Chapter 1: Starting at the Guillotine

The sky was soaked in the crimson light of the setting sun that glared angrily from the horizon onto the Grand Square of the Imperial City. At the center of this famed square loomed a guillotine, its crude and rusty blade dripping red.

The sole Princess of the Tearmoon Empire, Mia Luna Tearmoon, stood before the deadly instrument and gazed blankly at her surroundings. Voices assaulted her ears, sharp and relentless. They were full of fury and malice, attacking and condemning her with words that cut deep into her heart.

"...How? How did it come to this?"

Why, she wondered, did she — Princess of the proud Tearmoon Empire — have to suffer such a terrible fate? Was it because when she was told there was no bread, she laughed and said to let them eat meat? Was it because when her advances had been rebuffed, she'd vented her frustration by slapping her rival, the daughter of a poor noble? Was it because when she was brought a dish that contained ambermoon tomatoes, which are disgusting, she'd fired the cook on the spot?

She continued to ponder the matter — ostensibly oblivious to the fact that she'd pretty much answered her own question — as she looked at the masses of people and the hatred that filled their expressions.

At the front of the crowd was a young man who, with his silver hair and refined air, cut a striking figure as he gave instructions to the surrounding soldiers. He was Sion Sol Sunkland, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Sunkland. To his side stood a young girl of equal presence. Known as the Saint of Tearmoon, she was the daughter of a poor noble who ruled a remote domain near the edge of the empire. With Sion's help, she had started a revolution to save the people from their suffering. She was Teona Rudolvon, whose own scorn had once ignited the flames of Mia's hatred... But now, those flames had sputtered and died, leaving nothing but ashes of emptiness and resignation.

"How... did it come to this..."

The same words trickled weakly from Mia's lips. Soon enough, a soldier walked up behind her and forced her to her knees. She looked up and saw her hands being forced against the semi-circles carved into a coarse plank of wood. Then the top half was slammed down to keep its condemned captive in place. The crude surface bit into her skin, leaving painful splinters.

"How... did it come to this..."

The third utterance of her question was met with a reply.

"It's for the sake of the empire. Now, be a good princess and die."

She looked up to find the soldier who'd brought her here looking down at her, his eyes cold and hostile. They were eyes that wished for her death. Something seized her from the inside. A chill of terror ran up her spine, but it failed to find her head. The heavy blade of iron had already fallen.

There was a dull thump, and the world began to spin...

A well-used diary, the only personal article she had been allowed, fell to the ground. Slowly, its tattered pages began to turn the color of the blood-red sky.

Thus did Mia Luna Tearmoon die.

That was how the dream went.

"Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Mia screamed. It was a scream that was a tad lacking in the refinement that would befit a princess of the empire.

"M-M-M-My head! My head my head my head my heaaaaaad!"

She frantically patted her own head, checking every angle and surface to make sure it was all there. And then she checked again. Just to be sure.

I-It's there! I'm fine. I'm all right.

Next, she nervously looked down at her body. The stiff, ragged cloth that had covered her was nowhere to be found, instead replaced by a lavish nightgown made of a fine material that was lovely to touch. It was soft, comfy, and almost excessively frilly. Her skin, once marred by scars big and small, was again smooth and unblemished. She held up her hands. They were smaller than they'd been in her... dream.

As though they belonged to a child...

Still feeling rather heavy in the head, she slowly got out of bed and walked in front of the full length mirror. When she peered into it, her blue eyes went wide with surprise. Her argent hair was neatly trimmed to shoulder length, and her cheeks glowed with the faint pink of health. The girl looking back at her was the spitting image of her when she was just eleven or twelve. Back then, the empire yet boasted an affluence and prosperity that was nearly unmatched in all the continent...

How terribly strange. I recall being twenty years old...

She frowned.

I was seventeen when they caught me trying to escape... and confined me to a dungeon for three years... and...

Memories of those torturous days resurfaced one after another. She remembered the anguish. The crying. She recalled the sensation of the dungeon's stiff stone floor and the cold dampness of her blanket. The sudden flashbacks were bewildering. She felt confused, but more than that, she felt deeply relieved.

"...O-Oh ho ho. H-How terribly obvious." She giggled loudly to herself, as if she was trying to laugh off the nightmare. "N-None of that ever happened. How could it? What a silly dream. Childish in every way. And how silly of me to have had it."

She kept laughing and laughing, so desperate to fill the room with something other than silence that she didn't realize one, very simple, fact: real children don't think of their nightmares as childish. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something near her pillow.

"...Oh?"

She frowned curiously at the odd object. Upon closer inspection, she found it to be an old diary. In fact, it was her diary. She recognized the cover. It was the one she'd been using since she was ten. For some reason though, it looked much older than that. Its pages were aged and ragged and... Why was it covered in dark stains?

It looked exactly like the diary she saw in her dream right before waking up. She reached out a trembling hand and touched the discolored book.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she flipped open the cover to reveal a page soaked through in something dark and red. It was filled from top to bottom with bitter scribblings that matched her dream word for word. They described her long and harrowing experience in vivid detail, from her agony in the dungeon to her terror of the guillotine.

"Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Mia screamed again. Then, her eyes rolling back, she fainted on the bed right then and there.