Chapter 7

The words cut like a silver blade, splitting open the shameful truth my parents had never been willing to admit.

They couldn't even speak.

Serena had no patience for them.

The soft-flower act she'd worn for them all those years had only ever been a tool to compete with me for attention.

In the manor, she had played the same role for Cain.

Now that I was dead and she had no rival left, there was no reason to keep pretending.

"The Alpha King is arriving!"

Hearing Cain was here.

Serena's smile snapped instantly back into place.

She was about to go greet him when she saw the crowd of Pack Healers behind him, and froze in place.

"My Alpha, I'm already well. There's no need for Healers. The auspicious hour is almost here. Let's go to the Great Hall."

Serena thought Cain was worried about her health.

But the moment she finished speaking.

Cain gave a cold, thin smile.

"Since this is a Luna Coronation, that face of yours simply won't do."

Serena instinctively assumed Cain disliked her makeup.

Before she could call for a mirror.

Servants had already pinned her in place and forced a bowl of thick black potion down her throat.

The Pack Healers poured in with their cases.

Moments later, ear-splitting screams tore from the inner chamber.

Cain stood with his hands clasped behind his back. There was no feeling in his face at all.

One incense-stick of time later.

Serena was carried back out.

My parents looked up from where they knelt, and the sight alone knocked them back onto the floor.

Serena was wearing my face. Identical. Even the makeup and the robes matched what I had worn in life, stroke for stroke.

Cain stepped forward, eyes going red.

With a trembling hand, he touched that face and whispered, "Lyra…"

"My Alpha."

Serena, weak, lifted her head and answered.

Cain's hand snapped to her throat.

He hissed a sharp sound.

There was a dark, obsessed madness in his eyes.

"Quiet. My Lyra wouldn't speak like that."

Then, as if her answer had not been right, he signaled for the servants to bring the voice-severing tonic and poured it down her throat.

In the end, Serena completed the Luna Coronation wearing a face exactly like mine.

Cain had poisoned her voice into silence. He had turned her into nothing but my shadow.

The moment Serena let slip a gesture or expression that wasn't like mine.

Cain went wild. He tortured her.

Days later, Serena broke.

When her attendants looked away, she tore her own face open with a hairpin.

Cain came running, and when he saw her ruined face, he killed several servants on the spot in his rage.

Seeing him lose himself.

Serena, lying on the ground, suddenly began to laugh.

As if she were mocking the powerlessness of his rage.

The voice leaking from her poisoned throat was a cracked, ruined sound, like the last breath of a dying thing.

"Even if you kill me… Lyra, that bitch, still isn't coming back."

"Do you know what happens if she fails her mission? Do you?"

Serena stared at Cain, her face twisted. "All she had to do was keep one pup alive. Just one. And she wouldn't have had to die."

"But she never would have guessed — not one of her five pups lived. Even dead, their bones were ground into powder. They can never pass on. Ha ha ha —"

"Silence!"

Cain roared, eyes blown wide.

He stumbled back a few steps, bloodshot eyes fixed on her.

Every word she spoke.

Was another blade dragging through his heart.

"I'll say it. Admit it. The one who killed Lyra has always been you."

The moment Serena shouted those words, a scream tore from her as Cain cut out her tongue.

"Silence! I told you to be silent!"

Blood-red in the eyes, Cain struck her again and again.

Until Serena died with her eyes still open.

Only then did he drop the blade as if waking from a nightmare, clutch his head, and let loose howl after howl of agony.

"It wasn't me. Lyra, it wasn't me!"

He sank to his knees, tears pouring out of him like a broken dam.

"Lyra, my head hurts. Come back and see me, please… I'm begging you…"

I watched him quietly.

There was nothing left in my chest.

【Host. This world has finished its reckoning. Please prepare yourself.】

The System, gone silent for so long, spoke at last.

I closed my eyes, welcoming the release of the end.

Cain's sobbing grew further and further away. My consciousness sank into endless black.

I don't know how long it lasted.

I snapped my eyes open, gasping, and sat up on a hospital bed.

"She's awake! The young lady is awake!"

"My daughter! My daughter, you've finally woken up —"

I was pulled into someone's arms before I could understand what was happening.

Memories of the modern world flooded into me.

Instinctively, I called for the System.

"System, wasn't I terminated? How am I back in the modern world?"

No answer.

Just when I thought the System wouldn't speak again.

That voice came once more.

【Host. Something changed in the previous world. Cain took his own life, and together with the original host's parents, they offered up their souls in exchange for your mission success.】

I couldn't process it.

Until the System spoke again.

【Your mission-success reward has been delivered. In this world, you will have a long-lived body and a loving family. Good luck.】

Tears fell without my meaning them to.

Looking at the worry on my parents' faces right in front of me.

I held them tighter, and for the first time, a smile rose from deep inside me.

Thank the moon.

Thank the moon everything I had ever wanted.

Was not too late after all.

In this life, I would have a life of true happiness.

【End of story】