[Saint-Moritz, Switzerland, Earth Realm]
It's December 11th, 2036. Three days have passed since my seventh birthday, and the fog of early childhood has begun to lift. With clarity returning to my mind and magic still thrumming faintly beneath my skin, I've begun to truly understand the intricate web that makes up my new life. What I once believed to be simple geographical labels—"New York," "China," "the United States"—are, in fact, names with immense weight in this realm, this world they call Earth.
New York, as it turns out, is not a realm at all, but merely a state within a larger body called the United States of America, situated on the North American continent. A sprawling land of cities, conflict, and contradiction. And China? Not just a distant "land" as I once believed, but one of the most powerful countries on Earth, rooted in Eastern Asia, with a history as vast and complex as any kingdom from Thoria.
But power does not make for harmony. These two nations—China and the United States—are locked in a ceaseless political dance, one filled with tension, distrust, and veiled threats. They are not allies, not even friends, and their relationship is nothing like the union between my parents.
Which brings me to a truth I only learned around my second birthday—when overheard conversations and fragmented memories began to stitch together with startling coherence.
My father's real name is, in fact, Edward, not Jiehong as I had originally been told. The name Jiehong, it turns out, was given to honor his Chinese heritage, but he himself was not born in China. He was born in a small but wealthy European country called Switzerland, the child of Chinese immigrants. He was raised in a culture of rigid etiquette and old money privilege—an heir to legacy without roots in the land of his ancestors.
My mother, Morticia, was born in Canada, another Northern country, icy and vast. Her father was a traditional American, part of an old-money dynasty in the United States, while her mother came from yet another Swiss family—noble in their wealth, if not in title.
But the web goes deeper still.
Edward's mother—my paternal grandmother, Yaling—is a descendant of an old money bloodline from Japan, a culture she clings to with delicate precision and cold expectation. On paper, she is Chinese. In spirit, she is something else entirely. The elegance she demands from those around her is carved from centuries of ancestral pressure.
So here I am, the tangled product of five worlds: United States, Switzerland, China, Canada, and Japan. An heir to five nations, five histories, five legacies that compete for dominance within my blood. I am the walking embodiment of diplomacy and contradiction.
And with that heritage came... expectations.
When I was two, I thought I would be cherished. Raised with kindness, maybe even spoiled by the kind of love only long-awaited, firstborn daughters receive. I was wrong.
They are not the gentle parents I had once believed they might be. No—they are ambitious. Driven. Proud. The kind of people who pour their unrealized dreams into the soul of their child and call it love. They have molded my days into tight schedules and language drills, force-feeding me American English, Swiss German, Mandarin, and Japanese as though fluency in four tongues will earn me some seat at a table I have yet to ask for.
They speak of discipline, of multicultural brilliance, of raising a future leader. But it's all a performance—for their peers, for their families, and most of all, for themselves. A way to polish the image they present to the world. I am the diamond they plan to cut into shape.
And in that way… they are not so different from King Lukas Valentine, the man who called himself my father in my first life. He too molded me for his own ambitions. He too stole my agency and called it duty. These new parents may dress their cruelty in gold-embroidered intentions and speak with softer words, but the effect is the same.
If I hadn't let myself hope—if I hadn't allowed those quiet, dangerous expectations to take root in the fragile corners of my heart—I might have been spared the deep, aching disappointment that followed. For a time, I believed I had finally been granted a second chance at something as simple and rare as loving parents. I had dared to believe I could heal from the trauma of my past life—the betrayal of a father who murdered my mother, the pain of revenge gone wrong, and the soul-shattering grief of watching Yato take his own life because of me.
But hopes, when raised too high, fall the hardest.
In the beginning, everything seemed perfect. For the first two and a half years of this new life, I was enveloped in warmth and attention. My parents—Morticia and Edward—were doting and proud. My grandparents visited often, always bringing gifts and soft voices. It was a kind of love I had never known as Anna Valentine. I let my walls down. I allowed myself to feel safe.
That illusion shattered on July 13th, 2032.
That was the day Mother announced she was pregnant—with twins. A boy and a girl. I remember her beaming smile, the excitement that lit up Father's eyes, the way the entire family celebrated as if they had just received a divine blessing. I stood there, barely two and a half years old, watching the joy unfold like I was a shadow in the corner of their perfect little painting.
The twins were born on January 5th, 2033, just shy of a month after I turned three. They were given names dripping with symbolism and legacy: Edward Jiehong Qin II, a direct echo of our father's name and identity, and Milena Xialing King Qin, her middle name meaning "little phoenix," as if she were destined for rebirth and greatness.
And just like that, I wasn't the beloved daughter anymore—I was the eldest. The "big sister." It sounded like a promotion, a title of honor. But it didn't feel like one. It felt like being quietly demoted, like being moved off center stage while the spotlight turned toward the newcomers.
Responsibilities began to pile up like snow on a roof about to collapse.
At first, it was subtle: being asked to fetch things, to be quiet during the twins' naps, to wait my turn for hugs or stories. But soon, the shift became unmistakable. I was expected to show maturity far beyond my years. I was no longer coddled—I was coached, corrected, and criticized. They spoke of me like I was older than I was, like my early development meant I should act ten instead of three.
They stopped praising my progress. My milestones became checkboxes on a list of obligations.
They didn't look at me and see a child anymore.
They saw an asset.
A miniature adult.
A live-in assistant.
My once doting grandparents began to favor the twins openly, fussing over their every sneeze and babble, while barely glancing my way unless something needed to be fixed or fetched. I began to understand that love, in this life, came with conditions. It was transactional. And I had failed to meet the new terms.
I had not yet met my paternal grandfather—the elusive Jietang Qin, still cloistered in the Wudang Mountains, wrapped in mystery and tradition. Part of me feared that when I finally did meet him, it would be too late. That even he would view me as obsolete. Forgotten.
In the absence of affection, I turned inward. I let them push their expectations on me—studies, languages, etiquette, more studies. I let them bury me under the weight of books and perfection because it was easier to focus on memorizing mathematical formulas and verb conjugations than to face the grief of being unwanted. If I breathed too loudly near the twins, I was scolded. If I asked for too much, I was selfish. So, I stopped asking. I stopped seeking.
I wasn't known for sharing—not in my past life, and not in this one—and it felt unbearable to watch the love I once knew be given to others like it was never mine to begin with.
So I drowned in knowledge.
Better to drown in discipline than in despair.