preparing for the surprise inspection.

Anthea turned on her heels, her mind made up. There was no time to lose. If she wanted to see the truth, she had to do it before her resolve melted away in the comfort of the palace.

She walked quickly toward the door connecting her master bedroom to the dressing room, a room that was larger than her entire apartment in her previous life.

"Okay, something simple. Something ordinary. Dark pants, a shirt without embroidery... something that screams 'I'm a normal, boring citizen,'"

she thought as she opened the double doors of the enormous closet.

But what she found made her stop in her tracks.

There was nothing "ordinary" there.

Row upon row of silk dresses, tunics embroidered with gold and silver thread, lace that looked like it had been woven by magical spiders, and fabrics that glowed with their own light. Everything screamed opulence. Everything screamed "royalty." Even the nightclothes looked like they cost more than a small family's annual budget.

Anthea searched with growing desperation, pushing hangers aside and opening drawers with abrupt movements.

"Seriously? Not a single linen shirt? A pair of old woolen pants? Anything that doesn't look like it came from a gala ball?"

she complained internally, feeling her master plan crumble in the face of her wardrobe's reality.

Every garment she touched was soft, delicate, and obscenely expensive. If she went out in any of these things, it wouldn't be five minutes before she was mugged or immediately recognized as someone who didn't belong there.

Finally, at the back of a forgotten closet, her fingers brushed against something heavier and less silky than silk. A hooded tunic.

She pulled it out hopefully, tugging at the fabric. It was a white hooded tunic, made of thick, good-quality material.

It wasn't perfect, but at least it didn't have any embedded jewels or shiny embroidery that reflected the light. It was... decent. The only remotely passable thing among all that sea of unnecessary luxury.

"A white tunic..."

she murmured, holding it up in front of her and evaluating it with a critical eye.

Although it looked a little strange, it was the best she could get.

And since she didn't plan on telling many people about her visit to the city, it was better than nothing.

"I'll look like an eccentric traveler or a lost priestess, but I guess that's better than looking like a runaway princess."

However, getting the clothes was only the first step. Now came the really complicated part: getting out of the palace.

Anthea began pacing around the room, biting her lower lip. The palace was a fortress. There were guards on every corner, servants swarming the hallways, and watchful eyes everywhere. She couldn't just walk out the front door waving goodbye.

She needed an excuse, a way to leave without all the protocol coming down on her. She couldn't rely on the servants for this. Not because they were disloyal, on the contrary; if they served in her palace, they were completely trustworthy. But precisely because of that loyalty, they would run to inform the Council or the regular guards if they saw her trying to leave alone. "For your safety," they would say. And goodbye to secrecy.

"A surprise inspection,"

she murmured, remembering her previous life.

She remembered her old boss, that detestable man who would appear out of nowhere in the office to "check efficiency" without warning.

Everyone hated those visits, but she had to admit they were effective. If she announced her departure, they would clean up the streets and show her only what they wanted her to see. If she wanted to see the truth of her city, it had to be like those annoying surprise inspections.

But to carry out an "inspection" of that caliber without being stopped at the door, she needed support.

She couldn't do it alone.

However, she couldn't turn to the regular guard either, whose loyalty to protocol and the Council was still in doubt—she didn't know if they were more loyal to them or to her.

She needed a different force. Someone who wasn't obligated to report her movements to anyone else. Someone with enough authority to bypass the palace bureaucracy and whose loyalty was absolute and unquestionable to her, not to the rules.

But who? Who in this immense castle possessed that kind of autonomy?

That was when a memory from her recent visit to the library struck her.

She remembered the books she had leafed through, texts detailing the military structure of the Empire. In particular, a passage about the Drakorian Guard.

Suddenly, it all made sense. The image of those guards she had seen in the corridors while searching for the library came back to her mind with clarity. At the time, they had seemed intimidating, with an almost supernatural presence and a grandiose appearance that had left her perplexed, but she had not really understood what she was seeing. Now she knew.

The Drakorian Guard. The empire's elite force. They were among the elite of the elite.

According to the texts, they were responsible for protecting the Emperor and his family, the Rymokjaféts, and, of course, her. The most important thing she had read was their code: they were an independent force. They obeyed only those they served, owing allegiance to no one else. They did not answer to politicians or curious nobles.

It was just what she needed.

She walked steadily toward the door, remembering the exact location of those dragon-like guards she had seen before.

And she found them.

They stood there, immovable as golden statues, guarding a restricted access point. Anthea approached them, trying to project as much authority as she could muster in her strange white robe.

