Four years later...

The sound of terrible, roiling winds echoed for as far as the eye could see, as clouds of infernal ash danced across the blackened skies. Distant volcanoes could be heard erupting, releasing pyroclastic lakes onto the ground, even as glacial hailstorms rampaged against the very mountains themselves, entire rivers of ice, flying in the sky and smashing themselves against grey-white stone.

Earthen rumbling, geological turmoil and elemental fury tore apart the land, sending rivers of molten rock splashing against towers of antediluvian ice, stopped only as each incarnation of nature's wrath smashed against and died at the foot of pure, unrelenting walls of enslaved stone, even older ice and long-forgotten magma. A castle, carved unto the mountain, stretching out far enough to pierce the ashen clouds and cover the broken land in unnatural shadow.

Indeed, it would seem to anyone sane that this land was an inhospitable one. A place of death and despair, where no life could ever hope to flourish, for it would choke on the ash, freeze in volcanic winter, burn from within due to the presence of the magma, smashed by raging stones or preserved for eternity in ice older than soul. And even should one life manage to survive for any greater length of time, it would find itself at the same foot of the same tall walls that the elements perform their endless assaults upon; each of which heralds the ascent of an onyx spire, rising up to the sky as if needles in reverse, piercing the heavens much as one would skin, all in an effort to bleed the sun.

This is the truth of this place, for it radiates death unlike anything else on the planet. However, there is life in this land, and not one eeking out a desperate existence, for this is the home of the Inerti, a race without need for breath, feasting on sunlight, unbothered by the cold and just as eternal as the land itself.

And upon this seeming precipice of oblivion, stood a lone girl, atop a spire carved into the mountain, with a singular balcony connecting the world to her room, protected by a railing of glistening quartz and ageless ice. With trepidation and as she leaned onto the protective fence of her balcony, the girl took in a breath.

And then proceeded to unceremoniously choke her lungs out. "Ah- fuck- argh! Why do I keep forgetting that I don't need to breathe?! Its like someone told me to do it manually and now its become automatic." She groaned and spat blackened vile into the valley below, watching as the spit froze in mid-air before being swallowed by an ashen cloud.

This girl was one of the two princess' of the land, an Inerti royal by the name of Anne Sedellean, formerly known as Kamiyama Nori. "Your highness, it would be prudent to begin removing such immaturity from your dictionary, as I have stated many times before." An older woman, around twenty-six, stood at the opposite side of the balcony and straight at the girls right side. She wore an outfit indicative of a maid, had an eternally expressionless face apart from the occasional smirk and twitch of her lion-like ears.

"And you should try to put your heart on your face a bit more, Elena. If you do, who knows, some poor dumbass out there might actually take you as his bride." The princess didn't even turn her head as she said this, her voice echoing with about as much annoyance as the ever-present screaming of the land before her.

To her credit, the maid merely smirked. "But to what end? If the result of getting myself a man means having to eventually take care of a brat even a quarter as horrific as you are, your highness, then I would rather stay a virgin my entire life."

"Tch." Anne clicked with her tongue, finally turning around to face the maid that has decidedly shattered what little enjoyment she had managed to gleam from her morning. "So? What the hell do you want now?"

"With due respect, I am your head maid, which means that its my job to stand around and be of service. Should you wish to have me leave, it would be prudent to give me a task." With an audible sigh, the little girl relented and nodded. "Then make yourself useful and bring me some breakfast. Oh, and make me a list of whatever is expected from me today."

The maid bowed, nodded and left, causing the youth to sigh again. There was no innate malice within the maids speech, despite the words said, but knowing the truth only caused Anne's fury to grow even further as she watched the maid make her exit. "Respect is earned, not given..." Anne thought to herself with another click of the tongue as she turned back around to face the glacial inferno in the background. It wasn't an alien concept to her. No, as a matter of fact, its one she most certainly agrees with.

However, despite what people may think they agree with, unless that belief is tested in reality, it remains questionable at best. Having been reborn as a princess and coddled by her goddess of a mother, Anne though that her life would be an easy one. However, this is most certainly not the case, a truth made worse, or simply greater, by the fact that most Inerti within the castle are supremely powerful beings capable of many great feats. Plus, all of them can read souls to some extent, even the princess herself.

