Alliyana Etheria's Perspective
I woke to something warm and soft wrapping around me. Arms. Familiar.
Lina.
She squeezed me like a pillow, breath shaky against my shoulder.
"You're alive," she whispered.
"Mhm."
"You didn't come back yesterday… You missed your shift… I thought—"
I pressed my hand against her back, slow and firm. "Don't worry," I said. "I'm the apex predator outside these gates."
She pulled away and gave me the most dramatic sigh I'd heard in weeks. "You really say the scariest things sometimes."
The morning light bled through the thin cloth of our shelter, casting golden slats across Lina's cheeks. Her eyes scanned me up and down—then narrowed with a look I'd seen only once before, the day she caught a glimpse of the Duke's younger knights training shirtless.
"You know," she said. "You're… actually really pretty."
"Am I?"
Blonde hair. Pale skin. Blue eyes. Symmetrical features. A delicate face that would probably look ethereal when older.
I'd be hard to miss in a crowd. I can't help but feel excited how beautiful this vessel will be.
"If I didn't know you," Lina added, "I'd think you were some noble girl pretending to be common."
I stood up. "Thank you?" It came out more like a question.
She giggled.
A guard's voice cut through the stillness outside.
"All healers, to the northern sector. Paladins have arrived."
The northern barracks were larger than the ones we slept in. Reinforced stone. Banner-lined arches. Smelled faintly of lacquered wood, steel polish, and dry parchment. The kind of place where real decisions were made.
Healers, soldiers, and ranking officers stood in neat rows facing the stage. Two paladins, flanked by three bishops, waited under a tall canopy hung with golden cords and the symbol of Meliora. Their armor gleamed beneath the sun like silver dipped in holy oil.
The male paladin was standard fare: brown hair, green eyes, well-structured jaw, no imagination in his posture. But the woman beside him—
She stood out.
Long, jet-black hair. Sharp brown eyes. Refined features I hadn't seen once since arriving in this world. An Eastern beauty.
Her bearing was noble. Her stillness louder than most people's shouts.
Lina leaned toward me, whispering: "She's so pretty…"
I nodded.
"She's from one of the old hero families," Lina continued. "Descendants of the summoned heroes."
That gave me pause.
"You can't just drop a bomb like that," I whispered.
Lina blinked. "You say the funniest things sometimes."
I didn't laugh. Three years in this world and I didn't know. But it all made sense. The language, the clinics, clocks. It's a strange fusion of medieval superstition and modern structure. This world wasn't completely organic. It had been influenced.
That woman—Alana Sato—was living proof.
The Duke stepped onto the platform, and the chatter died instantly.
Raphael Aurellia.
His name alone made even the more seasoned soldiers stand taller. He was calm, towering, and lethal in stillness. His armor bore minimal ornamentation—just a fur-lined mantle and the crest of Aurellia etched in black steel.
It wasn't performance. It was presence.
A woman stood beside him. Red hair like silk ignited under sunlight, coiled high behind her head in loose, deliberate waves. Her frame was slim, deceptively delicate. The dress she wore flowed like a poured ribbon—elegant, impractical, and defiant of common sense for a battlefield. Dark crimson, patterned with faint arcane etchings that shimmered only when she moved.
On her waist hung a wand—not crude or ceremonial, but lacquered wood laced with inlaid runes, elegant and precise. No sword. No armor. Just that.
This wasn't a warrior trying to appear graceful. This was a woman who had never needed to fight conventionally.
Her steps were soft. Too soft. The kind that made you realize you were hearing everyone else's footsteps—not hers.
She smiled as she looked over the crowd. Not coldly. Not kindly. Something in between. Like she knew the thoughts in your head before you thought them, and didn't mind—because they amused her.
Her gaze lingered briefly on the paladins. Then the bishops. Then drifted past me like velvet.
I felt something odd stir in my chest. The first mage I'd seen in this world.
Not just someone using mana to leap higher or punch harder. Not a soldier with spell-enhanced limbs. But a real caster. A proper manipulator of the unseen.
I couldn't help it. My heart skipped once. Not out of fear. But excitement.
The Duke addressed the crowd with the voice of someone used to being obeyed.
"A high demon threat had emerged. Patrols had confirmed pack movement among corrupted beasts. Displacement patterns."
He looked down, the sunlight catching the sharp angles of his cheekbones.
"We are no longer containing corruption. We are hunting it."
He introduced the paladins: Dave Holton, of Holton County, and Alana Sato, of the Sato Duchy.
Sato.
That name didn't belong here.
I stared at the blade at her side. A katana? It was slim, curved, sheathed in deep burgundy. I couldn't look away.
The two paladins stepped forward to select from the soldiers. They moved with deliberation—assessing posture, questioning experience, testing discipline. Classic martial selection.
The bishops, meanwhile, could hardly care less.
To them, low-class healers were glorified nurses. Barely above servants.
But they looked at me.
Of course they did.
The Church had found out.
I almost laughed.
Inefficient. They could've sent assassins. Quieter. Cleaner. But no—they wanted to wash their hands clean while someone else did the dirty work and call it an "accident".
So virtuous. So weak.
They were selecting names at random, not even pretending to consider merit. The seventh was called, and I felt Lina's grip tighten slightly.
Maybe they'd skip me.
Maybe someone higher up still had enough shame to intervene.
Then one of the bishops stepped forward.
Thin. Pale. Blonde. Smiling that familiar saccharine smile. The kind that curdled in your stomach.
He patted my head.
"This one."
Lina flinched. Her knuckles went white.
But then—clack.
A sheath struck the bishop's hand away.
I looked up.
Alana Sato. Her blade's hilt rested against the bishop's wrist.
I recognized the design now. Wrought leather. Ironwood. Precision-made. And most of all, the tsuba. The iconic guard of the katana.
I was certain. A weapon from another world.
Alana's voice was sharp, clipped. "That's wrong."
The crowd had stilled again. Eyes shifted.
I thought it strange a paladin would disobey. I thought the entirety of the church wanted me gone. Perhaps the higher ups don't know? Is this a scheme of the bishops and a few low ranking priests? My family has something to do with this. Who did they get to replace me as Saintess?
Lina's eyes were wide with hope. So I raised my voice. Just enough to be heard.
"How could I possibly refuse?" I said, smiling. "God wills it."
Lina's hope crumbled. She didn't want me to go.
Alana turned to me. Her gaze softened. "Your name?"
"Alliyana."
She nodded slowly. "That's a lovely name. Sounds a little like mine."
"Thank you."
The bishop's smile returned, somehow even more rotten than before. "What a good and obedient girl," he cooed.
Alana didn't respond. She just stepped back into the crowd, jaw tight.
The bishop turned and added mockingly, "God wills it."