"I need to get out,"

she said directly, without beating around the bush.

"I want to see my people, to know the reality of my principality. But it must be a secret inspection. No one, absolutely no one outside of you, can know that I have left the palace. Not the Council, not the servants. Understood?"

The guards exchanged a brief glance. There were no doubts, no questions about her safety or protocol. They just nodded.

"As you command, Your Highness,"

one of them replied in a deep voice that resonated in Anthea's chest.

The plan was surprisingly simple and executed with terrifying efficiency. There was no need for dark tunnels or elaborate disguises for them.

One of the Drakorian guards simply raised a hand and muttered a few words in a guttural, ancient language. The air around Anthea vibrated, and a soft shadow, almost like a translucent mist, enveloped them. It was concealment magic, a "Shadow Veil" spell that made them imperceptible to the eyes of ordinary guards and the palace's standard protections.

They walked straight toward one of the side exits. They passed other guards who looked right through them as if they didn't exist. Within minutes, they were outside.

The outside air hit Anthea's face, cool and free of the palace's perfumes.

She turned to look back at what she was leaving behind, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

From the outside, the magnitude of her "home" was not just overwhelming; it was inconceivable.

The palace was not a simple building; it was a colossal citadel that devoured an entire mountain. Its white and gold stone towers pierced the clouds like needles of the gods, and its walls seemed like organic extensions of the rock itself, as if the mountain had decided to grow in the shape of a castle. It was an impregnable fortress, of a beauty and size that defied all logic.

Anthea's eyes widened, feeling a vertigo unrelated to the height. In her previous life, on modern Earth, she had seen skyscrapers, immense dams, and marvels of engineering. But this... this was in a league of its own.

"It's impossible..."

she whispered, unable to look away.

The Drakorian guards following closely behind her turned their heads slightly, as if confused. As an elite force, hearing such low whispers should be basic for them.

Anthea coughed awkwardly, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks as she realized they had probably heard every word of her previous murmur.

"I'm surprised that my possessions are still in such good condition,"

she said aloud, trying to regain some dignity.

The tallest of the guards stepped forward slightly and bowed his head respectfully.

"Your loyal servants would guard your possessions with their lives, Your Highness. You need not worry about that,"

he replied in a firm, confident voice, as if that truth were as solid as the palace walls they were leaving behind.

Anthea nodded stiffly, acknowledging the comment with a vague gesture as she quickly turned toward the immense structure.

She needed to look anywhere but into the eyes of her escorts. So she fixed her gaze on the walls, frowning and stroking her chin theatrically, as if she were deciphering the secrets of the cosmos in the masonry.

She was trying to project an image of wisdom and deep analysis, hoping that her "philosopher pondering eternity" stance would conceal the fact that her ears must be red as tomatoes with embarrassment.

But as she maintained this facade to avoid eye contact, her gaze was truly lost in the details, and the charade gave way to genuine disbelief.

Her modern mind, accustomed to concrete and steel, tried to calculate the cost of such a work. Billions. Trillions. No, not even with all the money on Earth could something like this be sculpted on top of a mountain without heavy machinery. The logistics, the transportation of materials, the labor... it was an architectural nightmare. It should be impossible.

And then, understanding struck her.

It wasn't engineering. It wasn't cranes or thousands of workers chipping away at stone for centuries.

It was magic.

It had to be magic. Only the arcane power of this world could have raised such a monstrosity of beauty and stone. The realization made her feel small, not only in the face of the building's size, but in the face of the power it represented. She lived inside an architectural miracle sustained by forces she was only beginning to understand.

Finally, she looked away with a grimace, rubbing the back of her neck.

Her neck was starting to hurt from looking up so much, and the simple act of trying to understand the magical logistics of it all was giving her a headache. She decided it was better to stop asking herself impossible questions and focus on her path.

He looked ahead.

A perfectly paved road stretched from the base of the mountain, flanked by majestic trees and, most strikingly, a series of solemn statues.

Anthea recognized it instantly. Memories of one of the books she had read flooded her mind. It was the Heroes' Way.

Each statue represented a figure who had made invaluable contributions to the principality: generals, magicians, sages, and artists. The former Anthea, in a rare moment of patriotic sentimentality, had ordered these effigies to be carved so that their names would never be forgotten by time. Walking there was like walking through the very history of her land.

He followed the path, marveling at the details of the sculptures, until the statues ended.

The path opened up, and beyond it, the landscape changed. In the distance, stretching across the valley, stood a fairly large city, vibrant and full of life.

The capital of the principality.