Its not that difficult for any Inerti, as all it takes is channelling one's mana through their eyes, while the unique souls of the Inerti allow for them to see into the realm of the dead. Emotions, experiences, thoughts, all of these and more can be found etched into the soul, as if souls themselves were some form of self-writing AI, constantly updating and changing and reforming.

One thought only exists for the briefest of moments, hardly ever physically visible even through magic. It takes a truly observant or highly skilled individual to catch glimpses of truth when gazing into another persons soul, which makes Domina, the princess' mother, all the more extraordinary of a creature. You see, as a royal, one must perform special duties for the nation, all of which require prerequisite scholarships to be completed and skills mastered.

In order to allow for a royal to do this, there are often entire cadres of tutors and professionals ready and willing to teach their young, future monarchs. This is also the case for the tailless lions known as the Inerti, with one pivotal difference; the current God-Empress is a person capable of understanding more about a person than they themselves do.

It wasn't long before Domina peered into the depths of her daughters souls, discovering Yvonne's talent for magic, stewardship and administration, which are all fine traits for any ruler, as well as Anne's talents of kinaesthetic ability, martial brilliance and leadership. A perfect split, not born from chance in the slightest, as this is how their very souls were built, hand-crafted by their mother and perfected by their grandfather.

While for Yvonne, this meant undertaking cool magic classes, learning extensive mathematics and being charged with management... her sisters chosen subjects weren't quite so normal.

For Anne, the exposure of this talent meant taking daily beatings by a cadre of overpowered teachers, ending every single day in bruises and with bleeding, aching muscles, being forced to eat foods other than raw sunlight to supplement her body's growth, only to be followed up by expeditions into the heart of her kingdom, to see her people and their way of life, to learn of literally everything there is to know about the Inerti.

Because, if one wishes to become a 'true leader' and worthy heir to the kingdom, they must know and understand everything. They must be capable of everything, prepare for anything. They must be perfect. And most of all? They can have no limits.

It is this last part that Anne has trouble accepting, as what it translates into is that she never gets to have any free time except for fulfilling her basic survival needs, like eating lunch or going to to the bathroom. "... only to have people standing in front of the toilet, waiting for me to finish so they can continue tutoring me."

She groaned and scowled. This life was pure torture for someone that's spent their previous existence living an entirely coddled life. She didn't have it easy, if you asked her, considering her parents never provided her with any true love. If anything, they weren't really parents to the girl rather than two people who, approximately a year prior to her birth, decided to have sex and have thusly been made responsible for her continued existence.

Its not like she had it bad, but it definitely wasn't the life she wanted. A life that she now knows was spoiled and inappropriate.

You see, this princess, she has a lot of pride within her heart. Her talents aren't misjudged, merely that remembering an entire seventeen years of a completely different life have left her in a rather stubborn, inadaptive mood. "Seriously... Inerti life is already boring as all hell, but mine is just pure torture..."

Musing to herself as she pondered this, the girl found herself staring off into the distance, watching east, then west. Completely opposite directions, yet she knew that regardless of where she looked, her goal was the same. "It wouldn't even be that bad if I didn't have that fucking 'hero' correction on my damn soul..."

A curse that she was quick to discover; the final reminder of her former status as a human, the mark of a 'hero'. It was like an etching, a rune, an ever-present, undeniable spell that had woven itself around her entire consciousness, a power so grand that its origins lie with the Creator himself. More than a mere title, this 'correction' of the soul caused Anne's power to grow at an exponential rate and combined with the clear mindedness of a child, allowed her to perform some undeniably grandiose feats.

Such as managing to learn the Inerti language in but a few months after her birth, even before she could properly speak it. It was something every child is capable of, but not something that an adult should experience. The speed at which thoughts are processed and reason compiled made the slow degradation of the brain all the more visible to Anne.

Usually, people aren't ever meant to remember this, but for Anne, it felt as if she had aged seventy years, while in reality, she was only four. "Normal children probably don't have it this bad, though... or maybe they do, and the trauma of it is why nobody remembers feeling slower and slower every single day?"

She shook her head and exhaled with another sigh, unaware that she had taken another breath moments prior. Stale, black ash and shards of ice were lazily spat out, much like the last group, except this time, their presence caused the princess to roll her eyes in annoyance. These reminders of her humanity, of her fragility, of her weakness...

