A numb feeling lulled the young girl to sleep, the heavy sound of her own blood coursing through her veins echoed in her ears, creating a soundtrack in the background.

There was this distant sense of agony, but it was cushioned by a muddy, almost soothing feeling of slowly sinking into the deep. As if Celia had stepped into a lake made of quicksand.

A sudden pain in her chest shook her entire torso as her heart began to pound like a sledgehammer inside. Shocked, her eyes popped open, only to close again as she began to flail her arms in the water around her.

Her throat burned and the urge to gag overwhelmed her, only allowing more fluid to enter her respiratory system.

It was surprisingly easy to get to the surface, holding on to anything she could find and spitting out all the water she had inhaled. Yet it took several minutes of coughing and heaving as she hung on, shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Celia didn't know how she had gotten to this point, or why she hadn't died as she had assumed, but she knew she had to get out of this situation as quickly as possible.

She clung desperately to the wall of the strange container she woke up in, as her heavy clothing pulled her back into the water. It was a terrifying struggle until she managed to swing one leg over what seemed to be the edge of a steep tub.

When she had finally rolled over the highest point, she was slammed onto a hard surface by sheer power of gravity. The impact traveled through her instantly, sitting nicely next to her aching lungs and the pounding in her head, as she pulled her face up that was stuck flat to the ground.

Her body felt uncomfortable and she was confused as well. There was a ball of sharp pain stuck in her chest, rippling through her in waves as regular as clockwork. There was wet hair stuck to her cheek and forehead, but even though her vision wasn't impaired, she couldn't easily believe that what she was seeing was real.

It was hard to understand what she was looking at. And it was not just because her brain had been rattled a bit when she had hit what she could now assume to be a bathroom floor.

'This feels like a fever dream.' She was looking at a brass bathtub straight out of a museum. 'How does this thing look so posh? Did I wake up in some millionaire's mansion?'

On four intricately carved lion paws, it stood proudly in the middle of a huge washroom. She had never seen a bathroom this big in her life, not even the shared ones in the dorms could compare.

One side of the room was covered with large windows, with a screen behind the bathtub being the only thing that protected privacy in there.

Celia couldn't calm down when , even the astonishing yet simple view of a setting sun, offered by those large windows, felt as unfamiliar to her as the room itself.

Suddenly, it was as if she had remembered something – or someone. 'Pan?' Her restless eyes searched the empty room as she called out his name in her mind. 'Pan!'

He did not respond. And it frightened her – to be alone. She had never been on her own for as long as she could remember. This was unprecedented.

Powerless, Celia tried to drag her soaked and numb limbs across the white-tiled floor. At that moment, she looked down at her hands, feeling fragile as they shook meagerly under the pressure of her wet weight.

Her nails were clean and well manicured, but some had distinct marks having been bitten – Celia didn't have the habit of biting her nails. And had her arms always been like this?

As she continued to examine what she could see, she couldn't find any of her callouses.

She might not have added any after she learned how to do her craft properly, but she surely had them from the time before she had gained that knowledge.

She should have scars on her arms as well, but she saw nothing but pearly skin – if anything, the only flaw in her skin was the slightly grayish tint.

And there was more. Or was it less? 'Why am I so thin?'

Pulling down the collar of her wet dress, she could see the bones peeking through, for she barely had any flesh on her. Despite the alarming fact that she suddenly had a visible chest where her seemingly thirteen-year-old body hadn't grown at all before, she was little more than skin and bone – and the scar she used to have, an almost star-shaped marking covering her sternum, had vanished. She couldn't tell with the corresponding one on her back, though it was safe to expect it wouldn't be there if she checked.

Her muscles were all gone as well, and her lean, athletic figure was nowhere to be found.

'Who did this to me?' She panicked slightly at the thought of how long she must have been unconscious or what could cause a special scar like hers to fade into essentially nothingness. Not only the scar, but she felt the heavy weight of her heart and the panic of being alone became louder again.

'I have to be calm and assess the situation first,' she told herself, not sure if she believed it.

Even the bust she had now seemed sunken in, as she was clearly underweight, while overall, to her dissatisfaction, she couldn't stop the feeling of unrest, so she let her mind wander.

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Could she have been kept somewhere and slept for years on end? 'Like Sleeping Beauty,' she imagined, trying to laugh at her own joke. 'That would be pretty stupid, not gonna lie.'

On unsteady legs, she somehow managed to stand and walk through the room, towards a full-length mirror that stood near one of the room's two doors. She had to see the full extent of her condition, otherwise she wouldn't be able to calm down at all.

Dragging herself over, lungs still feeling the full weight of her inhaling water, she looked up and raised one of her frail arms in shock. She was staring at what she could only assume was herself, as one of her hands touched the cold glass of the mirror right in front of her.

"No way," she whispered under her breath and her voice broke, noticing how weak her vocal cords truly were. 'Who the hell are you?'

The face that looked back at her had a pair of very distinctive eyes that looked as if they had been dripped onto her features with molten silver and liquefied ivory. That, and the hair on top of her head, though wet and a bit thinned out from her perspective, shimmered dimly in a shade of lavender that was almost as pale as her ghastly skin.

