Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!-Chapter 62: Mirror

Mirror

Eydis stood at the heart of her mindscape, a place where reality obeyed her command, or at least, that was what she liked to think. Faint luminescence bled from the endless rows of bookshelves, yet stray impulses from her subconscious still slipped through, smudging the neat order she imposed.

Memories, archived and sorted.

Not all of them glowed.

She walked toward the library’s edge, where the light dimmed and the shelves leaned, as if reluctant to hold what they carried. She lifted a volume, and the pages dissolved against her skin.

Gone. Erased. Forgotten.

She clenched her fists. She could feel it, just out of reach. What she had lost, why she was here, trapped beneath the unblinking gaze of The Eye, bound in the body of a younger self who carried secrets even she didn’t understand.

And as if that wasn’t enough, she was now sharing space with the most powerful Gifted St. Kevin’s had seen.

Coincidence? No. Chance wasn’t this precise. This was designed. She had stepped into a narrative scripted long before she spoke her first word. None of that answered the only question worth asking.

She had a choice. She could leave.

So why…

Did she stay?

The wooden floor answered her doubt, now firm and solid, now a swirling, intangible fog. She laughed dryly as she steadied herself.

Even within the depths of her mind, she could feel the subtle tremor of losing her balance.

“Trust is a slippery rope, Your Majesty,” came a voice behind her. “Trusting a stranger who, just moments ago, had a blade pointed at your throat? Curious.”

“Blades,” added another, more energetic. “Plural. Could’ve been three if she had more limbs.”

Eydis sighed and turned. Twin ravens perched on a crooked branch that hadn’t existed seconds earlier. Their outlines flickered, unable to decide whether they were birds or living shadows.

“How amusing,” she said, “to hear you, Raven… and Raven, speak of trust. Shall we revisit your last performance?”

“We’re wounded,” one crooned, fluttering its wings. “We exist only to serve you, not to ruffle feathers.”

The other tilted its head. “Mortally wounded, in fact. Humans never recognise brilliance when it caws right in their faces. And look at that, now we’re doing bird puns.”

“You confuse ‘insufferable’ for ‘brilliance.’ A common fowl mistake,” she said.

The first raven leaned forward. “But you trusted him once, didn’t you? And he—”

A hiss silenced it. Envy slid from the darkness, coils tightening around the bird. “Speak again,” the serpent purred, “and she feeds you to the Deep.”

“The Deep?” the other squawked. “That abyss of endless screaming—”

“—and a three-headed nightmare who thinks we’re his toys?” the first finished. “He never blinks. He never stops barking. It’s madness.”

“Please,” the second scoffed. “Gluttony is harmless.”

“Harmless? Harmless?!” the first shrieked. “It tried to play fetch with me. I was the fetch!”

Their argument spiralled, loud and circular.

“Ignore them, Envy. They adore their own voices. Pity the rest of us must listen.” She opened a void so black it made the ravens look radiant.

“Consider it said,” the first mumbled, feathers sagging. “Beaks shut.”

Its twin sulked. “For now.”

“Eydis!”

Astra’s voice lanced through her mindscape. Eydis blinked and returned to the humid glow of Astra’s greenhouse, a forgotten book splayed across her lap.

The greenhouse was a cathedral of glass and growing things. Condensation pearled on the glass panes overhead. It was humid, alive with the scent of earth and tropical plants.

She looked up lazily. “Astra.”

Among the greenery, Astra cradled a ceramic watering can and traced the browning edge of an oversized anthurium, scowling as if the leaf had insulted her.

Eydis studied her in silence, surprised that her aloof roommate had a retreat outside Alchymia, let alone one like this.

She hadn’t expected Astra to care about plants, either.

Then again, she didn’t know much about Astra at all.

The ravens, irritatingly, had been right about that.

“Are you about to say something, or…” Eydis flipped a page of her book. “...do you just enjoy savouring the sound of my name?”

As expected, Astra glared. Her eyes flashed and heat slipped through. Eydis would never admit it, not under torture or truth-binding spells, but she enjoyed these moments. Those small cracks in the frosty walls felt like rare treasures.

