Her name is Eumillia Dolkness.
She is five years old the first time she looks into a mirror and sees a stranger staring back at her.
Perhaps it had been wrong from the very start:
Her name is Eumillia Dolkness.
She is five years old and she essentially lives alone.
She has never once seen her own parents, and the maids that serve her all keep their distance whenever they can; they both fear and dislike her for her black hair and dark eyes, ominous features that her parents left her behind for.
And then she looks into a mirror, an uneasy feeling seeps in and she remembers -
Another life.
An older girl, a young woman with black hair and dark eyes, in a world that doesn't reject her for them, features that are normal and common even amongst its people.
A gamer, who spends her time playing computer games and exploring various fictional worlds beyond her small room, who chases the constant of "grinding" and the thrill of "levelling up."
But then she dies and -
In a game that girl plays, Eumillia Dolkness dies.
Not even the main antagonist but a background bully, who ultimately meets her end as a desperate villainess in a bonus side story.
She is an evil woman, with dark powers that fit her cruel heart and cold nature.
She pays for her sins with death at the hands of the heroes, her former classmates, who step over her broken body to uplift the smiling heroine into the light.
She is swept past, a minor setback on the way to their "happily ever after" ending.
She looks into the mirror and wonders, What is this? Whose face... is that?
Sometimes, she forgets.
She was born as Eumillia Dolkness, and for five years that was all she was and all she had ever known. Black hair, and absent parents, and maids who avoid her at every turn.
Now she has memories, of being that girl.
Now she has knowledge of the future, of how Eumillia lives and dies, of how Eumillia's path winds and ends up.
Of how her path ends.
She is Eumillia.
Sometimes she forgets.
Who is that?
There's her, there's the girl, and there's Eumillia Dolkness.
She is herself, she is her.
Who is she?
There is nothing to do in the mansion. A library full of books and she cannot read them, because no one has taught her or thought to do so (the written language of this world.)
There is no one to talk to (the maids dart in and out of rooms with her trays of food, as if her black hair was contagious. They shiver and whisper when they think she's out of sight.)
There is no one to play with (not that she needs anyone to, for she is a grown woman as much as she is five years old.)
There is no one to watch over her (because no one cares.)
And so she summons her dark elemental powers, the ones that she knows lives deep inside her body.
It is the one thing she at least knows.
This power will one day be enough that everyone will know it, be strong enough they will know of her, fear her enough to destroy her for it.
But for now, they are mere wisps; charcoal-coloured mist that easily enfold her small form in the faintest embrace, thin ashen ribbons that she can clasp and shake like another's hand.
How creepy, her maids will gasp when they catch her at it. How strange and forbidding, they will murmur as they spy her dancing in a circle of writhing black shadows.
She touches her spread fingers to the curl of a shadowy arm and spins on the tips of her toes, quietly humming to the tune of a song that only she can hear.
It is not enough to just dance, of course.
In her other lives - life - she had used them to fight.
And fortunately, there is a monster dungeon located close enough to where she lives. And nobody knows or wonders where she goes off to, what she does throughout the day and how she spends her time.
Now that she has awakened them, her powers churns inside her and she wants to know what she can do with them.
(Black hair, and absent parents, and maids who avoid her at every turn.
Dark elemental powers, strong enough to threaten a hero's party.
She loves fighting games and grinding.
She dies.)
She wants to know what she can do.
It gets easier the more she does it.
Being no longer behind a remembered screen and actually experiencing the movements of her body as she fights is unexpectedly exhilarating. It's addictive.
Her competitive gamer spirit rises and she thinks, I'm all fired up now.
It makes her heart race and her blood rush as she forcefully expels her magic from her very cells to battle monsters. The sudden flood of EXP surging through her body and her powers growing with every kill energises her even more, and she tears through the levels with a steady but vicious abandon. She forgoes the safety of a conventional protective amulet for more efficient maximised training, and learns to heal herself on the go. Her every small cut is quickly healed over before it can slow her down, blood audibly bubbling and skin hotly crusting over the stinging wounds, and black spikes suddenly grow and lash out as they protect her vitals from unexpected attacks.
If not for the inevitable hunger, thirst, bodily and magic exhaustion, the very real need for sleep and rest, she would continue her rampage into the dungeon, heedless of the danger or time of day.
She treats it like a quest, like her life is a video game, like her body is not a human.
And so time passes.
Notes: I LOVE the concept of Eumiella's character and I desperately want to play around with it! There are three main facets:
1) her as someone who regains memories of her past life:
2) her as a person who suddenly realized one day that she is a CHARACTER in/from a video game
3) her being born as and actually living/BEING that character/person (instead of someone else who suddenly replaced or took over their body mid-story)
Eumiella being all of these AND an antisocial gamer AND she just wants to survive. Does she ever linger on the fact that she's died twice before? Because I do! I rearranged bits of it a little but this is essentially a study of chapter one. She is under-socialised and touch-starved in all worlds. Some people hc her as autistic and yeah that's so valid! What do you call this kind of concept anyway? A Double Isekai?
The writer probably: .... it's not that Deep.
Me: But I want it to be!
Written 31/1/24. I actually wrote this in one go after my first read which is why some details are inaccurate, but try not to mind it! I really want to write more about her...