing a scholarship student in the courtyard? Dumping ink into her satchel? Have the Vance family morals fallen so low?”
Memories—none of them originally mine, yet all of them painfully familiar—slotted into place like a loaded save file.
I looked down at my hands. Pale, slender, adorned with two silver signet rings. I caught my reflection in the polished brass of a nearby decorative pillar: sharp violet eyes, dark wavy hair coiled into aristocratic drills, and a perpetual, haughty sneer resting naturally on my lips.
Evelyn Vance. The Act One tutorial boss of Crown of Thorns.
A minor noblewoman with a C-rank fire affinity, an S-rank inferiority complex, and a doomed obsession with her childhood fiancé, Prince Julian. According to the game’s main script, this exact argument in the Grand Atrium was the Opening Event of Year One. Evelyn was supposed to shriek, slap a nearby maid, try to cast a low-tier fireball at the girl standing defensively behind Julian, and get placed on academic probation. Twelve months later, after escalating to dark magic and assassination attempts, she would lose her head on the winter execution block.
I shifted my weight slightly, testing the balance of my new heels. Not bad. A three-inch block heel. Good ankle support, terrible for sprinting.
Behind Julian’s shoulder stood the actual target of the scene. A tall girl with silver hair tied back in a utilitarian ponytail, wearing a faded, slightly frayed standard-issue academy uniform. Her hand rested calmly on the pommel of an unadorned iron longsword at her hip. Her slate-gray eyes were cold, exhausted, and sharp enough to flay skin.
Seraphina Valerius. The Heroine.
Even at level four, before unlocking her divine sword-saint class in Act Two, she looked like she could snap Julian in half and use him as a toothpick.
“Well?” Julian pressed, puffing out his chest as the silence stretched two seconds past its dramatic prime. “I am considering petitioning the High Sovereign to dissolve our betrothal, Evelyn! Unless you drop to your knees and apologize to Lady Seraphina this instant, consider our engagement hanging by a thread!”
In the game, this threat was the trigger that drove Evelyn into madness.
In reality—or whatever version of reality I now inhabited—it sounded like the greatest golden parachute in financial history.
I let out a slow, measured breath, allowing the sharp, aristocratic sneer on my face to smooth out into cool, detached neutrality.
“A thread, Your Highness?” I asked. My voice was clearer and slightly deeper than I expected, carrying a crisp noble inflection. “Why leave it to a thread? Let’s use a pair of shears.”
Julian’s mouth stayed half-open, his prepared follow-up lecture dying on his tongue. “What?”
“The betrothal,” I clarified pleasantly, folding my hands neatly in front of my velvet skirt. “Between House Solaris and House Vance. If my memory of imperial contract law serves—and it does, because my tutor beat it into my skull with a birch ruler—a formal dissolution initiated by the Crown inside academy grounds requires only the verbal consent of both parties in front of three noble witnesses, followed by a stamped severance writ from the Bursar’s Office.”
I glanced lazily toward the front row of the crowd, where three girls in gold-trimmed capes were watching with wide, startled eyes.
“Lady Clara of House Vane, Lord Marcus of House Thorne, and Lord Henrik of House Sterling,” I said, nodding to each of them in turn. “You three heard His Highness just now, correct? He wishes to dissolve the engagement due to irreconcilable moral friction.”
Lord Marcus blinked rapidly, glancing nervously at the Prince. “Uh. Well, he said—”
“Wait a moment!” Julian snapped, flushing pink up to his ears. He stepped forward, dropping his pointing hand. “Evelyn, stop playing games! This is a warning meant to correct your unbecoming behavior, not a—a legal negotiation!”
“Oh, I would never dream of trapping a man of your lofty moral standards in a union with someone so terribly petty,” I said, placing a hand over my heart with mock solemnity. “You are entirely right, Julian. Clearly, I am unfit to walk beside the future sun of the Empire. Therefore, out of deep, unwavering respect for the Crown, I humbly accept your annulment.”
A collective gasp rippled through the Atrium. Behind Julian, Seraphina’s eyebrows twitched upward by a fraction of a millimeter. Her fingers relaxed slightly on the pommel of her sword, her head tilting as she studied me like a stray dog that had suddenly started reciting tax law.
“You... you cannot simply accept it like you’re returning a faulty carriage!” Julian sputtered. “Our families—the Duke will be furious—”
“My father is the third son of a dwindling viscountcy whose northern silver mines dried up three winters ago,” I interrupted smoothly. “The only reason House Vance hasn’t declared bankruptcy is because we’ve been spending the last four years buying silk gowns and carriage polish to maintain the illusion that we can afford a royal wedding. Quite frankly, the cancellation fee the Crown owes us for calling off the contract will keep our estate afloat for a decade.”
I unfastened the heavy sapphire brooch pinned to my collar—the engagement token of House Solaris, worth roughly four thousand gold crowns at the capital pawnshop, or three thousand five hundred if I liquidated it directly through the Academy Bursar—and held it out between two fingers.
