Author’s Note: Initial Development of the story is a little slow, though there are no info-dumps, it is to make the world feel more realistic and lived in.
***
’Shit!’
Pain sat behind my eyes like something had been driven in and left there, and for a long moment that pain was the entire world.
I felt as if someone had hit me with a pole made up of iron.
I could not open my eyes. I could not move my hands. My body simply refused to answer.
’This is a dream. This has to be a dream.’
Thoughts kept firing anyway, useless and out of order.
’Did I hit my head. Did someone hit my head. Why can I not feel my hands. Is this what a stroke feels like. People my age do not have strokes. I should look that up. I cannot look anything up, my hands do not work, why do my hands not—’
The pain surged again and scattered every one of them at once.
I have no idea how long I lay there riding it out, wave after wave, each one a little weaker than the last, before something finally gave enough that I could drag my eyes open.
I did not try to stand yet. Standing felt like a decision I was not ready to make. Instead I let my eyes crawl across the desk in front of me, piece by piece, cataloguing without meaning to.
An inkwell, half full, a quill resting across its lip at an angle that suggested someone had set it down mid-thought and never come back. A stack of books, spines cracked from use, none of the titles in a language I recognized until I looked a second time and somehow did. A brass paperweight shaped like a wolf’s head. A folded letter, unopened, sealed in dark red wax with a crest pressed into it.
None of it belonged to me. All of it felt, somehow, like it already did.
I turned my head, testing a limb I was not sure still worked, and the rest of the room filled in around the desk. Dark shelves lined every wall, packed floor to ceiling with leather spines. Even the chair beneath me felt expensive enough that I half expected to be billed for sitting in it.
’None of this is mine.’
I pushed myself upright, and my whole body disagreed with the decision at once.
I looked down and saw small hands, slender fingers and smooth knuckles. Undeniably attached to me, and undeniably not mine.
’No. No, no, no, f*ck no!’
I already knew, cold and sinking, before I let myself think it all the way through. Knowing did nothing to make it feel less insane.
I got to the mirror on legs that had not earned my trust back yet.
A boy looked out at me. He had Black hair, blue eyes and average features. A face several years younger than the one I had gone to sleep with, and mine, unmistakably, uncomfortably mine.
I lifted a hand. He lifted his.
"Okay," I said, mostly to check whether my own voice still worked. It came out lighter than I expected, a boy’s voice instead of a man’s, and hearing it left something cold sitting in my chest that the mirror alone had not managed.
"This is bad."
The headache surged one final time and memories flowed into my mind.
A garden, sunlit, the smell of cut grass.
A sword too heavy for small hands, propped against a training post.
A dining room, candlelight on silver, a voice correcting my posture without ever once raising in volume.
A woman laughing somewhere upstairs.
A girl standing under the afternoon sun, dark hair catching the light, turning to look back at me over her shoulder.
I lived in the Fourth Age and the date today was 29th December, 1550.
A name, surfacing like something dragged up from the bottom of a well.
Edmund Rhys. Second child of Baron Alaric Rhys, House Rhys, a name with old blood and a smaller title than it used to carry. Raised on this estate. Tutored in etiquette, mathematics, and just enough swordsmanship to not embarrass the family. Fifteen years old. Three days from his first term at the Royal Academy. No memory of ever being anyone else.
Except I had one. Mine.
The rest came slower after that, less a flood, more a current I could finally keep my head above. My childhood. My home. The tutors who shaped my handwriting and told me, more than once, that a Rhys did not slouch at the dinner table. The academy, waiting somewhere ahead like a date circled on a calendar I never agreed to.
And underneath all of it, quieter but heavier than everything else combined, one more name surfaced.
Sera Rhys, my sister.
My breathing stopped.
"No."
I knew that name. Not from anything Edmund’s memories had just handed me. I knew it from a different life, from nights hunched over a screen telling myself I would stop reading once it got too late.
Sera Rhys. The villainess.
One of the most important characters in the novel I had spent months reading, right up until the moment I woke up as somebody else entirely.
I sat down hard on the edge of the desk.
’No, no, no.’
Fourteen hundred Chapters. I had read maybe two hundred of them. That was not enough to remember everything, not enough to know every character or every quiet detail buried three arcs before it mattered.
It was enough to know Sera Rhys did not get a happy ending after all the villains lost every time.
The author had spent the first arc mythologizing her so that her arrival could feel world shaking. Rumors that started small and grew teeth. Political alliances closing in around her one at a time. A slow, patient slide into the woman the story eventually just called the villainess and stopped bothering to explain further.
She was my sister now.
"You have got to be kidding me."
A knock saved me from finishing that thought.
I straightened without deciding to, posture drilled into this body long before I ever showed up in it. "Come in."
An old man stepped through with a breakfast tray. Grey hair combed with military precision, spine straighter than mine. I knew him the instant I saw him, the name surfacing from Edmund’s memory like it had always been there.
’Mr. Rowan.’
"Good morning, young master."
"Good morning."
He set the tray down with the kind of care that suggested he had done this exact motion ten thousand times. "Your father wishes to see you after breakfast."
"I will be there."
He bowed and left. I sat staring at the door a moment before finally looking down at the food.
