Elena Vance died at 11:47 p.m.
on a Tuesday, and woke up at 6:15 a.m.
on a Thursday that didn’t exist.
She was aware of the cloying scent of the room first—velvet and vanilla, dried lavender tucked into oak drawers, and the stale mustiness of air that had been trapped inside for far too long.
A strange thing to notice first, but the sensation reminded her faintly of the stale, closed-off rooms she’d known during her years in the hospital.
She tried to open her eyes.
Nothing happened.
Panic flickered through her.
Why couldn’t she feel them properly?
Why did her own body suddenly feel so unfamiliar?
She tried again.
This time, a thin blade of light cut through the darkness.
Elena flinched.
Her eyelids followed reluctantly, peeling apart as though even they had forgotten how to obey her.
The ceiling was a riot of frescoes, cherub faces pinched into mock-indignation, clouds that resembled cotton candy left to soak up rainwater, and a garish medallion of gold-leafed roses at the center that made Elena think of the shabby apartment she’d lived in just two minutes before her death.
She blinked slowly, expecting the morphine haze to clear, the hospice nurse to adjust her IV drip and ask if she was ready for another round of chemo, or any other sign that this wasn’t the afterlife.
Nothing happened.
Instead, a familiar burn of sour wine crawled up her throat, her skull throbbing with a hammering pulse that wasn’t her own.
She raised a hand, slim and pale, fingers tipped with dark red nails that curled back in sharp crescents.
A ring of some heavy metal adorned her index finger, its deep-set crest carved with the snarling features of a lion.
She knew this hand.
Knew whose skull it currently inhabited.
“Oh,” she heard herself say, her own voice a silken whisper wrapped around the edge of a dagger.
Lower than she expected, colder, and laced with the kind of authority that had servants dropping to their knees and lords reaching for their belt buckles.
“Oh, dear.
Oh, hell.” Elena sat upright, sending her reflection reeling across the canopy bed and the crimson drapes on either side of it.
Her own silver hair, she realized with a pang of surprise, barely spilled over her shoulders in the voluminous coiffure she’d worn during her three-hundred-and-forty-seven-hour-long vigil over the villainess of a dark otome game she’d played on her tablet as her cancer had ravaged her organs.
Her reflection’s eyes were violet, a violent and passionate shade that made her think of bruises and the last look of betrayal in a lover’s gaze, not the silvery blue of youth and promise she wore.
A nightgown of black silk hung from her shoulders, an extravagance as impractical as it was expensive.
Elena knew this body, this face, this life, because she’d stared at it for three-hundred-and-forty-seven hours in excruciating, excruciating detail.
She knew what was coming for this woman in chapter forty-seven and she “No,” she said, the word rippling through her unfamiliar lungs.
“N-no, no!
This is a coma dream!
This is a dream sequence and I am right now so far away from—” Elena’s bare feet were already brushing against the marbled floor as she climbed out of the bed, the cold surface sending a shiver up her spine.
Her reflection’s cheeks were flushed, just as she remembered them, and not because of the warm summer morning.
She pushed aside heavy curtains of gold and looked out over the expanse of the Vance estate, gardens, and training grounds, and the distant silhouettes of the Royal Magic Academy where in three months’ time Elena Vance would be paraded before the entire kingdom dressed in rags fit for a beggar or a noble harlot.
Further beyond it, the city’s golden domes and marble bridges stretched toward an impossible blue sky.
The guillotine, she knew, waited just at the city’s edge.
“Three months,” she murmured, pressing her forehead against the cool glass.
A lifetime in the context of the game, but no more than a heartbeat to someone who had three-hundred-and-forty-seven hours to die.
“Three months before the engagement is broken.
Four before the family disinherits me.
Five before I stand trial for treason.
Six before the guillotine.” “Okay,” she said, her voice barely louder than a sigh as she turned away from the window.
“Okay, I know the game.
I know every flag, every path, every ending.
I just have to avoid the ones that lead to the guillotine and find the ones that lead to the—” The door burst open behind her, making her spin on her heel, heart hammering against her ribs.
A woman stood in the doorway, her grey uniform the color of ash, her expression one of disdain.
Elena could see the freckles across her nose and the rough calluses on her thumb from years of embroidery as she entered the room, her heels clicking against the carpet.
She paused just inside, her gaze sweeping over the canopy bed and the reflection of Elena in it.
In the game, this woman had no name.
She was simply [Maid A] among the twelve other spritelike NPCs who populated the prologue of Crimson Throne.
“Lady Vance,” the woman said, her voice like a scolding mother.
“The Duke requests your—” her eyes settled on Elena’s reflection and she paused, “pardon, I mean the Duke requests your presence at breakfast.
You have twenty minutes.
Do try not to embarrass us all with your little… affliction.” Elena stared at her.
