Main World.
Konoha Year 25, winter.
The Imperial Palace, a side hall.
Mikoto stood quietly before a polished bronze mirror.
Her standard black maid's dress barely reached her knees, a plain white apron fastened neatly around her waist. A snow-white headband held down her pinned-up dark hair, accentuating her slender, pale neck, elegant yet lowly.
Neither sorrow nor joy showed on her face, her expression as cold and indifferent as frost. Only deep within her eyes did boundless bewilderment churn. There was no searing hatred, no overwhelming resentment, only the weightlessness and panic of suddenly plunging to the bottom of fate's abyss.
Three full days had passed since she had been brought into the Imperial Palace.
On the first day, she had met Kushina. On the second, she had paid her respects, one after another, to Toyotomi Yinglang's women-Tsunade, Sakura Haruno, Pakura, Karura, and Sasha.
Their gazes were gentle and friendly, without the slightest hostility or scrutiny. It was a detached understanding born of seeing through life's vicissitudes, not sympathy for the weak, but a silent accord between those confined to the same world and bound by the same rules: you, too, have finally come here.
On the third day, a cold verdict definitively settled every aspect of her identity for the rest of her life.
From then on, she was His Majesty's maid. Not a noble consort, not a concubine, merely a maid at the lowest level, bound strictly by the rules and without the slightest privilege.
More cruelly still, she no longer deserved to possess a complete name. The Uchiha had already been utterly destroyed in the Number One Shinobi World. Past glory, family bonds, and her former identity had all vanished into smoke.
No one here knew Uchiha Mikoto. There was no longer any Uchiha Mikoto in