Elma's blood ran cold.
The name—that alphanumeric sequence of steel and sorrow—was a ghost she thought she had buried in the mass grave of her previous life. To hear it spoken here, in the heart of the Altheris estate by a woman dripping with fresh blood, was a tactical nightmare.
She knows. The thought looped in Elma's mind, sharp and jagged.
The luminous green veins that had snaked across her skin during the descent had dimmed, fading back into the pale porcelain of her arms.
The sickly light was gone, leaving her looking like nothing more than a terrified child lost in the dark—but a trace of the paralysis remained.
The woman stepped closer, her black-and-red ceramic cat mask catching the moonlight in jagged slashes.
"Do not look so hollowed," the woman said, her voice rippling with that strange, metallic distortion.
"We are here to determine where you stand."
Suddenly, the air behind the woman shifted.
Elma couldn't see anything through the darkness—the courtyard was empty, the shadows of the cypress trees motionless.
But her sensory net, the instincts of a weapon that had survived a thousand battles, screamed a warning.
There were eyes on her.
Dozens of them.
Elma forced her throat to work, her muscles clicking against the lingering paralysis as she dragged words into the air.
"Standing... where?"
The woman leaned in, the painted grin of the cat mask mocking her.
"You were chosen, Little one. Just as we were. You are not a mistake of the forge, nor a discarded product. Your role is the keystone—the pivot upon which the new world turns."
"By who?" Elma spat.
The woman didn't answer immediately. She tilted her head back, tracking a slow, reverent path across the starless sky.
"One who was ancient when Veraxys was but a breath of dust," she whispered, her voice vibrating with a terrifying, hollow sincerity.
"His cause is noble, D—66. It is the only cause that matters."
A cold, tactical clarity settled over Elma.
This was the heart of House Altheris—the apex house of Veraxys. The most heavily guarded house in the city. And yet, they could breach it without a sound.
If they had wanted anyone in the manor dead, they already would be.
"What would you have me do?" she asked, her voice steadying into the flat, clinical tone of the D—66 she had once been.
"You were brought back as Elma Altheris," the woman replied, her cat mask tilting as if studying a specimen.
"So, you will be Elma Altheris. You will not flee this family. You will not attempt to vanish into the gutters of the city. You will play your role in this masquerade until the curtain falls."
Confusion flickered through Elma's mind. Run? The thought was almost absurd.
There was no "outside" for her—no home to return to, no map that led anywhere but back to a laboratory or a grave.
"And most importantly," the woman continued, the metallic distortion in her voice sharpening like a blade, "you will do exactly as we command. Without hesitation. If we tell you to spill blood within these very walls you do it."
The courtyard fell into a suffocating silence. The dozens of eyes in the dark seemed to pulse in anticipation.
Elma looked at her pale, porcelain hands—the hands of a noble daughter, currently stained with the metaphorical weight of a thousand future sins.
"And if I don't?" Elma said, the question cutting through the silence like a scalpel.
The cat mask didn't flinch. The answer came instantly, devoid of both malice and pity.
"You die."
The words hung in the cold air, simple and absolute.
Death.
The concept clawed at the back of D-66's mind, death had been a mercy. It was a shutdown command she had secretly prayed for.
But now?
Elma felt her heart kick against her ribs—a frantic, rhythmic hammering that defied her purpose.
Fear.
She was afraid. The realization hit her harder than the paralysis.
Why? Why did the prospect of non-existence suddenly taste like ash? She was a weapon in a stolen dress, playing a role in a play written by monsters. She should welcome the curtain call.
But as she looked at the moon washing over the cypress trees, and the woman in the cat mask waiting for her answer, a terrifying thought took root.
She was expecting something.
Not a mission. Not a target. Not a command.
Something else.
For the first time in her existence, the future wasn't a calculated trajectory. It was a blank page.
And however jagged and terrifying this new life was... she wasn't ready to close the book.
She swallowed the fear, forcing it down into the pit of her stomach where it burned like fuel.
"I understand," Elma said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried across the yard.
She locked eyes with the black hollows of the cat mask.
"I will play my part."
"Good," the woman answered. The word was clipped, finalizing a contract signed in coercion.
"Your training starts tomorrow," she said, turning her back on Elma, the crimson slashes on her mask vanishing into the shadows.
Elma blinked. The adrenaline that had spiked at the threat of death curdled into confusion.
"Training?" Elma asked, the word slipping out before she could stop it.
The woman paused. She didn't turn around, but her head tilted slightly.
"You wanted to learn how to bend patterns, didn't you?"
"Also," the woman added, her distorted voice dripping with a casual, cutting cruelty, "you'll be more of a help to the cause if you could actually do something."
The woman stepped forward, not into the distance, but through the darkness, vanishing as if the night itself had swallowed her whole.
The eyes in the trees blinked once, then faded.
Elma was left alone in the silent courtyard, the smell of ozone and blood lingering in the cold air.
Beneath the pale skin of her arm, the green veins erupted once more.
The world tilted, the moonlit training ground blurring into a smear of silver and black.
Her knees buckled. Before her small body even hit the cold stone, her consciousness snapped.
Elma Altheris was gone. Only the darkness remained.