The heavy scent of old paper and dust always acted as a sanctuary for Saato.
To the rest of her high school classmates, she was just a quiet, unassuming girl who preferred the corners of the classroom, but to herself, she was a traveler of worlds.
Her absolute obsession, the one thing that kept her heart racing through the mundane cycle of school and exams, was a dark fantasy romance novel titled The Grand Duke’s Cruel Heart .
It was a brilliantly woven, gripping story about a brutal empire, ancient hidden magic, and a ruthless tyrant known as the Monster Duke.
Saato had read the first four volumes so many times that the covers were frayed, her mind constantly living within those printed pages.
And today was the day she had been waiting for months—the official release of the highly anticipated fifth volume.
The moment the final school bell echoed through the corridors, Saato did not loiter.
She slung her school bag over her shoulder and dashed out of the gates, her breath ragged but her determination absolute.
Her first destination was the city’s largest commercial bookstore.
“I am incredibly sorry, young lady,” the clerk behind the counter said, offering an apologetic, helpless shrug.
“The fifth volume of The Grand Duke’s Cruel Heart was completely sold out within the first hour of opening.
The demand was just too high.”
Saato felt a cold drop of disappointment hit her chest, but she refused to give up so easily.
“I see.
Thank you anyway.”
She turned on her heel and sprinted toward the next district.
She visited a second bookstore, then a third, and then a fourth.
Everywhere she went, she was met with the same devastating response: out of stock, sold out, try again next week.
The sky above began to shift, losing its warm afternoon gold and bruised by the creeping, heavy shadows of twilight.
The streetlights flickered to life, casting long, eerie glow across the concrete pavements, but Saato’s feet did not slow down.
Her obsession was a burning fuse.
Finally, at the very edge of the eastern district, tucked away in a narrow, dimly lit alleyway, she spotted a small, dilapidated bookstore with a faded wooden sign.
Her lungs burned as she pushed the heavy glass door open, a tiny brass bell chiming overhead.
She scanned the cramped, overwhelming shelves until her eyes locked onto a dark, beautifully embossed spine sitting in a neglected corner.
Her breath hitched.
There it was.
The definitive fifth volume of The Grand Duke’s Cruel Heart, its pristine cover gleaming under the faint yellow bulb of the shop.
“I found it…
I actually found it!” Saato whispered to herself, clutching the book tightly against her chest as if it were a priceless artifact.
Her heart hammered against her ribs with pure, unadulterated euphoria.
She quickly paid the elderly shopkeeper, not even waiting for the change, and rushed back out into the cold night air.
A quick glance at her wrist watch told her it was already pitch black outside, far later than her usual curfew, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
The heavy weight of the book in her hands was a shield against any anxiety.
As she hurried down the main thoroughfare, her pace naturally broke into a joyful run.
Her mind was already racing ahead, thousands of miles into the plot.
‘I am going to lock my room, pull up the blankets, and read this entire masterpiece in one single night without sleeping!’ she thought, a bright, triumphant smile spreading across her face.
She was so consumed by her sheer happiness, so completely trapped inside her own head, that the ambient sounds of the city completely faded away.
She didn’t hear the violent roar of an accelerating engine echoing from the intersection.
She didn’t notice the massive black silhouette of a vehicle losing control on the slick asphalt.
Suddenly, a blinding, piercing glare of twin white headlights shattered the darkness, engulfing her vision.
The sharp, agonizing shriek of burning tires tearing against the road violently forced her back to reality.
BOOM!
A brutal, deafening impact shattered the night silence.
The sheer velocity of the collision threw Saato’s fragile frame high into the air like a broken ragdoll before she slammed violently onto the cold, hard tarmac several meters away.
The agonizing force of the impact fractured her bones, and the sudden, overwhelming shock robbed her lungs of air.
Her precious book slipped from her numb fingers, sliding across the dark asphalt.
The agonizing pain lasted only a fraction of a second before a profound, freezing numbness began to spread from her spine to her extremities.
The thick, metallic scent of her own warm, crimson blood began to pool rapidly beneath her head, staining the dark road.
Saato tried to move, tried to cry out for help, but her jaw was frozen, and her vocal cords refused to cooperate.
Her fading, blurred vision locked onto the copy of the novel lying just a few feet away from her.
In the dim light of the streetlamp, she could see her own fresh blood splattering across the pristine pages of the cover, slowly obscuring the printed title.
A profound, suffocating sorrow washed over her, heavier than the physical trauma destroying her body.
With her very last ounce of consciousness, she let out a desperate, weeping lament inside her mind:
‘No…
not like this…
I haven’t even opened it…
I will never know how the story ends…’
Her heavy eyelids trembled and closed, sealing out the world, as she was pulled down into a bottomless, silent abyss of absolute darkness.
“Miss Evelyn?
Oh goodness, Miss Evelyn!
Please open your eyes!
Can you hear me?
What has happened to you?!”
A frantic, high-pitched female voice pierced through the absolute silence, echoing painfully inside Saato’s skull.
A throbbing, agonizing pressure pulsed behind her temples, making her feel as though her brain was being compressed by a heavy iron vise.
‘Am I…
am I still alive?
Is this a hospital?
