Charlotte Holmes' thoughts wandered uncontrollably back to more than three years ago, when she had not yet come to Stellaxis. Her home was in the remote Linen Valley in the Kingdom of Zodiac. It was said that half a century ago, this place belonged to the Earl of Linen, but now it belonged to His Majesty the King.
When 16-year-old Charlotte Thriss Shadoweye walked home from boarding school on the gravel path, dusk was falling through the branches of the hawthorn trees.
Elves did not reach adulthood until the age of 18, and according to the laws of Stellaxis, elves had to attend boarding school until they came of age. Of course, this law only applied to elf citizens, not slaves and orphans.
In the hallway, her father's old leather slippers were neatly arranged at a forty-five-degree angle on the walnut shoe rack, the toes pointing to the left, just as they had been every evening for the past twenty years.
This precise angle reminded her of the specimens fixed in anatomy class. The clinking sound of porcelain cups in the kitchen mingled with the bitter scent of Ceylon black tea, overpowering the sweetness of the lavender incense.
"Is Charlie back?" Father emerged from the kitchen wearing the blue-checked apron his mother had left behind, flour specks from his sleeves landing on his neatly ironed shirt. He handed her a plain white bone china teacup, the rim facing her usual right side.
The completely accurate detail made the back of her neck stiffen, because her father always unconsciously rubbed the three-millimeter-long crack on the cup with his fingertips when he made tea, but at this moment, his fingers were gripping the cup handle with the precision of a mechanical gear.
So precise, it was as if he had deliberately gripped it that way.
This absurd thought flashed through her mind, but he had already turned to get the sugar bowl, and the three moles on the back of his neck were in exactly the same place.
Charlotte suddenly remembered that her father always skipped the third verse of "The Last Rose of Summer" when he hummed, but now the melody drifting from the kitchen was frighteningly complete, each syllable as if measured with a ruler.
Her sister's door was locked, and the door handle was as warm as usual, because her father always gave Steamsprite clear instructions before going to bed to keep every room at a constant temperature of 21 degrees.
As she pushed open the door, Charlotte caught a whiff of cedarwood, though her sister had always used rose-scented candles.
The eyebrow pencil on the vanity was angled to the right, and the compact mirror was aligned with the mirror, perfectly matching her sister's right-handed habits. However, the thirty-seven maple leaf specimens in the glass jar were arranged too neatly, with the jagged edges all facing the same direction, unlike the natural creases where her sister had casually tucked them between the pages of a dictionary.
She found her sister's diary in the depths of the wardrobe. The last page was dated three weeks ago: "July 15th, Father sprinkled salt three times while frying eggs."
Perhaps it was a family trait, but Charlotte's family all possessed exceptional observational skills and sharp minds.
Charlotte traced the creases on the paper, recalling how her father would always taste the food before seasoning it. This instinctive action had become a mechanical repetition in the diary.
"Your sister said the dormitory is well-heated," her father's voice came from the doorway, tinged with just the right amount of concern. "She returned to school yesterday."
The holiday was almost over, and her older sister, who was attending university, had gone back to the dormitory early—there was no issue with that. But she had to wait at least until Charlotte returned from her boarding school!
Charlotte felt the old razor in her apron pocket, and water droplets slid down its blade along the familiar curve.
Her father always left a two-millimeter stubble on his temples when he shaved in the morning, saying it was the "scholarly look" her mother liked, but now the person in the mirror had an unnatural stubble on his chin.
Charlotte's fingertips traced the ink on the diary. This wasn't the first time she had sneaked a peek at her sister's diary. Usually, her sister would draw punctuation marks as perfect circles, but here, the comma had a long, thin tail, reminiscent of her father's handwriting when he wrote on the blackboard in his youth.
Even more bizarrely, there were no ink stains on the back of the page, meaning that this page had been forged recently using quick-drying ink, not her sister's usual iron-core ink.
Charlotte's gaze fell on the glass jar on the bedside table, where thirty-seven paulownia leaves glowed dully in the twilight.
Last week when she returned home, her sister had held up a newly picked leaf, laughing that the veins resembled the river map of Linen Valley, with a triangular notch at the tip where a bug had chewed. Yet now that leaf lay at the bottom of the jar, the notch neatly trimmed.
Charlotte suddenly recalled her father's words, "Broken leaves should be buried in the garden." But the only one who would treasure such imperfect specimens as treasures was her sister.
"Want to see your sister's new scarf?" Her father had walked up behind her at some point, holding out a deep gray cashmere scarf with tiny letters 'FS' embroidered along the edge.
Charlotte's breath caught in her throat. Her sister's initials were "ES," and her father's were "FS." This wasn't her sister's new scarf—it was a gift she had bought for her father.
