🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 3
Filled with curiosity, Irene flew out of the castle. The rustling leaves swaying in the gentle breeze, the warm sunlight shining on the giant wolf statue in the town center, the laughter of running children, and the energetic people bustling through the streets all warmed her heart.
‘Wow! This reminds me of Laura’s bakery! That bread looks so good… I want to try it….’
While she was sulking at the sight of the displayed bread, Irene’s head turned at a conversation that caught her ear.
“Looks like our lord will be returning soon, huh?”
“That’s right. As expected of our lord! He’s the hero who led the empire to victory!”
The townspeople were excitedly talking about the returning lord who had brought victory and was on his way back.
‘The lord is coming back? Hmm… what kind of person is he?’
Irene imagined a burly middle-aged warrior with a thick beard, holding a giant sword in one hand.
‘Well… I just hope he’s not a weird or unpleasant person.’
The gloomy castle had no portraits left behind, so Irene was curious about its master.
He might be someone she would end up living with, so she hoped he would be generous enough to even accept a ghost like her.
While imagining the lord and looking around the village, she overheard something interesting.
“What? There’s a monster in the castle?”
“Shh! No, not a monster. We don’t know exactly what it is, but something is definitely there.”
“You don’t know what it is? Then isn’t it a monster?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see it clearly… but it’s definitely not a monster.”
‘A monster in the castle?’
Around a young man, five or six people had gathered, talking about the rumors surrounding the castle.
The man who started the story looked around carefully before lowering his voice even more.
“The Grand Duke’s castle has an ancient relic passed down through generations. No monster can easily enter that place.”
“Oh! Like a sacred artifact?”
“Probably….”
‘Really?’
Curious, Irene boldly floated closer to listen more carefully.
But she had overlooked something.
The man speaking was someone who had once worked in the castle—someone who had fled after his sensitive senses couldn’t endure her presence.
As expected, he suddenly began trembling violently.
“Hey, maybe you’re just scared for no reason?”
“N-No… I- it’s here right now. T-the thing….”
The man shook like a leaf, looking around with terrified eyes.
His sudden panic made the others also sense that something was wrong.
“Hmm? Now that you mention it… maybe there really is something.”
The group began scanning their surroundings. Some swung their hands wildly, others grabbed pots, brooms, or even pickaxes.
‘Eek—! What the… why are these people so sensitive?!’
Even though she was a ghost and couldn’t be harmed, Irene was terrified by all the tools swinging around in front of her.
With a teary face, she dodged the people and, just three hours after leaving, returned to the castle in defeat.
For a brief moment, she had felt familiarity with this world.
But being treated as an invisible stranger who couldn’t even be recognized or avoided left her feeling deeply lonely.
And the fear of being completely alone in the world followed her as well.
Her disastrous outing left her looking nothing like the excited ghost who had left earlier.
Dragging her shoulders, she wandered through walls back toward her room.
Then she suddenly remembered the “sacred artifact” they had mentioned earlier.
‘They said there’s a relic in the Grand Duke’s castle… If I get that, maybe they won’t try to exorcise me even if they find out what I am?’
The memory of scary exorcism movies from her first life gave her chills—even as a ghost.
On top of that, the memory of villagers swinging tools in fear made her shiver again.
‘Right. No one is here to protect me. I have to protect myself. If something can help me, I should find it!’
With a firm resolve, Irene began carefully exploring the castle again.
‘But strangely… this castle feels familiar.’
Even though she had no memory of this place, something about the corridors and the view from the windows, and even certain rooms on the second floor, felt strangely familiar.
‘Well… noble castles probably all look similar.’
She brushed off the thought.
What mattered now was finding the relic.
While searching, she discovered a room covered with a white cloth.
It was so dusty that it looked untouched for years, so she had previously ignored it.
But this time, she checked carefully—and found something in a corner.
‘Huh…?!’
It was a necklace.
A round golden gem surrounded by silver ornamentation, like a crescent moon embracing the sun—beautiful beyond words.
‘Wow… it’s beautiful. Could this be the relic? But… why does it feel familiar?’
It looked like nothing special except its beauty, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off it.
Tilting her head, Irene unconsciously reached out toward it as if drawn in.
The moment her finger touched the necklace—something inside her was pulled out, and something else flowed in to replace it.
A strange, heavy energy pressed down on her body.
She collapsed onto the floor as if she had just stepped onto solid ground after floating in space for a long time.
And then she felt the cold touch of the necklace on her fingers.
“Gasp—! H-Huh?! It can be touched?!”
Startled, she grabbed the necklace and rushed to a nearby mirror.
Although her form was still pale and transparent, she could now at least recognize her shape.
The face reflected in the mirror was very similar to Irene Snowell from her previous life.
“It wasn’t my imagination… Wait. Why am I suddenly becoming human?”
Even her voice resonated through the air.
But soon after, her body began to fade again, slowly returning to transparency.
“No, no! There’s no time! This necklace definitely has something inside it! I need to hide it!”
In her hurry, she nearly hit her head against a wall while rushing forward blindly.
She quickly searched for a door, groping along the walls.
‘At this time, servants don’t usually come this way. If I run fast enough, I won’t be seen.’
She quickly memorized the paths she had learned over the past month and headed to her room.
Once inside, she hid the necklace under the edge of the bed where it wouldn’t be easily seen.
Unlike Irene nervously looking back at the door, the outside remained completely silent.
‘Phew… thank goodness. I wasn’t caught!’
She swore to uncover the necklace’s secret and regain her physical form.
Her heart pounded at the fact that she might have finally found a clue about her ghost state.
Maybe—just maybe—she could escape being a ghost.
‘I like being a ghost… but I still want to live as a human.’
While Irene dreamed of a hopeful future through the necklace, strange rumors among the servants continued to grow.
Especially since these rumors came not from sensitive northerners, but from servants from other regions, confusion only spread further.
“Hey, don’t you sometimes feel something eerie? Remember when Paul said something similar, we thought he was just a nervous northerner.”
“Yeah… I’ve also felt sudden chills while working recently….”
Some of the listening servants quietly nodded.
“…You too?”
“Don’t tell me… you too?”
As they looked at each other in shock, another cold breeze swept through them, raising goosebumps.
“There’s definitely something here.”
Panicking, the servants quickly fled the area.
And so the rumor of “something eerie existing in the castle” spread throughout the entire estate.
The rumor grew as it passed from fearful servants to others.
Objects moving on their own, books flipping pages by themselves… strange phenomena multiplied.
Unfortunately, Irene had no idea.
Since finding the necklace, she had been completely focused on studying the energy inside it all day long.
‘No… at first, just touching it made energy flow out… why isn’t it working now?’
She tried holding it in one hand and focusing her energy.
‘Come on… how do I do this? Focus, Irene. Feel the energy… draw it out.’
She grabbed it with both hands, lifting and shaking it in the air.
‘Ah! I think something’s filling me… is it changing?!’
She worked so hard on it that anyone watching would think she was completely obsessed.
Because of that, rumors spread so widely that even servants began collapsing from fear, and many resigned.
Despite Sebastian’s efforts, the rumors could not be stopped.
And so, Irene became the fearsome “unknown entity” of the northern territory.
And finally—
The owner of the northern lands returned home after a long war.
