I Returned To Kill Monsters, And Created The Worst One

Chapter 3 — No One Chose Me

Elara Veyne

Three years passed.

They say time makes certain memories easier to bear. Maybe three years were too few, or an entire lifetime trapped in a laboratory was too long for anything to be softened.

To everyone around me, I had simply grown up. At fifteen, I was an orphan without a particularly interesting ability. At eighteen, I was still exactly that, only a few centimeters taller, with longer hair and old enough to finally leave the Church’s guardianship.

No one adopted me.

It was funny how one of the greatest humiliations of my first life had become the greatest success of my second.

I spent three years working hard to be forgettable. During the annual evaluations, my blessing remained as disappointing as I needed it to be. I learned to control the amount of mana I released until I could strengthen an almost-dead plant without letting the golden glow on my fingers last more than a few seconds.

I trained where no one would have any reason to look for me. Behind the Church gardens stood an old greenhouse that had stopped being used after part of the roof collapsed. The sisters considered the place useless. To me, that made it perfect.

It was there that I learned something the Caldris had never bothered to teach me.

Control.

In my first life, they always demanded more. More mana, more power, more time working. If I could increase the effect of a potion twofold, Gideon wanted three. If I could remain conscious after the tenth mixture, he ordered me to prepare the eleventh.

There had never been any reason to learn how to do less.

In my second life, doing less was exactly what kept me alive.

I also studied.

I did not become wise in three years. I still didn’t know an impressive number of things that children from noble families probably learned before the age of ten. But I discovered where Aldervane’s main borders were, which countries maintained trade treaties with us, how interest, contracts, and taxes worked, and what exactly some of the clauses I had signed without understanding in my first life meant.

That last part was particularly unpleasant.

Discovering that they had managed to enslave me using pretty words in official documents did not improve my mood.

At sixteen, I started taking small jobs outside the Church. Older children were allowed to help merchants, copy records, organize stock, and work for a few hours in authorized establishments. I did anything that paid and did not require too many questions.

I saved almost everything.

At first, I hid coins under the mattress. Then I realized that was a terrible idea when one of the girls in the dormitory lost two coins and decided to search every bed. I started splitting the money between three different hiding places.

Paranoia, perhaps.

I preferred to call it experience.

It was while working that I discovered the Caldris name was everywhere.

“I heard the Consortium signed another contract with the Imperial Army.”

“The new recovery potions are excellent.”

“Gideon Caldris is going to receive another commendation.”

People said these things while I organized boxes, carried books, or served tea and expected me to agree.

Sometimes I did.

It was impressive how smiling and saying “truly admirable” could require more self-control than enduring pain.

One afternoon, while working at a small teahouse near Sacred Crown Avenue, I heard the sound of a carriage stopping outside. I didn’t need to look to recognize the crest.

I looked anyway.

Livia Caldris stepped out first.

She was beautiful.

Healthy.

She wore a dress that probably cost more than I had managed to save in two years and chatted with another young woman while a servant held a parasol over her head.

For a moment, our eyes met.

Livia looked at me as though I were part of the shop’s facade.

Then she looked away.

She didn’t recognize me.

My body, unfortunately, recognized everything.

My hands went cold. My neck burned exactly where the collar used to press against my skin. For a second, I smelled the alchemy rooms again and tasted blood in my mouth.

I gripped the cloth I was holding so tightly that my fingers hurt.

That was when I looked for someone else.

The girl.

The brown-haired girl with braids who had left the Church years earlier almost bouncing with happiness because the Caldris had liked her.

She wasn’t in the carriage.

She wasn’t with the servants either.

I had already noticed that no one talked about her anymore. During the first few months, some girls from the orphanage still said they had received bits of news. Then, nothing.

Maybe she was studying.

Maybe she had gone to another estate.

Maybe... she was perfectly fine.

I could invent many possibilities.

None of them convinced me.

When the carriage left, Livia still didn’t look back.

I should have gone back to work too.

Instead, I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty street and thinking about that girl walking into a room beside Gideon.

My hand had risen.

Then I had lowered it.

I still remembered that.

“I wonder if you’re all right,” I whispered to the wind. Maybe if I was quick with my revenge, I could still save her.

I wanted so badly to believe that.

Julian appeared a few months later.

I was leaving an apothecary where I worked two afternoons a week when I almost walked in front of a cart.

“Careful.”

I stopped.

I would know that voice in the middle of a crowd.

Julian Reeve was holding the reins.

He was younger than the man who had cried while I died, but he was still him. The same brown hair, the same eyes, and that irritatingly gentle way of tilting his head when he was worried.

My stomach turned.

He stared at me for a few seconds.

At first, I thought he had recognized me.

Impossible.

In this life, we had never spoken.

Then I noticed the way his eyes lingered a little longer on my face before he smiled.

“Are you all right?”

I felt an almost childish urge to hit him, unfortunately remembering the few good moments I had in that house, the ones I had spent by his side.

“I’m fine.”

Julian lowered his eyes to the box I was carrying.

“Is it heavy?”

“No.”

“I can help.”

“No to that too.”

He let out a small laugh.

At that moment, I hated that laugh.