A life ago, they would have been seen as hypocritical symbols of her human spirit, of strength and meta-cognitive power. Now, that she has been given a separate perspective, freed from the innate supremacism of the human species...

Well, let's just say that there aren't many beings out there that can match her spite, her hatred of the race. If she were fully an Inerti, without the memories and soul etchings of a past, disgustingly human life, she would have been the perfect leader that her mother believed she could be. It was a deep hatred that boiled within her, forcing the princess into a jaded state of unwillingness and sloth.

It was everything her chuunbyou heart had ever desired, but it came with what she could only call, a disgustingly realistic price. "... cause there's no way anyone would be given this much power from birth if they were actively willing to use it."

That, at least, was the reasoning her mother gave to Anne's perpetually infuriated state. That the only reason why she was a princess, a demi-goddess and a heroine all at once, was exactly because the Creator trusted her to not abuse this great power. And while this may or may not be true, it certainly didn't sit well with little Anne.

Sure, she had enough strength to squash ice and shatter granite as a four year old girl with a moderately malnourished-looking body, but that alone did not make up for all the drawbacks present in her current life. Not that she was actually malnourished, its just that due to their diet of ninety-percent sunlight, most Inerti look a bit on the too-thin side. "Sure was fun realizing that just because I don't need to eat stuff other than sunlight, that does not really mean that I shouldn't."

Sugar, proteins and all the other requirements needed by life to properly exist aren't unneeded by the Inerti, merely unnecessary for the daily life of most. This means that their intestinal systems aren't exactly well-developed, so when they actually eat food, it takes weeks to properly process, and that when it finally does, it hurts like hell to 'deposit the waste'.

A terrible pain that our youthful princess has to undergo daily, as she is forced to drink potions to speed up the entire system to be even faster than a human full of laxatives, as her tiny body is made to intake several kilograms worth of sustenance more than any sane Inerti ever should. Thing is, if this wasn't the case, her classes would have been the joy of her life.

Swords, pole arms, war-hammers, shields five times bigger than she is, the princess' former life's hobby had become a part of her daily life in Aestra, as the Inerti were masters of effective weaponry. No artwork, no ridiculously oversized swords, no blades of overlapping metal pretending to be parrying tools and most importantly; no firearms!

This place was her only other reprieve, often spending entire days around the foundries, inspecting every single weapon for quality and nearly never finding any form of fault, as she uses the wide variety of arms and armour till she is content, with no shortage of masterful teachers to show her the way of the blade; as well as other, considerably less cool weaponry.

However, despite all of these present tools of war and conflict, Anne's true talent lies with none of them. Instead, her mother ordered the forging of a set of specialized gauntlets, twin sets of pearly, quartz-like plate which was so full of enchantments and magic that the metal may as well be considered sapient and alive, as it neatly reshaped itself to suit the girls own growth.

In other words; her fists. Pummelling, fighting, brawling, this is where the girls true potential lied. Her short, weak-looking stature did not betray her strength, as even her malnourished frame was strong enough to send an average man stepping backwards from the sheer force of the blow. Naturally, this did nothing against the largely immortal, ageless Inerti masters gathered around her, all of whom did nothing to hide their spite for the girls preferred frame of combat.

Against them, all she could do is parry and make distance, counter their blows instead of striking and hope for an opening. Her training had started merely a year ago, but she already had a fear of her once favoured weapons, such as axes, spears and claymores, for there is no better way to learn than to experience things up front, no?

That means that this little girl has already lived through a year of being cut up, smashed, sliced apart, stabbed, impaled, skewered and broken against the ground. The training yard had been drenched in so much of her blood that its entirety radiates with her soul's essence, passively empowering her due to the ambient mana within the spilled blood.

It was during a particularly harsh session that the princess discovered her innate attunement with holy 'magic', a power supposedly based in faith that materializes in a brilliance of perfect light. This power, borrowed directly from her esteemed grandfather, was capable of many grandiose feats, such as healing wounds instantly and without leaving scars or in the case of this particular training session, blast the enemy with an inferno of righteous flame so hard, that their antediluvian, enchanted armour melted straight off of their flesh.

