In the dim light of the living room, Lilia's figure looked frail and stiff.
She bowed her head, as though trying to shrink into the shadows of the world.
When people fell into despair, they looked back on their past.
It was one of the Three Great Questions of Philosophy: "Who am I?"
At that moment, Lilia kept recalling her past.
Her story began in the splendid yet cold and merciless royal palace of the Asla Kingdom.
Back then, Lilia had been no ordinary maid.
Her official position had been "Palace Guard Maid."
-a special position combining the duties of a royal guard with the skills of a senior maid.
Normally, she attended to the royal family's daily needs with meticulous, impeccable care;
but when danger struck, she had to take up her sword at once and become the sturdiest shield before her master.
Lilia had once taken immense pride in that.
Her exceptional housekeeping skills and devotion to her duties had earned her a place in the inner palace.
Yet the cruel thing about fate was that it often shattered you precisely where you took the greatest pride.
As a swordsman, Lilia possessed only what could be classified as an ordinary person's talent.
That hardly mattered in peacetime, but in a true moment of life or death, it became her most fatal weakness.
That day, an assassin's dark figure appeared like a specter beside the newborn princess's cradle.
Lilia instinctively drew her sword to meet the attack.
But in that lightning-fast exchange, a moment of carelessness allowed the enemy's poisoned shortsword to slash her ankle.
It was no ordinary poison.
It was a troublesome, exotic poison designed specifically to assassinate royalty, one that even detoxification magic could not completely purge.
Although a Court Magician's healing spell closed her wound