If Mikhail was the fearsome devil who conquered the eastern lands in a bloody and protracted campaign, Clara was the devil's unwavering sword. When he swung his hand, she was the blade; when he aimed his wrath, she was the reaper.

She did this because she irrevocably—and perhaps foolishly—believed in his goodness.

It was this belief that ultimately claimed her life.

At the height of Mikhail's power in the imperial year of 601, Clara was assassinated by her own most loyal soldiers in a desperate conspiracy to usurp Mikhail—whose power and violence had risen to such heights that most now whispered behind his back, calling him the Mad King. And perhaps he was mad—though Clara was too blinded by her own loyalty to see it.

If you had asked Clara at the moment of her death where she thought it might've all gone wrong, she wouldn't have known what to tell you. She only knew that in her final moments, as she thought of the man whom she had followed across continents—into battle, into an unending war, into the embrace of death itself—she realized that she no longer knew him.

And so she died cradling this deepest regret: that she, in her blindness and foolishness, had helped create the Mad King—and in doing so, lost her greatest friend.

And that was her tragic end.

Death was as dark and peaceful as a womb.

For a long time, there was nothingness.

Until suddenly, there was light.

Clara gasped awake.

Breaths shallow and unsteady, she looked frantically at her surroundings. She was in a small rickety bed. Strange, rough sheets scratched her skin. And the room she was in was entirely unfamiliar.

She had died. She had most certainly died. So why, then, was she alive? And where was she?

She stumbled out of the bed and to the nearest door. She jumped back when she swung it open to find a strange girl staring wildly back at her.

Clara raised her arms up in defense, and the girl seemed to mirror her movement. She blinked. Clara lowered her arms and the girl did too.

And then Clara realized that there was not a girl; there was only a mirror and she was looking at herself. Except she was not herself. The person in the mirror was someone she had never seen before in her life.

She watched her own unfamiliar bottom lip quaver in the mirror. She watched her own shaky hand touch her unfamiliar cheek. She stood at the door's threshold, legs leaden, seemingly frozen in place.

And then heart racing with either panic or resolve—she wasn't sure which—she hurriedly veered out the door and into the hallway, unsure where she was going but determined to figure out what the fuck was going on.