Both were a far cry from her original warm brown eyes and reddish brown hair. She used to have freckles on and around her nose, and small, fine scars everywhere. Despite that, the face she was looking at didn't have any blemishes, except for a small black beauty mark under her left eye.

But the one she was looking at, though her cheeks were slightly hollow and her chapped lips rather blue, was strangely beautiful. In a different way from how she had perceived herself until that moment.

A serenity that wasn't quite tangible emanated from her entire being. The appearance also felt eerily familiar to Celia.

That was what spooked her the most.

"Why do I feel like I know you?" This time, she didn't care if her voice cracked, and asked as if it was a plea.

The face she didn't really know looked back at her through the reflection, but didn't answer.

Instead of lamenting further, she scoffed at her own idiocy in resignation and turned to one of the doors.

It was a large, white wooden door with fancy golden handles. When she touched them, she could feel the unique way the pure material felt in her hands. Even though there was no magic involved, it was something she knew by heart – though silver had always been better in terms of conductivity.

This loose train of thought somehow managed to finally put her at ease to some extent. The feeling of something she had a lot of experience with; something she knew by heart.

Behind the fancy door she could see a bedroom. It was no less elaborate than she would have expected at this point, but at the same time it had a subdued aura.

There was a large bed with an elegantly decorated canopy, a massive wooden desk withckearky expensivewriting equipment, and golden ornamental flowers along the cream-colored walls.

There were some pale purple things scattered around as well, reminiscent of Celia's current hair color. It was pretty, but as extravagant as it was, it also seemed simple. Almost as if the room could have had a lot more going on in it, but didn't.

She didn't want to go through someone else's stuff. Or worse, to find out that it might not be someone else's stuff at all.

She already had a bad feeling, but when she went to the other door in the bedroom, she felt it even more.

Beyond the room was a large hallway. Vases filled with beautiful flowers on little cabinets lined the walls, next to windows and elegant paintings. No, the flowers itself looked the most expensive, as there was an abundance of them in those countless vases and all of them were roses. The flowers heads were lavender, like Celia's hair, and their petals shown in a silvery white hue. It looked outright surreal.

But the real problem was that now, finally, she was encountering other people. People in outfits that could be described as "a maid's uniform".

'Well, it does fit the bill, alright.' She slowly took a breath and closed her eyes.

Before she could utter a word however, someone else raised their voice from behind, startling the thirteen-year-old girl who merely looked a bit older now.

"What's the meaning of this unseemly appearance, young lady?" A woman with broad shoulders towered over her and yelled in a thundering voice, with a face full of contempt and anger. "What have you done now?"

"Uhm," Celia went ahead of herself, not exactly knowing what to say in regards to what she had been doing. 'So no Sleeping Beauty. Did they not know I took a nap in the bathtub?'

She could guess that this probably wasn't a state she had been in for years. But nothing really made sense, so she had to take every possibility into account.

Celia shook off the thought as the now even angrier woman in front of her grabbed her arm and forced her down the corridor. After a few meters she was already shouting in another direction.

"Norina, you lazy girl!" she barked without a bite, as her grip wasn't even strong enough to withstand the old ladies Celia knew on the regular, "Take this crazy child and prepare her for bed."

There were more of those "maids" all around them and the context slowly started to paint a picture, no matter how much she disliked the art it portrayed. But something didn't fit that painting at all as she took in the scornful looks she received.

'Harsh much? Am I not supposed to be your Boss?' But Celia could hear them snickering, talking among themselves, and felt their eyes on her as they looked at her outfit.

Wet from head to toe and disheveled. What must they think she had done? "Look, our Lady Annex is at it again. What was she up to this time?" someone said, because "whispered" wasn't quite the word for it.

The young maid who was summoned had to follow the older lady's command in silence, of course. She gently led Celia back to the room where she had originally woken up, and helped her out of her shabby dress.

It took a while for the younger girl to sit down and contemplate her misery. She needed information. As she did so, she glanced at the blonde girl next to her as their eyes met for the first time and properly cleared her throat, startling the maid visibly in the process.

At least, she definitely had her attention now. "Who am I?" Celia asked in what could have been seen as a challenge to the other, when in fact she was simply feigning ignorance to appear more natural.

However the said maid, Norina, heard it somewhat differently. 'Did I do something that lacked respect in front of me lady?'

Therefore she panicked. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. Did I do something wrong?"

"I want you to tell me who I am," Celia doubled down and crossed her arms in front of her chest in accordance to her attitude. 'Everyone just called me Young Lady or Lady Annex, after all,' she recalled.

"You are… Indeed the daughter of the only Grand Duke of our Arlen Empire, Lady Rowena Dynari van Varnhagen, are you not? Did you forget?"

Celia could only stare at her after hearing that cringe-inducing tongue twister of a name that seemed as familiar as her new face.

"No way," the lady dropped, looking at the poor maid with a vacant expression.

Norina became anxious. 'F'course, there's no way she'd forget her name. What'm I, crackers?'

Her mistress was known for her less than calm demeanor – if not unhinged. At least that was what people had said, and she was still new, so she didn't want to get on her bad side already.

"Is it maybe… A bad thing? Should I call you something else, my lady?"

"No," Rowena said, shaking her head. 'Can't I just go back to being Lady Annex?'