CHAPTER 5 Part 3

Elkhart could only sigh while Valthorn kept going. "I just can't wrap my head around it. A princess biting the duke and him just... letting it happen. Really, how could she be bold enough to bite the duke?”

"Please don't waste any more of your measly remaining brain cells thinking about that. You will never understand unless you get laid."

"What the hell does that have to do with getting laid?!"

“You and your thick skull…” Elkhart groaned. “I swear. Tonight, I’m finding you a woman. We've got to knock some sense into that head of yours, or it'll drive me nuts.”

“Good luck with that,” Valthorn said. “They all run the other way. So how about you just fill me in instead?”

"Enough! Let's just go."

"Just tell me, and I'll stop asking," Valthorn insisted.

Alena stopped following them closely, as she was unable to make herself listen to their conversation anymore. She couldn’t help but want to face palm because, good lord… To think that these two formidable generals were actually talking about such stuff was just... why can’t they just talk about serious matters? And really? General Valthorn was still a virgin?! That news would certainly send ripples of disbelief through the ranks of Claveria’s soldiers who were idolizing his martial prowess.

When the gates opened and the generals spurred their mounts forward, Alena moved again and floated after them, hoping that they could lead her to the duke’s whereabouts.

Suddenly, Alena's spectral body struck something, stopping her from going any farther. It was as if there was an unseen barrier right before her.

Alena attempted to drift elsewhere, but in each direction she was met with the same resistance.

And then a realization struck her as she finally realized where she was. She was at the very spot where she had been assassinated!

Her eyes swept across the familiar scene. The winding road, the trees, the palace's silhouette. This was, without a doubt, the place where she had died.

But the very spot where she remembered her carriage had stopped was empty. Slowly, she approached and stood there, looking around desperately for a shred of evidence.

Disbelief and denial slowly took hold of her as she couldn't find any trace of the incident. Not even a drop of blood or a sign of struggle. Nothing at all.

It didn't make sense and the more time she spent looking around and finding nothing, the more her thoughts go overdrive and she began to question everything. Was she actually dead? Had that terrible moment even happened?

Something in her started to feel a sliver of hope that maybe... maybe she was not dead. Maybe what happened here never happened at all! Maybe all of this was just a very bad dream. Maybe none of it was real and she was still... alive somewhere!

She tried to go farther again. She wanted to return to the grand palace, to her home, thinking that once she was there, she would wake up from the nightmare. But the invisible barrier, or whatever it was, remained, stopping her advance.

In the end, she could only stay in that spot. She continued floating around, trying to find something, anything. And the more she found no evidence, the more hope bloomed within her. That she was not dead.

Until the sun began to rise.

While she was sitting under a tree, something shiny on the ground caught her eye. It was partly hidden by the long grass at the side of the road, shining because of the morning sun.

Curious, Alena moved toward it, and the moment she saw what it was, she froze. There in the grass lay a radiant sun-shaped pendant cradling a shimmering crystal that was spotted with dried blood. It was hers... it was the forehead ornament ornament she had been wearing when she was killed.

As the hope within her instantly withered and then crumbled into ashes, Alena bent, reaching out to pick the ornament. But her hand passed through it.

She closed her ghostly fingers into fists.

"Who are you trying to fool in the first place?" she murmured, a self-mocking smirk curved on her lips. "You know there’s no way that was just a dream. You know it all felt too real to be just a nightmare."

Standing straight, Alena stared at the bloodied ornament one last time before ripping her gaze away from the haunting evidence of her demise and cast her eyes towards the looming castle.

With her reawakened fiery rage burning in her eyes, Alena drifted back towards the castle.