Chapter 156: Chapter-156

Even while Elara slept, her mind refused to rest. Thoughts spun like overworked gears, cold and relentless. Maybe her brain was broken, maybe it was just how she’d always been—unable to feel things properly, only able to dissect them. Her dreams weren’t really dreams at all. They were like a desktop screen replaying scenes in neat little windows: what happened, what variables she’d missed, how to fix it next time. No warmth, no softness—just optimization.

Tonight, one question kept looping in that mechanical mind: she couldn’t handle this. Not like this. The problem wasn’t that she was too tired or too weak; it was that the **position** itself was wrong. She wasn’t Crown Princess. On paper, she was only the Emperor’s stand-in, a temporary substitute wearing his shadow while he lay in a coma. Substitute. Not successor. And when he woke up—if she ever allowed that—her authority vanished in a blink.

She knew the nobles wouldn’t wait politely for that day. Right now, they were quiet, pretending to watch. But in truth, they were just like ants stuck to a fan on a low speed—still, but only because the fan hadn’t truly started spinning. Once they chose to move, they’d whirl into a hurricane that could tear her to pieces. At the moment, they were probably using only twenty percent of their influence, and even that was enough to make her uneasy. The newcomers, the young noble heirs, she could deal with. They were loud, impatient, easy to provoke and pin down.

It was the old ones she feared—the old foxes with slow smiles and long memories. Their minds were sharp, like double-edged swords you only noticed when you were already bleeding. She’d spread the story that the Emperor personally assigned her to act in his place while he slept, but she didn’t fool herself. It wouldn’t take long for those men and women to smell the cracks, to start digging for proof, to ask the questions no one else dared voice. Before that happened, she needed to solidify her position so thoroughly that even suspicion wouldn’t be enough to move her.

Somewhere in the middle of that endless planning, the lines blurred. Her calculations thinned out, thoughts grew fuzzy at the edges, and finally her brain gave up. She slid into a deep, heavy sleep that felt more like dropping off a cliff than resting.

When her eyes opened again, it was already night. The room was dim and quiet. She realized she was still lying on the couch, a thick fur blanket tucked around her shoulders. Someone had covered her while she slept. She pushed the blanket off and sat up slowly. Pain slammed into her skull like a hammer. Her head throbbed viciously, each pulse beating behind her eyes.

“Great,” she muttered, fingers pressing her temples. “This body really is fragile.”

In her first life, she hadn’t exactly been a gym rat, but she’d been used to long hours, little sleep, constant stress. This body, spoiled and undertrained, complained at every push. When she stood too quickly, the world tilted. Her vision blurred, black spots dancing at the edges, and her knees almost buckled.

She grabbed the nearest small table for support, fingers digging into the wood. The slight noise of it scraping against the floor was enough—within seconds, the door swung open.

“Your Highness, are you alright?” a voice asked anxiously.

She turned her head and saw today’s guard. His armor was neat, posture straight… and on top of his head, two soft rabbit ears twitched, alert and nervous. For a second, despite the pain, Elara’s analytical gaze softened. He looked… oddly cute like that.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, easing herself back down onto the couch. Her head still spun, and the couch was safer than the floor.

Maybe I really am anemic, she thought. It would explain the dizziness, the fatigue, the way her limbs felt heavier than they should.

The knight hurried inside, ears flicking with worry. He poured water into a cup with careful hands and stepped close, offering it with a small bow. “Your Highness… water.”

“Mm. Thank you.” She took the cup, her fingers brushing his gloved hand for a heartbeat, and drank. The warm water slid down her throat, and after two or three slow sips, the roaring in her head eased a little. The pain was still there, but less sharp, like it had moved from a scream to a grunt.

Her heart steadied. Her mind, though still throbbing, began to fall back into its familiar pattern: work. Think. Move.

She set the empty cup aside. “You can go back to your post.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied, ears dipping respectfully before he left, door closing quietly behind him.

Elara stood again, this time more carefully, and walked back to her desk. Work awaited—piles of documents, reports, and letters stacked like small fortresses on the polished wood. Here, at least, she knew what to do. Every piece of paper that reached her had already been checked. Nothing entered her office without passing through detection spells for poison and malicious magic. It was the one system she trusted.

Until the next morning shattered that illusion.

The following day, she was sitting at her desk, pen moving briskly over a report, a cup of coffee steaming at her elbow. Routine. Safe. Her mind clicked through lines of text, checking numbers, noting inconsistencies.

A new letter was placed on the corner of her desk.

“Your Highness, this arrived for you,” the current manager said.

She glanced at it without much interest at first. “From who?”

He shook his head. “We don’t know, Your Highness. There is no sender name.”

That alone was odd. Elara’s gaze sharpened. “Was it checked?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I scanned it with magic. No poison, no hidden curse, no explosive runes. Only paper.”

Her fingers tapped the desk once. No poison. No harmful spell. Just paper.

“Alright,” she said. “Leave it.”

He bowed and stepped back. Elara finished the line she was writing, took a sip of her coffee, then pulled the letter in front of her.

The seal broke with a soft crack. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper—clean, perfectly white.

No crest. No ink. No threat. Nothing.

Her brows drew together. She lifted the paper, turned it toward the light. No watermark. No faint glowing script. No strange smell. Just… paper.

“Did someone send me a blank sheet for fun?” she murmured.

She was about to set it down and reach for her coffee again when something caught her eye. Her fingertips.

Her index finger was red—as if dipped in ink.

She froze. Slowly, she looked at the ink bottle on her desk. The ink she’d been using all morning was a deep blue.

Not red.

Her stomach dropped.

There was no smell. No stain on the table. Nothing visible on the page. And yet, there was crimson color on her skin where she’d touched the “blank” letter.

“Damn—”

The curse never fully left her lips.

Heat slammed into her body like a wave of fire. It started at her finger, raced up her arm, then exploded through her chest, searing its way into every limb. Her heart lurched, beating too fast. Her breath hitched.

The room blurred. For the first time in a long time, there was something that almost felt like fear—not the emotional kind, but the cold realization of miscalculation.

They bypassed detection.

Her vision wavered, the edges going white-hot, and the coffee cup slipped from her fingers as her body seized under the invisible blaze roaring through her veins.

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