In my first life, I had liked it.

Maybe that was worse.

My chest tightened and my eyes threatened to burn. He had betrayed me, after everything, and I, i***t that I was, still remembered good moments.

Julian kept watching me, clearly trying to find some excuse to prolong the conversation.

“Do you work here?”

“Sometimes,” I replied as I walked away, trying to keep my distance.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

“Lucky you.”

He seemed surprised by my answer, but then smiled again.

“Maybe not.”

That finally made me look directly at him.

It was the same look.

Not exactly the same, but close enough to make me uncomfortable.

In my first life, it had all started like this too.

A smile.

A conversation that lasted a few minutes longer.

Then the pieces of bread he secretly brought me.

Promises.

Kisses.

A door he swore he would leave open.

And, in the end, Gideon waiting on the other side.

I pressed the box against my body, anger consuming me alongside memories I had once believed were good.

Nothing remained.

Only hatred.

Julian had not done anything yet.

It was an inconvenient truth.

In this life, he had never lied to me. Never promised to run away with me. Never sold me.

Even so, I remembered.

“I need to go.”

I walked past him before he could answer.

“Hey.”

I didn’t turn around.

“What’s your name?”

I kept walking.

Maybe it was childish.

I didn’t care.

I knew his name.

That was already more than I wanted.

That night, I added Julian Reeve to the list of problems I would deal with later.

I still didn’t know how much he had received to hand me over to the Caldris.

I didn’t know what he had done with the money.

I only knew the result.

He had offered me hope when I had none left, then ripped it away from me along with my last chance to escape.

I had not forgotten.

I did not intend to forget.

Those three years also taught me something else.

There was something strange about the Sacred Guardianship.

Maybe I was seeing monsters everywhere because I had spent too much time living among a few of them. That possibility occurred to me often.

Even so, certain patterns began to bother me.

Whenever a war worsened in some region, more children arrived at the Church a few months later. That, by itself, was not strange. Wars created orphans.

What was strange was how efficiently certain families appeared to evaluate them.

Some regions produced children with similar affinities. Children from mining areas displayed certain manifestations. Children from the northern borders had others. The Church’s records were far too careful about abilities and surprisingly vague about the fate of some of those under its guardianship.

Maybe it was just bureaucracy.

Or maybe I was paranoid.

I preferred to store that somewhere in the back of my mind.

I already had enough monsters to destroy without inventing new ones.

On the day I turned eighteen, everything I owned fit inside one bag.

Some clothes.

Two books.

My documents.

The savings no one at the Church knew I had.

And, of course, a small bundle of food Sister Ysabel had insisted on putting inside.

She walked me to the gates.

“I still don’t like this,” she said for the third time.

I smiled.

“I realized that the first time you said it.”

Ysabel adjusted the collar of my coat the way she used to when I was younger.

My first impulse was to pull away.

I managed not to.

She had never hurt me.

I needed to remember that some hands touched without wanting to possess.

“You could stay,” she said. “Just because you’ve reached adulthood doesn’t mean we need to put you out immediately. We could wait a few more months. Maybe a good family will appear.”

Family.

I almost laughed.

“I think we’re past the stage of waiting for someone to choose me.”

“Elara...”

“It’s all right.”

And, strangely, it was.

I looked at that woman.

Ysabel had a few new lines around her eyes. During those three years, she never asked too many questions. She never insisted when I said I was fine even when I clearly wasn’t. She simply left food, books, or a new candle beside my bed and pretended not to notice when I came back too late from the library.

Maybe affection could be quiet too.

I was still learning.

“Thank you,” I said.

She looked surprised.

Probably because I didn’t say that often.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

I looked through the gates.

Sacred Crown Avenue stretched out before me, filled with carriages, mana rails, vendors, workers, soldiers, and enough people for someone to disappear among them if they knew how.

“Not yet.”

Ysabel looked worried.

I smiled.

“That’s exactly the good part.”

She hugged me before I could stop her.

My body went rigid for a second.

Then relaxed.

Just a little.

When we pulled apart, I tightened my grip on the bag’s strap and walked through the gates.

No one came after me.

No one asked where I was going.

No one grabbed my arm.

I stopped outside and looked both ways along the avenue.

I could turn left.

Right.

I could keep going straight.

Such simple freedom was almost frightening.

I remembered what it had been like in my old life, the collar, the imprisonment.

This time, no one would decide anything for me. No one would lock me up.

I thought about the brown-haired girl with braids who had climbed into a carriage smiling three years earlier.

“I really hope you’re still all right.”

I didn’t know whether it was a prayer or an apology.

Then I thought about Livia.

Julian.

Sabine.

And finally, Gideon.

The hatred was still there.

Three years had not diminished it at all.

Maybe ten wouldn’t either.

Good. Maybe it was better that way.

I had learned to be patient.

I started walking.

I still didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know how long it would take me to destroy House Caldris. One year, five, ten. It didn’t matter.

One day, I would return.

And when I did, I would open every door they kept locked and make the entire Empire see what existed behind them.

This time, no one had bought me.

No one had chosen me.

For the first time in my life, I belonged nowhere.

And never had an absence felt so much like freedom.