Her thoughts faded, her mind fogged, and her body felt different than before; it was no longer light, as if someone who had been starving for air was finally able to breathe.
There was something terribly, undeniably wrong.
After a while of drifting in what seemed like nowhere, the pain from her body disappeared; she was only left with a sense of self and betrayal. She jolted upright with a gasp, eyes wide, as she looked around the area that she was currently in, wondering if she was dreaming or not.
However, there was no battlefield.
No traitorous fiancé. There was no blood, no strange man, and... simply nothing that she knew.
Just a strange room, too clean to be real, too fancy to be safe.
A high-vaulted ceiling loomed above her, etched with strange runes and ridiculous artwork of birds carrying scrolls. The scent of magic hung faintly in the air, like enchanted linen and disappointment.
She sat in an enormous bed covered in gold-trimmed sheets.
She was... alive. How was she alive?
But definitely not herself.
She blinked and her hands trembled as she sat up. The sheets beneath her were embroidered with gold thread and the Noctherin family crest: a silver serpent coiled around a crescent blade, one with a dark red eye and a stripe of both colours.
"Whose ridiculous name—" She paused, then blinked at her reflection in the polished wardrobe mirror across the room.
Oh. Oh no. Her fingers reached up to her face—thinner, bruised, unfamiliar. She stumbled toward the mirror and nearly fell over a discarded schoolbag.
The girl in the reflection was pale, scowling, and looked like she'd fought a dragon and lost the argument.
Long, silky, crimson and silver tangled hair. One eye slightly swollen. Lip split. And worst of all—
'That's not my face! None of this belongs to me! I was not a hellcat even if I was a villainess, I was at least elegant and did not look like I got shock in the head!'
Panic rose like bile within her; something was terribly wrong.
She had died as a villainess. A life she hated, yet she was a feared sorceress. A general. A monster in beautiful heels, as they called her, one with the worst fate. But now, everything that was in front of her was painfully real. Her chest rose too fast. Her throat burned. Her limbs felt foreign, heavy, like they belonged to someone else, which they did; she was just taking a while to realize it.
"What the hell is this?! Who gave me this face?!" She exclaimed as she tried to make sense of what was happening to her and then she remembered that man she met when she was in pain, when she thought she was dead.
She touched her face once more and winced at how bruised it actually was.
'This... must be his doing; this only happened after I saw him; everything has changed. Not only is this not my body, this is something else entirely," she thought in horror. 'I have been body snatched too!'
And then it hit her. The reality she was now facing, what he said to her before she was swept into that vortex, was more than true: she was not supposed to be alive. Now she was given something much more than she had and that she lost.
She was no longer a character in a novel.
She had escaped the fictional world she had died in...
Only to wake up in someone else's life and body, an entirely different world and reality, one that did not go by the rules of a novel.
A world that wasn't just real—it was half magical and half a modern headache, a mixture of both worlds, something she never thought possible until now.
'Great, I left a fantasy novel with a sadistic author who loved to make my life hell only to end up in a different arc, a different hell,' She thought, with a sigh.
If this was a joke, the gods were not only in their flop era, they were in for a rude awakening. They say the past was what defines you; well...given the way the body looked, the original owner must have had it tough. Like it or not, this was her second chance.
Just as she was about to change, a firm knock echoed from the double doors. "Vaela."
She frowned. "Vaela?"
She sighed and moved forward, her body sore in places she didn't remember owning. The room was big enough to be called a royal suite, but the air was cold—decorated like it had been forgotten. Not unloved, just... unimportant.
She found a school uniform draped over a chair. High-collared, midnight blue, crested with the Noctherin insignia. Expensive, elegant, and tailored with all the warmth of a political alliance and her eyes narrowed as she wondered what was going on; everything was happening so suddenly, she needed to breathe.
"Vaela," came another voice, sharp and cold. "You are expected downstairs. Immediately."
She stared at the door, heart racing.
'Vaela huh?' She thought.
Right. That was the name now.
New face. New life. A new disaster, waiting just downstairs, with who knows what more, something that she was not prepared for, not right after she had just escaped death and thrust into a real world, another place she knew she did not belong; she could smell it in the air.
"Well, I don't have a choice; let's do this," she said, exiting her room and heading downstairs to the dining room, which was far too quiet.
A long table extended toward the stained-glass windows. At the helm sat Duke Corven Noctherin, who appeared to have been sculpted from disapproval and shadow. Gray-streaked black hair. Unreadable eyes. A presence that stated, "Speak only when summoned."
Lady Altira, his lawful wife, sat beside him—elegant, cold, and completely uninterested in anyone born outside of her own womb.
At the far end sat two ideal siblings: a brother who was too beautiful to be kind, and a sister who smiled like a snake with a fanbase.