Dimensional Descent

Aina sat within a luxurious room upon a well cushioned stool. Before her, a mirror lay, reflecting her image back to her. In her palm, there was a pair of scissors. She held them open and up to her hair, thinking about how short she should cut it. But, for some reason, she was hesitating.

'Hm, it's a bit amusing.' She thought to herself. 'If I really was a vampire, I wouldn't have a reflection at all, now would I?'

It was a completely random and almost painfully childish thought.

Ever since she woke from her sleep, Aina had found her long hair very annoying. She couldn't use it to attack like some other people with weird abilities and she always had to compensate for it in battle so that her opponent couldn't take advantage. She couldn't for the life of her understand why she had allowed it to get so long.

What was especially frustrating was that every time she entered her peak battle state, her vitality would be stimulated and it would grow even longer. By then, she would have to trim the ends just to make sure she wasn't sweeping the ground with her every step.

'My facial structure is pretty good, I could probably pull off going completely bald… Hm…'

As Aina was lost in thought, she heard the sound of footsteps and her door clicking open. She lowered the scissors in her hand, forgetting her original purpose as she met the gaze of the person who had entered through the mirror.

The current Yuri was red and puffy eyed. She didn't look like she had gotten an ounce of sleep, but for someone as powerful as her, missing out on a single night's rest shouldn't have been enough to put her in such a state.

As though she had to sneak around, she carefully closed the door behind her and locked it soon afterward. Her chest beat so wildly that it seemed that her heart might fly from her chest.

"Aina…"

voice almost carried with it a pleading tone. Looking at her friend… no, her sister of so long, she felt as

dresses of Earth wasn't shared here, but none of that stopped her from shining like she was

delicate

a very special hair pin reserved for the ladies of the Viola family who shared similarly high status. This job was to fall into Yuri's hands, but judging by

"Hm?" Aina blinked.

gaze looked Yuri up and down,

can't go

we already have this conversation yesterday?

response, Yuri felt like banging her head against a wall. She knew that she shouldn't be doing this, she should be allowing Aina to stumble and fall

the one person she respected to the depths of her soul, maybe even more than her own adoptive father. She had watched Aina go through so much as nothing more than a little girl. She couldn't stand the idea of her image and sense of

danger of Aina not reawakening to her true self soon enough, so he took a hands off approach trying to expedite Aina's growth by allowing her to maneuver through situations alone.

was a mess. Everyone seemed to be trying to do their best with what they were given, but

said with

get Aina to agree, any sort of escape plan was meaningless. If the person in question didn't cooperate, any

helpless. After two days, they had no plan. Miel hadn't said anything to her, she had contacted Joel again only to learn that Leonel had refused, and now there was no one but her and Savahn. In fact, if it wasn't for Savahn stalling the other maids, she wouldn't even be able to be here to speak to Aina alone and give it