Eggs. Toast. Fruit cut into pieces too even to be an accident. A pastry dusted in powdered sugar, completely unbothered by the fact that I was six inches away from a breakdown.
I picked it up anyway.
’At least transmigration comes with decent food.’
I took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and let the sheer stupid normalcy of it untangle something in my chest that the panic had not managed to touch.
’Okay,’ I thought, quieter now. ’Think.’
I needed to know where I stood in the timeline. I needed to sort what I actually remembered from what I was only guessing at.
’So today is December 29th, 1550. According to my memories, the protagonists of the original novel started their journey on January 1st, 1552. So basically, if I want to save my sister, no she isn’t my sister! why am I even thinking of this!? But I guess I do need to see her...’
I found her on the western balcony.
She stood with her back to the doorway, forearms on the railing, a thin curl of smoke rising from between two fingers. I stopped in the doorway and let myself look at her a moment before she noticed.
Sera was seventeen and a student in the academy.
She had Long black hair that were loose over one shoulder. Pale skin, faint shadows under her eyes that said sleep was not high on her priority list. Sharp features, and eyes that read almost black until the light caught them and showed the deep blue hiding underneath.
She noticed me before I decided how long I planned to keep staring.
"You are staring."
I blinked. "Sorry."
"Why?"
I reached for an answer that was not the true one.
’Because you are supposed to become the villain of the book I used to read before bed!’ I thought, and said absolutely none of it out loud.
"You are different from what I remember," I said instead, and only heard how bad that sounded after it had already left my mouth.
Her eyebrow went up. "What?"
’What the f*ck am I saying!?’
My stomach dropped for the second time that morning.
I had said that out loud.
"Nothing," I said, fast enough to convince no one.
She studied me, cigarette forgotten between her fingers, then took another drag and looked back at the gardens. "You have gotten strange."
"That is what people keep telling me."
"People?"
"Myself."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "At least you are self-aware."
I leaned on the railing beside her, close enough our shoulders nearly touched.
She was my sister, standing three feet away, smoking on a balcony, completely unaware of what I was currently carrying on her behalf.
She nudged me with her shoulder. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I was wondering something."
"What?"
"Do you ever think about the future?"
She turned to actually look at me. "That is a strangely serious question for breakfast."
"I have had a strange morning."
"I noticed."
She looked back at the gardens, and her voice dropped a register, less performance, more actual answer. "Of course I think about it."
"And?"
"I try not to."
I frowned. "Why?"
She shrugged, the motion careless in a way that did not quite reach her eyes. "Because the future is usually disappointing."
I did not have anything ready for that. We stood there a while longer, smoke curling between us, the morning going on around us like nothing had shifted at all.
Then the air in front of my eyes changed.
A translucent window unfolded out of nothing, and I went very still.
[System Initialized]
[Host: Edmund Rhys]
[Objective: Prevent The Villainess’s Fall]
[Plot Points: 0]
I almost laughed.
’Of course it is,’ I thought. ’Save my sister from becoming the villain of her own story. No instructions. No hints. Good luck.’
"Eddie?"
I did not answer. More text unfolded, patient and unbothered by the fact that it had just handed me the largest problem of my new life.
[Main Objective]
[Prevent Sera Rhys From Reaching Her Destined Downfall.]
I looked at my sister. Still smoking, still watching the gardens, completely unaware that a System had just informed me her entire future rested on whatever I managed to do about it.
I looked back at the window.
’Prevent the villainess’s fall.’
I almost wanted to ask if it had anything less ambitious available. Instead, one more line appeared, and my stomach dropped for the third time that morning.
[Core: Unawakened]
So I was starting from zero. Exactly what a boy carrying his sister’s future needed to hear before finishing breakfast.
I dismissed the window on instinct more than understanding. Nothing happened. I tried again, sharper this time, and it blinked out like it had never been there.
Sera glanced sideways at me. "You look like you are thinking very hard."
"Hmm.."
"About?"
I met her eyes and gave her the only honest-sounding lie I had. "Nothing important."
"You have said that three times now."
"I am consistent."
"You are annoying."
"Good to know."
’You are not going to become the villainess,’ I thought, gripping the railing hard enough to feel the stone bite into my palm. ’Not if I can help it.’
My father sent for me not long after.
Baron Alaric Rhys sat behind a desk stacked with papers when I arrived, and did not look up until I had crossed half the room.
"Father."
He studied me a beat longer than the greeting required. "You seem more awake than usual."
"I slept well," I said, which was a lie he had no way of understanding the size of.
He nodded at the chair across from him. I sat.
"The carriage leaves in three days," he said, without preamble. "For the academy. You have studied enough," he said, already back to his documents. "Do not embarrass the family."
"I will try."
"You will do more than try."
"Yes, Father."
I was almost at the door when he spoke again, quieter.
"Edmund.
"Do not let the other young nobles provoke you."
"I will not," I said, and meant it.
He nodded once. That was the end of the conversation.
I let out a breath the second his study door closed behind me.
Three days. The academy was coming, and with it the story I used to only read from a screen. This time I would not be turning any pages. I would be walking straight into it, carrying a sister who had no idea she needed saving, and a System that had handed me a name for the problem and nothing else.
Right now, I had two hundred Chapters of a story that used to just be words on a screen, waiting for me somewhere down the road, close enough to touch.
’That will have to be enough.’