In the game this woman didn’t exist as anything more than an ambient NPC until the final sequence when she watched the villainess, Elena, stumble out of the ballroom doors and into the waiting carriage.
She didn’t have a name or a personality beyond the disdainful glare she was programmed to give anyone who glanced her way.
“I’m sorry,” Elena said, “I don’t think I understand.
I am the villainess .
I am supposed to be in the ballroom, not the bedroom, and I am supposed to—” “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be,” the maid snapped, “but twenty minutes.
You do not want to keep the Duke waiting.” She turned to go, pausing only to glance back at Elena.
“He does not take kindly to impertinence.” Elena watched her leave before turning back to the window.
The plan was simple, it had to be.
She wasn’t a princess or a queen from some golden tower, she was a girl with an hourglass full of sand and a mind full of contingencies.
She would find a way out, pack a bag, take some trinkets with her, use her last name to bargain for passage as she fled the country before the guillotine’s shadow fell over her again, but what if there was no exit?
What if the game didn’t allow it?
The last thing Elena wanted was to reach chapter forty-seven and find herself standing where she was now, staring into the mirror that reflected not a woman but a monster.
“Okay,” she said, pushing away from the window and back toward the bed.
“Okay, I’ll do it.
I’ll—” She paused, her hand hovering over the gowns hanging from the wardrobe.
They were beautiful things, more dressage than clothing, but she needed something practical.
Something not covered in yards of silk, something with a skirt that didn’t extend all the way to the floor so her feet wouldn’t be exposed to the cold.
A riding habit, that was what she needed.
Black, perhaps, or at least a dark enough blue to make the nobles of the Royal Magic Academy uncomfortable.
The room froze.
Literally froze.
The bird outside ceased in midair, the dust hanging in the sunbeams stopped in place, and the reflection of the sky in the glass turned to liquid gold.
A faint shimmer of text appeared in the corner of her vision.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: 3%…
12%…
34%…] Elena didn’t move.
In the game, there was no system.
This was a Crimson Throne , a dark otome game with no isekai elements, and certainly no systems.
The villainess didn’t possess any skills or statuses, but Elena knew what this was.
She’d read every hidden script passage, every bonus chapter, and seen firsthand the mechanics of the game’s engine.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: 67%…
89%…
100%] [WELCOME, ELENA VANCE] [WORLD INTEGRATION…
COMPLETE] [ERROR DETECTED: FOREIGN CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED] [CORRECTING…] [CORRECTION FAILED] [ALTERNATIVE PROTOCOL: ADAPTATION] [ADAPTATION COMPLETE] [STATUS: ACTIVE] A second later, the text vanished and the world resumed motion.
The bird outside completed its impossible wingbeat, the dust resumed its slow spiral, and the reflection of the sky in the glass returned to its normal state.
What was not normal, however, was the warmth in Elena’s ribs that blossomed outward to fill her lungs and make a sound in her throat like the crackle of a joint settling.
She took a step forward and something else changed.
Not the world, but the world’s fabric, the invisible threads holding it together, she realized; there were golden threads in the air, connecting her to the bed, the wardrobe, the ring on her finger, and the cracks in the floorboards, stretching out to the horizon beyond the window.
Another part of the system had engaged without warning, displaying a permanent script overlay in the lower-left corner of her vision.
[DEATH FLAG: ACTIVE — 183 DAYS REMAINING] She blinked the words away, then cursed under her breath.
“Of course,” she said to no one in particular.
“Of course I get a system.” She reached out, her finger passing through the text, but the words flickered and expanded [SKILL AWAKENING IMMINENT] [PLEASE PROCEED TO THE DESIGNATED AWAKENING LOCATION] [COORDINATES: ROYAL MAGIC ACADEMY — MAIN HALL] [TIME LIMIT: 72 HOURS] The Royal Magic Academy was where the villainess of the game was expected to perform before all of the kingdom’s nobility.
It was also where she was expected to be publicly humiliated in the final chapter, and where, in four days’ time according to the timelines in the game script, she was to be asked to demonstrate her “trash” skill.
If she failed the demonstration, she would be executed with a sword, or at least that was what it said in the bonus route.
The longer route, the one where the main character survived, she had to escape the Academy and reach the border of the kingdom alive.
“Right,” she said, staring out the window where the bird outside was paused mid-wingbeat.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to live long enough to see the end of this and then I’m going to live even longer.” Elena turned back to the wardrobe and the habit.
If the world was changing, then she would change as well.
She spent the next two hours adjusting to her new body, tying up her silver hair into a severe knot, practicing the expression the face she now inhabited wore in the game.
She did not think about the possibilities, the things she could be, the games she could play.
She only thought of escape and the odds of survival, the statistics of escape, the weight of a sword, the scent of blood, and the way the horizon seemed to lean inward when she looked at it long enough.