“That’s a thing?!”

  I readied for the bloody battle. The queen’s body loomed over me, her abdomen shuddering with the rhythm of hive-breath.

  But the battle never came.

  Instead, the world blinked. Darkness swallowed me, a total, breathless void… and then a cascade of logs flashed across my vision like a divine meltdown.

  Goddess of what now?!

  My thoughts barely had time to process before another realization hit me. Something had gone very wrong. I didn’t feel my limbs. I felt nothing.

  I had no body.

  And then… I did.

  Light flooded my vision, blindingly soft and way too pink. I blinked. Once. Twice. Everything slowly came into focus, and I immediately regretted it.

  I was lying on a bed wrapped in silk the color of strawberry milk. The canopy above was carved from silver-white wood, braided with blooming vines that sparkled faintly with magic.

  Around me were plushies, dozens of them, shaped like Rimelion monsters: a chibi Wyrmsnail with a bowtie, a grinning lava rat hugging a cupcake, even a sleepy Goolem with glittering eyes. Pillows embroidered with elegant runes were stacked like a fort around the mattress.

  Sooo cute! was my first thought.

  Crystals embedded in the walls gave off a gentle glow, lighting up a vanity desk shaped like a blooming flower, and bookshelves packed with old tomes and glass… butterflies?

  The entire room smelled like sugared berries and enchanted linen.

  I sat up, groaning. “What the…?” No system pinged. No interface appeared. It felt like Earth again… quiet. Empty. Wrong. I turned slowly, taking in every unnervingly cute corner of the room.

  Someone knocked on the massive double doors at the far end of the room. They were carved with ivy patterns and lined with silver trim, clearly meant for someone absurdly important. “Come in?” I called automatically, my voice a little too high. I wasn’t ready. Not even close.

  Then I looked down.

  Pink satin, embroidered gold trim, soft lace at the wrists. The hem of the absurdly flouncy skirt pooled around me like a floral pancake. And the tiara. Oh gods, the tiara. I raised a hand and confirmed its existence by poking myself in the forehead with a tiny jewel.

  A princess outfit? But I was still me, right? Maybe, though…? What the actual hell?

  The door creaked open with dramatic timing that said: cue the theme music. And in stepped Irwen. “Mom?” I blurted out, blinking fast. “What is going on?”

  She walked toward me with regal ease, her gown swishing softly with every step. She sat beside me on the plush bench at the end of the bed; her smile serene and reached out to tuck a strand of my blue hair behind one ear. “I’m so proud of you.”

  I crossed my arms instinctively, the silks of the outfit rustling too much. “I did nothing. The system is broken,” I muttered, lower lip jutting out in an involuntary pout. Then I noticed my own expression and forced it away with a grimace. “And it’s been messing with me since I reincarnated.”

  She tilted her head and gave me a knowing look, one of those ‘oh-you-silly-child’ smiles that had no business being so effective. “You’re just a child. Of course you’ll be like a child.”

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  “I’m NOT—” I started, loud and defensive, then bit my tongue. That smug little curve of her lips grew just a fraction, and it hit me.

  I was proving her damn point.

  I sat straighter, folded my hands over the frilly nightmare of my skirt, and took a breath. “Okay. But tell me the truth.” My voice was steadier this time, more… mature hopefully. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “This is our bloodline castle,” Irwen said softly, her voice echoing faintly through the rose-hued chamber. She tilted her head up, and I followed her gaze.

  The ceiling above us was as if the sky had been painted onto marble, deep blues, threads of gold curling into constellations, and a silvery mural of elven princesses mid-battle, mid-spell. Yeah, and it shimmered as if made from starlight. “The authority of our legends and myths,” she continued. “Here we exist outside the time.”

  I blinked and fiddled with a pearl button on my sleeve. “Ah. Pocket universe,” I nodded slowly. The silk of the dress was cool under my fingers, soft and, of course, annoying. “But that doesn’t make sense. I was about to challenge a queen!”

  She turned to me. A slow tilt of her head, a narrowing of her eyes, and a look that could only be translated as: You did what now?

  My breath caught. “I…” I coughed. “I mean, termite queen. I… challenged her?”

  She arched one elegant eyebrow. “Good,” she said after a moment. “I hear a ‘but’ in your voice.”

  I looked to the side, cheeks warming with an embarrassing pink. “You can?”

  She moved closer. “Tell me. Have you claimed your title?”

  “Kinda?” I shrugged, tugging at the edge of my sleeve. “I charged into the room at her and yelled something cool?”

  “Alone?” Her voice had dropped just slightly.

  “Yes?”

  She smacked the top of my head.

  With the kind of motherly force, that made me flinch more out of reflex than pain.

  “Hey!” I rubbed the spot and pouted at her, my lip trembling as if I practiced it in the mirror. “I could—”

  “Charlie. No.” Her voice was steel now. “Look at you. You are barely able to fend off a single termite.”

  “That’s not true!” I felt the heat rise again, this time not from shame. I stood up straight. Well, stood up on the bed, arms flailing dramatically. “I fought like ten of them at the same time!” I said with a grin, hands slicing the air like I was narrating a war epic. With Zweih?nder, of course.

  She just stared.

  “Eight?” I tried, faltering a little, dropping the imaginary Zweih?nder.

  Silence.

  “Six…” My voice trailed off, and I glanced down at the frilly blanket beneath my feet. Her stare hadn’t changed. She looked at me like I’d told her all the whiskey had evaporated.

  “I swear! I won!”