Did the paramedics find me?’ she thought, her consciousness slowly piecing itself back together from the dark fragments of the accident.
With an immense, exhausting effort, Saato forced her incredibly heavy, trembling eyelashes open.
She expected to see the sterile, harsh white glare of fluorescent hospital lights, the smell of antiseptic, and the rhythmic, reassuring beep of an imperial heart monitor.
Instead, her vision was met with an overwhelming display of opulence that left her completely paralyzed.
She was not lying on a thin hospital gurney, but rather embedded within an enormous, incredibly luxurious royal canopy bed draped in heavy, deep crimson velvet silks.
The ceiling above her was vast, adorned with intricate, hand-painted gold leaf murals of mythical creatures and sweeping celestial skies.
A massive, breathtaking crystal chandelier hung directly above, casting soft, flickering candlelight across walls lined with dark, polished mahogany wood and antique, sweeping draperies.
Saato’s mind instantly went entirely numb.
Before she could even process the foreign grandeur of the architecture, her eyes drifted toward a massive, ornate full-length silver mirror standing in the far corner of the chamber.
Reflected in the polished glass was a face that did not belong to her.
The reflection showed a young woman of ethereal, haunting beauty.
Strands of long, pale golden hair spun like fine silk fell over a pair of wide, trembling amethyst eyes that looked completely fragile and exhausted.
Her complexion was pale, almost translucent, completely devoid of the sharp, modern features Saato had looked at in the mirror every morning of her high school life.
‘T-This…
this face…
this room…’ Saato’s heart began to hammer with a terrifying, erratic rhythm.
Her breath caught in her throat as the overwhelming realization crashed into her mind like a tidal wave.
‘This isn’t a hospital.
This is exactly how the grand chambers of the imperial palace were detailed in the descriptions…
I am inside the universe of my favorite book!
And this body…
I have become Miss Evelyn?!’
The sheer shock made her dizzy.
She had reawakened as Princess Evelyn, the tragic, magic-less side character of the novel The Grand Duke’s Cruel Heart.
In a royal family where magical prowess dictated an individual’s worth, Evelyn was viewed as an absolute disgrace, a useless, magic-less piece of garbage despised by her own biological father, the Emperor, and utterly loathed by her venomous stepmother.
“Miss Evelyn…
praise the heavens, you are awake!
You gave me such a terrible fright.
You suddenly collapsed onto the floor,” the voice spoke again.
Saato turned her head slowly, her amethyst eyes locking onto a young girl standing by the bedside.
The girl was clad in a crisp, black-and-white classical maid’s uniform, her hands trembling as she clutched a silver serving tray.
Evelyn swallowed hard, trying to steady her erratic breathing.
She raised a pale, delicate hand to her throbbing forehead, forcing a weak, deceptive smile onto her lips to mask the absolute panic tearing through her soul.
“I…
I am alright.
It was merely a sudden, sharp pain in my head.
My vision went dark for a moment, but I am entirely fine now.”
Though her voice sounded soft and melodic, her mind was a raging storm of calculations.
‘Think, Saato, think!
If I have just awakened in Evelyn’s body, and the maid is reacting to my first sudden collapse…
that means the timeline of the book is exactly at the very beginning of the prologue.
But what do I do now?
The imperial palace is a literal viper’s nest.
My entire family wants me gone, and if I stay here, my stepmother, the Empress, will—’
“I am so relieved to hear that, Miss,” the maid interrupted, her tense shoulders visibly relaxing as she took a step closer to the grand bed.
“You have been looking dreadfully pale all evening.
The Empress specifically ordered that you must be taken care of.
Look, I have brought you a glass of warm milk.
Please, drink it all while it is still hot.
It will soothe your nerves and help you sleep peacefully.”
The maid reached down, lifting a beautiful, intricately carved crystal glass from the silver tray and presenting it directly to Evelyn.
The rich, thick white liquid steamed slightly in the cool air of the chamber, looking entirely innocent and comforting.
Ding—
In that exact split second, a loud, metaphorical alarm bell violently rang inside Evelyn’s mind.
A sudden, paralyzing wave of pure, absolute dread washed over her, causing the temperature in her veins to drop to absolute zero.
Every single line, every single word of the novel’s prologue flashed before her eyes in a brilliant, terrifying sequence of memory.
The prologue of The Grand Duke’s Cruel Heart was etched into her brain permanently.
It was the very catalyst that set the entire plot into motion.
The Empress, desperate to permanently rid the imperial family of the magic-less disgrace and frame a rival political faction for the crime, had orchestrated a covert execution.
‘The milk…
the warm milk on the night of the third full moon…
Oh my god, it’s this night!’ Evelyn’s soul screamed in sheer terror as she stared at the glass.
‘The Empress didn’t send a comforting drink…
She mixed a lethal, agonizingly slow-burning POISON into this very glass!’
Evelyn stared fixedly at the rising steam of the white liquid, her hand freezing inches away from the glass.
Her fingers began to tremble uncontrollably, and her throat completely closed up, suffocating her breath.
death had just hunted her down on the asphalt streets of her past life in the form of a speeding car, and now, it was standing right in front of her again, disguised as a warm, welcoming glass of milk.