Date: Unspecified
Ti: Unspecified
Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Southern Capital, Guild Association Mall, Warehouse No. 234, Limitless Celestial Domain, Gainover Manor
"It seems I’ve beco more of a distraction than any real help. Since you don’t need , I’ll take my leave. Stay safe," I said, taking my cue to withdraw. Without waiting for Anna’s response, I stepped out of the limitless celestial domain.
The Anna Heatsend I knew, the Bad Daughter, could never let duty and responsibility bound her. If such chains were forced upon her, she would eventually begin to wither under their weight.
As she was now.
Yes, Anna had accepted the duty and responsibility of being the Southern Heir of her own volition, but she was now carrying them out the way others expected her to, not the way she herself desired.
In truth, the Anna standing there had no feelings for , yet she was preparing to enter matrimony with because others insisted she needed the Southern Hope by her side, nurturing and guiding for the sake of the Southern Region. If it had been her true self making the choice, she would have long since ended whatever remained between us.
However, this would not last long. Like every ruler, Anna would eventually recognize the error in her path, tune out the noise, and begin doing what she should have done from the start, reigning with her will and not others.
She was still learning. Without mistakes, how could she grow? That was to say my window to rekindle things with Anna was narrow. Before long, I would be no different from one of her exes in her eyes, with only Anne’s presence setting apart.
With gone, Anna once again dashed toward Gainover, who remained suspended in the air, disregarding my earlier warning that it was nothing more than a reflection and a trap. The instant she made contact, her body was swallowed whole, like a pebble sinking into a lake, except there were no ripples to follow. She simply vanished.
I imdiately switched on my primordial soul pupils and peered into Gainover’s dinsion. What I saw was Anna trapped within what resembled a nightmarish version of a circus house of mirrors. Only, these mirrors were not glass. They were thin, translucent sheets of ice, transparent yet completely non-reflective. Yet, they reflected Gainover’s image.
At the very heart of the dinsion, I spotted Gainover hiding. I had to admit, he was strikingly handso, like a snow elf carved from frost itself. No wonder won across the five regions had gone mad over him, including two princesses. One had been Anna’s mother, and the other Anna’s rival, the Northern Princess.
"Welco to my mirror maze, my dear daughter." Gainover’s voice echoed throughout the dinsion as every reflection of his reflected on the towering sheets of ice turned to look at Anna.
Anna did not wait to hear another word. She charged forward and began smashing at the ice. To her shock, every strike passed straight through it. From where I stood, I could see what was happening. Each ti she made contact, she was flung to the far end of the maze, while the section she had just traversed subtly reconfigured itself, reshaping and realigning until it fit seamlessly back into the structure.
The result was cruelly elegant. Every attempt to break the ice only forced her to start over, trapped in a newly altered mirror maze each damn ti.
As I observed more closely, it beca clear that Gainover’s mirror maze held far more depth than what was currently on display. He simply had not been given the chance to reveal it yet, not while his foolish daughter was still struggling to understand the first stage. He showed no urgency in dealing with her, and I felt there was a reason for that.
I wondered how long Anna would continue charging forward like a wild bull. Had her enemy been anyone other than her cowardly father, they would have already exploited her rage and killed her by now.
Before long, I noticed sothing else. On every ice sheet filling the dinsion, beside Gainover’s reflection, another image slowly began to take form. It was Anna’s reflection. Not just one, but countless reflections of her, each identical in appearance. Even the light in their eyes shone with the sa intensity as her own, as if they were truly alive.
Seeing her likeness appear beside Gainover’s reflection, Anna finally halted and looked around. At last, she gave her mind a chance to work instead of blindly swinging her fists in fury. That was when Gainover’s voice echoed through the dinsion once more.
"Go," he commanded calmly, "bring my daughter to ."
His reflections mirrored his movents and issued the sa command to the Annas standing beside them. The light in those reflections’ eyes flared as they stepped out of the ice sheets and rushed toward Anna in a surging wave.
Just when I thought she was about to properly engage her brain instead of her rage, Anna reacted. She threw a confident punch at the nearest reflection. To her astonishnt, the reflection t her strike head-on with equal force, perhaps even slightly greater, driving her back several steps.
In that mont, I understood why Gainover had not attacked her imdiately. He had been patiently copying her, bidding ti to create those reflections. Each one was an exact replica of Anna, identical not only in appearance but also in strength and skills. There were more than a hundred thousand of them, and Anna stood alone.
The outco was inevitable. Anna was soon overwheld, surrounded on all sides, overpowered, helpless, and finally subdued. The replica Annas restrained her and carried her deeper into the mirror maze.
Watching this, I frowned. They were not taking her toward the heart of the mirror maze where Gainover was hiding. Instead, they were moving toward another end, where an incarnation of Gainover stood waiting for them.
He had lied, no surprise there.
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