When she turned around, she knocked over the bedside lamp, and the trajectory of the copper base rolling across the floor made her pupils contract. The lamp had always been placed 10 centimeters from the edge of the table. Her father had deliberately placed it there to prevent them from knocking it over in the middle of the night, but now the base was only three centimeters from the edge.
This slight deviation was like a fine needle piercing a balloon, causing all the perfectly disguised details to begin to leak out.
"My sister wouldn't have come back to school early." Charlotte heard her voice trembling, yet she was more awake than ever. "She said last week she'd wait for me to come back before we went to our mother's grave together."
Her father's pupils contracted slightly. This momentary blank allowed Charlotte to catch the final piece of evidence. The real father would unconsciously touch the wedding ring on his left ring finger when he heard the word "mother," but the person in front of her kept his fingers straight at his side.
Perhaps it was because it was an unconscious action that didn't exist in his memory, so he didn't know?
Or perhaps it was simply because he no longer bothered to pretend.
"Who are you?" Charlotte's fingertips brushed against the sandblasted handle of the scalpel in the drawer. The coldness of the stainless steel crept up her fingertips and into her veins. Last week, when she was dissecting a gray mouse in the lab, this No. 15 blade had just cut through the intercostal muscles of a mammal. The handle still bore the anti-slip patterns she had wrapped with medical tape.
The metal drawer emitted a barely audible click in the silence. She deliberately pressed the heel of her right hand against the end of the handle, with her index finger resting lightly on the anti-slip groove along the blade's back—the standard "defensive grip."
In her memory, every evening after self-study, her father would correct her knife-holding posture at the entrance: "Keep the palm of your hand pressed tightly against the curve of the handle, as if holding a beating heart." But the man before her now merely tilted his head and smiled, his Adam's apple moving beneath the collar of his shirt, which was unbuttoned at the top.
The man's lips still curved into a gentle smile, but he didn't correct her knife grip as he usually did (palm pressed tightly against the handle's anti-slip groove).
The absence of this instinctive action stripped away the last layer of disguise.
"Ah, I never wanted it to come to this. After all, I inherited this man's memories, and I still have some feelings for you two sisters."Charlotte saw a smile she was completely unfamiliar with on her "father's" familiar face.
The man's voice still had the chest resonance that her father was known for, but there was a sticky smile in the last syllable. "After all, I inherited the memories of this body, and seeing you in your school uniform running in the morning really reminds me of my favorite NPC in Luminism Online in my previous life..."
"But the system actually came with two real-life beautiful girls as a bonus. This time travel was definitely worth it. Especially the way you hold the knife—you're more tempting than the five-star shadow assassin in the game's CG."
Charlotte saw that the right hand her "father" had raised, which should have been holding the gold-rimmed glasses for reading the morning newspaper, now emanated a faint blue glow. When the magic sword dripping with black mist fully materialized, the air exploded with the metallic, sweet stench of rust, reminiscent of the rotten specimens soaked in formaldehyde from last month's anatomy class.
That smile was so blatant, so malicious.
Charlotte's left arm tensed involuntarily, and her elbow, which was protecting her chest, slightly extended outward. This was the first move of the "Family Defense Twelve Forms" her father had taught her.
But at that moment, she was more concerned with the change in the other's pupils. The brown mole beneath her father's left eye was still there, but when those eyes swept over the hem of her school uniform skirt, the greed flickering in the depths of the iris reminded her of the experimental rabbits on the dissection table, their skin peeled away.
Seeming to notice his slip, Fox Shadoweye pinched the corner of his mouth with his fingers. "But you two sisters are so beautiful. I didn't expect that after traveling through time, I would not only gain a system, but also two beautiful sisters. I thought I was hallucinating from playing video games too much... Ah, you natives of another world probably don't understand what I'm saying, right? I advise you not to resist too violently. I want you to be intact when I enjoy your body later."
"Kneel down, you little beauty from another world." The black mist at the tip of the magic sword condensed into a hook shape, burning scorch marks on the wallpaper. "There is a sealed magic sword in my hand! Kneel down! Submit! I am the protagonist of this world. Once I break the third seal, all the noble ladies of the capital will... Hmm?" Fox's voice suddenly cut off. He stared at his right hand, his eyes filled with confusion.
There should have been a right hand holding the magic sword there.
Charlotte squeezed Fox Shadoweye's broken right hand, her eyes glowing silver. Three swords appeared in midair around her, their blades simple and rustic, completely different from the elven craftsmanship. "Believe me, I know exactly what you're saying, because I arrived here 16 years before you did."