One of them stepped forward, her voice like a blade of ice.
"Young Miss, First Madame ordered that you are to remain confined to your quarters until the Eldest Young Master returns."
Without another word, the four turned in mechanical unison and left, the door slamming shut with a finality that reverberated through Cassandra's chest. A heavy bolt scraped into place. She was a prisoner.
She sat up abruptly, her body trembling—not from fear, but from the sudden, searing flood of memories not her own. Images, names, sensations—foreign and invasive—crashed into her skull. She clutched her head, rolling onto the bed as a strangled cry tore from her lips.
When the storm receded, she lay gasping, pale and clammy, her chest heaving as though she'd clawed her way back from death. Slowly, she turned her head.
The mirror.
Her reflection stared back at her—an exquisite young girl with delicate features, her long black hair spilling like silk over a fragile frame that was not Cassandra's.
Her stomach dropped.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhh!"
The scream ripped through her throat, piercing and raw. But outside the door, the guards didn't even flinch. To them, this was routine. Their "Youngest Miss" often wailed whenever locked inside by the First Madame.
But this wasn't routine for Cassandra.
She stumbled from the bed and lunged toward the mirror, gripping its sides with bloodless knuckles. Wide, disbelieving eyes stared back at her from a stranger's face. Her breath came ragged, too fast, too shallow.
What the hell happened?!
Her memories clawed their way forward—blood, assassins, betrayal. Her Master's hand striking her dantian, the explosion of qi, her body ripping apart from within. She had died. She remembered dying.
So why… why was she alive, trapped in the body of a girl she had never known, in a family she had never belonged to?
When she woke up, she found herself trapped inside the body of a seventeen-year-old girl—Cassandra Bolton, the youngest daughter of the infamous Bolton Family.
Through the strange flood of memories that weren't hers, she realized with mounting disbelief who these people were. The Boltons—rulers of the underworld, their name whispered like a curse in the Rowan Empire. A clan of villains who fed on blood and fear, cloaked in elegance but rotting with cruelty. And she… she had reincarnated into the body of their weak and bullied youngest miss.
Her breath caught In her throat. Did she… turn into an evil ghost? After dying so wretchedly, did her soul crawl into the body of a stranger?
The thought was absurd. Insane. Completely unscientific. Yet here she was, alive inside a body that was not hers, surrounded by memories that tasted of smoke, blood, and crime.
Cassandra Feng's mind reeled. I escaped one dungeon only to wake up in hell itself.
Her chest tightened, the bitterness suffocating. Even death offered her no release. What kind of twisted fate was this? What rotten luck chained her to misery across lives?
Rage, grief, and disbelief coiled in her chest until her delicate new frame shook. Her beautiful borrowed face distorted into something almost feral as her aura turned sharp and bloodthirsty, vengeful enough to chill the air.
A raw scream tore out of her throat as she hurled her fist at the marble floor. The sound cracked like thunder. A thin spider-web fissure appeared beneath her knuckles… yet the ground held firm.
She froze, staring.
What the hell?!
In her old body, that punch would have shattered stone like glass. But here—barely a scratch.
Cold realization struck like lightning.
This wasn't her body. Not her strength. Not her qi. There wasn't even a flicker of energy flowing through her veins.
"No…" she whispered, trembling, horror widening her eyes.