It was then used again, within the span of about five seconds after realizing what she'd done to her current teacher, to heal his charred carcass as best she could, though it still took repeated healing sessions over half a year to actually return the man to his former glory. Now, this might make one think that such an event would cause the girl to develop even greater trauma, or that the teacher in question would never wish to see her again and, in a human world, this may have been the case.

However, Anne and her teacher were Inerti, and to react in such a manner would be no less than the 'action of a lesser creature'. In short, her martial instructor became filled with pride as soon as he regained consciousness, proclaiming himself to be the best teacher she has since her display of raw power, with him as its test subject, was technically the result of his hard work and her talent. "He still gloats about this to everyone, even half a year later..."

She chuckled and smiled to herself.

Everyone here was like this. Everyone in the castle was allowed to do literally anything they wanted, with only their pride being in the way of these actions. This is why everyone could be rude to royalty and why she had heard the God-Empress be directly called an idiot by random guardsmen on multiple occasions, without anyone treating it as strange or even shocking.

For such a reaction is something that a lesser creature would do and not an Inerti. An Inerti is only truly considered responsible for their own actions and not for the souls of any other. Speech, mannerisms, thoughts, plans, wishing death on others... none of these matter in the slightest, so long as you don't actually do them.

One may continuously yell at another about how they are going to kill that person. Hell, they can even wave a weapon in front of them, but so long as nothing actually happens, the Inerti don't consider it worth mentioning. It was not a case of 'actions speak louder than words' as much as it was that actions were the only thing capable of speaking at all.

Emotion and expression are thought to be the means of a lesser people. Only raw experience, only truth, only action, matters.

It is, in fact, the princess' full agreement with this philosophy that makes her so infuriated with herself, constantly angered by her own faults and yet, blockaded by the remainder of her humanity from fixing these faults. Blockaded, from becoming a fully-fledged, true Inerti. It should be noted that absolutely nobody else that has ever seen or known the princess would consider such a thing, that she was an imperfect Inerti, other than herself.

In fact, in the eyes of others, her perpetual self-hatred and gnawing fury may as well be what paradoxically paints her as the perfect example of her race, as that very rage devours any other emotion and allows her to make quick, decisive and often fundamentally correct judgements in any situation, a power that any leader would kill for.

Anne knows full well that regardless of how the others choose to treat her, they would kneel within seconds had the situation demanded it, with no less will than they would for her mother, though this truth, this undeniable, inexorable fact, fuels enough spite to shatter the ground she walks on. And this is no joke, by the way, the servants of the palace have already created numerous emergency stockpiles of concrete and other building material should the princess ever lose her cool for even a split second.

It is with these painful thoughts that the princess found herself staring east and west once more, knowing full well that she couldn't allow herself to suffer this fury for the whole of her likely to-be-made-immortal life. "... guess I should talk to mother about letting me go on an adventure..." She murmured to herself, gazing deeply through the ash and glacial wind, with her mind focused on the distant land of Ennergres, the birthplace of Aestra's humanity and the root of all her problems.

Perhaps there, she could find a 'cure' for her heroic curse. "Whatever you may require her majesty for, it shall have to wait until the Empress has completed her tour of the nation, your highness." Elena rudely interrupted the princess, though as the girl made a sharp turn to face her maid, she found the woman staring at her with a rather uncharacteristic expression; that of pride and respect, a complete opposite to her mannerisms.

"Elena? Is something wrong? You're actually looking at me without sending waves of spite at me." Anne smirked and chuckled lightly as she walked into her bedroom, kicking off all the soot, ash and snow that coated her for the entire process of her waking dream. Elena sighed and closed the doors to the balcony, shivering lightly and exhaling an ashen breath of relief as the stone doors finally shut completely, for even if the Inerti are not bothered by the cold, it takes an especially strong will, or body, to stand for hours in the face of the morning hailstorm, to remain unmoved by clouds of volcanic ash and uncaring of the spikes of antediluvian ice piercing your skin.

And all this, done by a mere four year old girl, a demi-goddess, a heroine, a reincarnation; and as her maid smiled lightly to herself, she knew deep within her heart that the one before her, was none other than her royal highness, the First Princess of the Sarcopha Empire, lady Anne 'Regina' Sedellean. "Tis' nothing, your majesty. I was merely reminded of the Empress herself as I watched you standing against the morning blizzard in naught but a half-shredded nightgown~."