# The Return Begins
Someone shook her awake.
"Your Highness? Are you awake?"
Medea blinked. Her face was utterly blank, as though someone had drained every expression from it.
The maid's shoulders trembled. The lifeless, doll-like stare unnerved her.
"Your Highness? Can you hear me?"
A figure reflected in the mirror on the vanity table. Bright green eyes that gleamed like spring leaves. A high, smooth forehead. An elegant nose. Lips soft and flushed with youth.
A girl poised somewhere between childhood and womanhood.
Medea looked down mechanically at her arms.
*There should be scars. The demon's claws—*
Nothing. Not a trace of the countless wounds she'd suffered during the imperial campaigns. Instead, her skin was pale and smooth, unmarred as new silk.
*Is hell this vivid? Or have I—*
A thought struck her like lightning, and her body went rigid.
"What about Peleus?"
"Pardon?"
"Is he alive?"
Peleus. Her brother. King of Valdina. Dead because of her.
She'd stolen the Philosopher's Stone, and Valdina's barrier had collapsed. Hordes of pitch-black demonic beasts had swarmed across the kingdom like a plague.
Her brother had died holding the line against them while she'd been far away, fighting to secure Jason's claim to the imperial throne.
Only then—far too late—had Medea understood what the Philosopher's Stone truly was. Why demons that had ravaged the continent for centuries had never crossed Valdina's borders.
"What are you talking about? Of course he's alive."
Medea shot to her feet.
"Where is he?"
> *"Dea, don't even think about coming back. Valdina is no longer a land of protection.*
>
> *I don't blame you. Just... live. That's all I ask."*
Her only family. The one who had always been on her side.
"Where do you think you're going? You can't visit someone on the battlefield!"
The maid caught Medea as she stumbled forward.
"Battlefield?"
"Don't you remember? You hit your head when you fell from your horse."
"We're still at war. The conquest isn't over."
"He's still alive, isn't he?"
The maid shook her head, more in confusion than denial.
"This won't do. I need to call the royal physician."
"No. I have to see it with my own eyes."
Medea bolted from the room.
"Your Highness! Where are you going!"
The maid rushed after her, but found only an empty corridor.
"Oh no. This is bad!"
---
**The basement of Valdina Palace.**
Light bloomed in a place known only to those of royal blood.
Medea descended the spiral staircase and pressed her hands against a blank stone wall. The hidden door groaned open. Cold air rushed out, sharp enough to sting.
The altar at the center blazed with light—no, not the altar itself, but the treasure resting upon it.
"There."
The chill of the precious stone ran through her trembling fingertips.
Transparent tears streamed down Medea's face.
Blind. She'd been so blind.
"Sister Medea, His Highness suffers so much. If he had the Philosopher's Stone, everything would be perfect."
"It's a national treasure in name only. You can return it later—we're just borrowing it. When relations between our kingdoms improve, Peleus will understand."
"We're all thinking of you."
Medea had swallowed their honeyed lies.
Looking back, that had been the beginning. In her previous life, the Philosopher's Stone she'd stolen—young and desperate—had been shattered and its fragments buried in Katzen's border walls.
"The Emperor was afraid I'd demand it back. So he destroyed it immediately."
Medea clenched her teeth.
"I'm back. I'm really back."
How could she not believe it, when the untouched national treasure lay before her eyes? The gods had granted her last wish.
*A-ha-ha-ha… A-ha-ha!*
The reality of what was happening washed over her.
"Ancestor of Valdina, god and spirit who guards this land…"
Medea leaned over and kissed the foot of the altar. The soft glow of the Philosopher's Stone enveloped her.
"Never again will I be foolish."
She would not waste this chance.
Medea raised her head. Her clear eyes flashed a bright blue against her pale face.
"Claudio."
All the honors paid to her uncle would be dragged through the mud.
"Jason."
The magnificent crown he desired would be torn from his grasp.
**"I've returned."**
The prophecy of rebirth shone with a dark light.
---
Medea emerged from the dark underground passage. Her tears had long since dried.
"The maid said I fell from a horse."
Even among distant memories, some moments remained vivid—especially the ones that had made her life unbearable. *"Cursed Princess," "half-blood," "child who brings misfortune"*—all names given to Medea.
"How foolish I was."
A sweet lie and a cunning trick. Medea had seen neither truth nor sincerity.
> *"Mom, Dad, did you leave me because of me?"*
The image of a lonely, crying girl, abandoned and blamed by everyone, overlapped with the deserted corridors of the royal palace.
But now everything was different. Medea—the strategist who had once made Jason emperor through arduous campaigns and a ruthless struggle for the throne—could now clearly see the whole picture of her uncle's plan.
"When I was about seventeen, I went to a tea party and fell from my horse."
Tea and a fall. Two events on the same day, and neither of them a coincidence. If Neril's maid hadn't rushed to save her, she would have broken her neck and died.
"But after that, Neril left the palace."
When the princess woke up, the maid was already gone.
After that, believing she had been abandoned, Medea had simply forgotten about Neril. But common sense now whispered that things had been far more complicated.
"She wasn't the type to leave without a word."
Now that she had been given a second chance, the first thing Medea needed to do was create a safe haven. She couldn't fight alone in a palace surrounded by enemies on all sides.
"If only Neril were here with me."
If she had had just one person she could trust—someone to watch her back—her past life would not have been so hard.
---
"Did you hear? Jenna is dealing with one of the maids from the princess's palace."
A group of maids walked down the corridor. Medea quickly stepped out of sight.
"And do you know who it is? That one. The one who abandoned knighthood and entered the princess's palace of her own will."
"Oh my God, could it really be her? Did she do something wrong? She was the only one who worked properly there."
"She always attracted the head maid's attention. But this time they plan to send her away, using the princess's fall from her horse as an excuse. Jenna plans to punish her."
"What? That's absurd. She saved the princess's life. We all saw it."
"That's what the head maid said: if you put an earring on your nose, it becomes a nose ring. Who in this palace could go against her, hic… Your Highness?"
The maids froze when the princess suddenly blocked their way.
"Where are they?"
Medea's cold voice rang out through the corridor.
---