She blinked at the thought.

A week had passed since she bound the ravens, four days since she woke. And Astra had been brooding ever since in that distant, unreadable way only she could manage.

She hadn’t asked questions. She hadn’t turned hostile. Instead, she’d fortified herself behind her walls. Sometimes, when light hit her silver hair, Astra’s gaze drifted to some private horizon, as if she, too, wandered a maze of memory.

That, at least, was something Eydis understood.

Astra crossed the room and sat opposite her beneath a wooden pergola swathed in vines. “You seem content talking to yourself,” she said, voice soft yet intimate.

Eydis smirked at the book she wasn’t reading. “I didn’t realise you found my company so enthralling. Or…” Her voice dipped. “Is this your way of asking for my attention?”

“Maybe I wondered if anything behind that smile is real.”

The word landed harder than expected. Real. Eydis’s fingers tightened on the pages. She felt the same curiosity.

Because Astra wasn’t the only one asking that question.

And so, Eydis did what she always did best.

She tilted her head, still staring at print. “A mystery to keep you up at night. I’m flattered.”

Astra sighed, rose, and started to turn. Reflex made Eydis reach out, her fingers circling Astra’s wrist. Surprise widened Astra’s eyes as she turned back.

Amber met crimson for the first time that day.

In that silence, Eydis realised she’d misunderstood the situation entirely. It wasn’t Astra who had been avoiding her.

It was her.

She had been pulling back, retreating into her thoughts, chasing memories that refused to come together. Even in her own mind, everything felt off-balance. It all came back to one thing.

She wanted to trust someone again. Let someone in.

But the familiars she spoke to, the only “others” she’d allowed into her world, were nothing more than projections. Talking to them felt like arguing with her own doubts. A closed loop of second-guessing and self-interrogation.

Eydis let the thought sink deeper. She refused to swat it aside or take cover behind deflection.

She remembered the years she lived as Princess Eydis, tucked among the endless shelves of the palace library, always searching: for meaning, for purpose, for something bright enough to cut through the gray of her world. Back then she believed she could become more.

When the crown arrived, the walls rose with it: barriers that left no room for gentleness, for uncertainty, for anything that resembled introspection.

But now, all she had was time. Endless, suffocating time. Time that forced her to confront the truth she had run from for so long.

She was lonely.

Astra didn’t pull her wrist away. Frost thawed in her crimson eyes. “What is it?”

Eydis set the book aside, smile fading to something sincere and dangerously vulnerable. “What is it you really want to know, Astra?”

A flutter of her pulse beat against Eydis’s thumb. “Are you Pr…?” Astra’s gaze flickered uncertainly across Eydis’s face. “What’s your real name?”

Eydis raised an eyebrow. “Eydis.”

Their eyes held. Softer now, she repeated, “Just Eydis.” freewebnσvel.cѳm

Astra’s eyes narrowed. “Just… Eydis?”

“If you prefer formality, ‘Your Majesty’ would be technically accurate.”

Astra withdrew her wrist, surprise giving way to irritation. “You’re deflecting again.”

“I’m clarifying,” Eydis said firmly. “My name doesn’t matter, Astra. What matters is who I am.”

“Then who are you?”

A current of intensity tugged at Eydis, the same pull that had sparked between them on that rain‑soaked night. She considered letting silence answer. Yet the tremor in Astra’s question sounded less like anger than pain, maybe longing.

What are you chasing, Astra? What do you need?

Eydis took a breath, and this time, she gave a direct answer.

“I am the Queen of Shadows.”

Astra opened her mouth to argue. The protest died as understanding dawned. Eydis didn’t hide behind wit or masks; she let herself be seen.

Trusting that instinct once more, she made a choice. If fate or another power had set Astra in her path, let them think she played along. The truth was simpler.

She was choosing this. Choosing to stay. Choosing to trust. Maybe she already had, in some small, wordless way.

“This world…” Eydis closed her eyes. “Was never meant for me.”