  Her eyes narrowed. “With… how you are now?” She cocked her head to one side, as if assessing a slightly defective artifact. “I see a healing skill, two magic skills, and godly skill, but utility. That’s it.”

  Then her expression softened. She stepped closer and her smile widened, a radiant warmth spreading across her features. “You are amazing, daughter.”

  I frowned. “You didn’t raise me,” I said too fast.

  A flash of something passed behind her eyes, like glass fogging. I bit my lip, guilt twisting low in my stomach. “I mean—”

  “I understand. In a way, I did,” Irwen whispered, as if meant only for me. “But that’s not what matters. What matters is that you accepted me in your heart.”

  She pulled me into an embrace. Her scent was floral, something ancient, something elven, like some roses that only bloom under moonlight the first day in century or something. Her arms wrapped around me with a gentleness that made the rest of the world go still.

  “And I love you,” she finished.

  I closed my eyes. They were watering now, no matter how hard I blinked. “I… may have been trying not to… But… I love you too,” I breathed. “I feel it in my soul. It just felt right to yell that out loud, you know?”

  “It’s okay,” she said, brushing her fingers lightly through my hair. “We have time to get to know each other now.”

  I let her hold me for a moment longer, then gently pulled away, sniffing and swiping at my eyes. “I don’t understand what happened.”

  Irwen nodded, her features calm again. She stood and moved toward the tall, covered window at the edge of the room. Velvet curtains spilled down in folds, muffling the world.

  With one smooth motion, she drew them back.

  Behind the window was a garden. Pale blossoms glowed faintly in the low light, vines curled around carved stone trellises, and a thin stream ran through it like liquid crystal. At the garden’s edge, the air shimmered white: the boundary of the pocket realm. Probably.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted, still gazing out. “But I was notified you tried to claim you are a princess. It’s a given title, and I confirmed it’s indeed true. But because you were a princess three times, and once even had that name, the ██████ got… confused. It couldn’t decide who you truly are.”

  “Wait, wait… three times?” I asked, crossing the room toward her, my skirts swishing and catching on my legs awkwardly with each step. “Now… sure. First time in Rimelion when you gave me the title, okay. But third?”

  “I can’t explain that part, sorry,” she said, frowning. “You’ll need to ask ██████.”

  I winced at the glitch. “It seems someone doesn’t want to explain something,” I said. “Yeah, hello ██████,” I muttered, trying to say ‘Seed’.

  “Ah! What’s the point if we both know who you are? Sassy ██████. Anyway mom, ██████ said I’m the Goddess of Exploits. How could I be one?”

  “You have a skill at that level,” Irwen said, her voice tinged with both pride and frustration. “And you’re simply an exception to the rules set by ██████. You also ██████, ██████, and ██████. No? Can I… Not even ██████ or ██████?”

  Her expression darkened with growing irritation. “██████, how can I tell her about ██████ or ██████? She’ll just be confused! Please, can I tell her why ██████ is ██████? No?!”

  “Uhm, let’s not get angry at the all-powerful ██████, okay?” I said, hands up in mock surrender. “I see it runs in the bloodline.”

  That earned a laugh from her. “I also have godly skills,” she said, smile widening. “Now I’m in the phase of building my myth. In a few hundred years, I think I can claim divinity.”

  She drifted back toward the bed, graceful, and I followed. ”You can just… claim that?” I asked as we both sat down on the bench near the foot of the bed, shoulders nearly touching.

  And… I wasn’t uncomfortable.

  She ruffled my hair. “Of course. Haven’t you seen that in your dream world?”

  I batted her hand away, furious. “I’m not a child!” I pouted again before I could stop myself, lips twitching down as the warmth of her touch lingered on my scalp. “What the hell is wrong with the system?! I’m over forty!”

  Irwen giggled, covering her mouth with her sleeve in that maddeningly elegant way only elves seemed to manage. “You’re twenty again, dear. But even if you were forty, that’s still not considered adulthood, at least not for elves.”

  I froze, horror dawning on my face like a slow eclipse. “I… is this… hormones? I mean, I have the maturity not to—”

  My breath caught. The panic was bubbling now. Chest tightening. Fingers twitching. But then Irwen reached out and gently caught my hand, giving it a calming squeeze. Her thumb brushed softly across my knuckles.

  That simple gesture pulled the air back into my lungs.

  “Maybe by human standards, but we see the world differently. Slower. It takes much longer to find meaning in things,” she said. “Each elf is different. At forty, you’d still be considered a young ruler by older elven standards. You’re still growing.”

  “Wait!” I suddenly leapt up, tugging her hand and pulling her to her feet, too.

  She let me, amused.

  I started hopping up and down beside her, glancing from her forehead to mine, trying to compare. My skirts puffed and bounced with every jump. “Does that mean I can still grow? Like—vertically?!”

  Her laughter rang out again, bouncing off the high ceilings. “Mom!” I whined, cheeks puffing. The pout threatened to make a full comeback.

  “Can you hear yourself?” she gasped, struggling to contain the giggles.

  “I know! I know…” I groaned, dragging a hand down my face. “But I used to be tall… I miss that…”

  She looked at me with love, like I was the brightest star in her sky. “Tall or not… Let’s prepare you for the fight, shall we? The moment you go back, you need to run.”

  “I won’t run away!” I protested, puffing out my cheeks in defiance.

  And yes, I pouted.

  And no, I didn’t regret it. Not even a little. It was a perfectly reasonable reaction, and totally age-appropriate for someone emotionally overwhelmed, cosmically displaced, and apparently still growing.

  “I’ll win.”