“Now,” I continued briskly, “according to Section Four of the Imperial Betrothal Act, since you initiated the public repudiation without a tribunal conviction of treason, the standard severance penalty applies. Twelve thousand gold crowns, payable in bearer bonds or silver bullion, plus the forfeiture of this brooch back to the royal treasury.”
Julian stared at the sapphire brooch as if it were a live venomous snake. “Twelve—are you insane?! You dumped ink on a student’s bag!”
“Allegedly,” I corrected. “And even if I did, petty vandalism carries a twelve-silver fine under Academy Bylaw Seven, not the voiding of an imperial marriage penalty. Of course, we could drag this before the High Chancellor’s court, where I would be forced to read aloud the forty-seven painfully misspelled love poems you sent me last summer so the magistrates can evaluate our emotional history...”
Julian’s face went from pink to a terrifying shade of beetroot. “You kept those?!”
“Or,” I said, offering him a serene, merciful smile, “you can sign a standard no-fault severance voucher at the Bursar’s desk right now for a flat lump sum of eight thousand gold crowns. I walk away in disgrace, you look like a decisive, righteous prince freeing himself from a wicked woman, and those poems go straight into the nearest brazier. Everyone wins.”
The Atrium was dead silent. Even the floating mana chandelier seemed to hum a little quieter.
Four thousand gold crowns was enough to lease the abandoned glasshouse on the edge of the Lower Merchant Quarter for three years. Another two thousand would cover commercial alchemy licenses, a high-grade copper alembic, and bulk shipments of glassware. The remaining two thousand would let me live on freshly baked brioche and imported tea while the entire academy tore itself apart fighting the Demon Cult in Act Two.
Julian looked around wildly, realizing that every noble student in the hall was watching him calculate the price of his own dignity.
“Fine!” he barked, snatching the sapphire brooch from my fingers so roughly he nearly pricked his thumb. “Eight thousand! And I never want to see your face in the Inner Court again, Evelyn Vance! Come, Lady Seraphina—we have wasted enough breath on someone who values gold over honor!”
He spun on his heel, his white cape billowing dramatically behind him, and marched toward the administrative wing—presumably to have his royal steward draft the bank note before I changed my mind about the poetry.
The crowd parted hastily for him, whispering furiously.
Seraphina didn’t follow him immediately.
She lingered in the center of the marble floor, five paces away from me. Up close, the dark circles under her slate-gray eyes were distinct. In the lore of Crown of Thorns, Seraphina spent her nights hunting low-level rift-beasts in the sewer tunnels beneath the city just to afford sword maintenance and medicinal herbs, all while enduring the constant hazing of noble brats by day.
She looked at my calm posture, then down at my empty collar where the royal brooch had been, and finally straight into my eyes.
“You didn’t put ink in my satchel,” she said. Her voice was low, slightly raspy from lack of sleep, and entirely devoid of the theatrical grandeur Julian loved.
“My maids did,” I replied honestly. “Or rather, I strongly implied they should three days ago when I was still an idiot. Consider the ink a parting gift from the old Evelyn. If you bring the ruined textbooks to the third-floor supply clerk and mention my name, they’ll issue you replacements on my family tab before it closes at noon.”
Seraphina’s gaze narrowed. “What are you planning, Lady Vance?”
“Retirement, mostly,” I said, smoothing down the front of my overly tight bodice. “And tearing this corset into kindling the moment I find a pair of scissors. Good luck with the Prince, Lady Valerius. His poetry really is terrible—he rhymes sword with lord in almost every stanza.”
I offered her a polite, shallow curtsy—just enough to satisfy basic etiquette without hurting my knees—and turned toward the southern archway before she could reply.
I had forty-two minutes before the noon bell rang and the Bursar’s Office closed for lunch. If I moved fast, I could cash the royal severance check, forfeit my spot in the Elite Noble Dormitory, and secure the deed to the dilapidated apothecary on Bramble Lane before the afternoon rain started.
As I stepped out of the Grand Atrium into the cool autumn breeze of the outer colonnade, a tiny, translucent blue window flickered to life in the bottom corner of my peripheral vision—the only remnant of the game’s interface that had followed me across.
[Main Storyline Altered: "The Fallen Rose of House Vance" — ABORTED] [Title Lost: Crown Prince’s Obsessive Fiancée**]** [Title Acquired: Pragmatic Mercenary (Rank F)]
[Passive Skill Unlocked: Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 1)] Description: Those who abandon the sword for the scale see the true value of the world. Allows the user to view the hidden medicinal properties, resonance purity, and market value of raw materials.
I paused on the stone steps, looking down at a patch of scraggly, grayish weeds growing stubbornly through a crack in the academy’s manicured cobblestones. Every student who walked past crushed them underfoot without a second thought.
As I focused on the weeds, faint golden text hovered just above their serrated leaves.
[Item: Ash-Crest Nettle (Common Weed)] [Standard Value: 0 Copper**]** [Hidden Property: When boiled in distilled rainwater at 60°C with crushed peppermint, neutralizes Low-Tier Mana Burnout and restores 15% Stamina over 10 minutes.]
A slow, genuine smile spread across my face.
Keep the throne. Keep the sword fights. I was going to make an absolute killing.