The first thing I registered was the scent of old roses and lemon polish, a world away from the instant coffee and ozone-laced air of my tiny studio apartment. The second was the impossible softness of the bed beneath me, a cloud of silk and down that seemed to cradle my very soul.
Something was terribly, luxuriously wrong.
When I finally forced my eyelids open, they felt heavy as lead shutters. Sunlight, thick and golden as honey, streamed through the latticed windows of a room so opulent it made my architect's heart ache with a mixture of awe and professional jealousy. Carved mahogany, velvet draperies, a silver vanity… it was a scene straight out of a historical fantasy.
Specifically, a historical fantasy novel I'd binge-read just last night to escape the crushing reality of my looming thesis presentation.
The Crimson Blade's Oath.
An epic tale of a stoic, silver-haired knight who rises from obscurity to save a kingdom. And I… I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly where I was. And who I was.
Oh no. Not her.
Before the panic could fully set in, a series of crystalline chimes echoed not in the room, but directly inside my mind.
[Destiny Weaving System Activated.]
[You can earn Destiny Points (DP) by forging and strengthening bonds with pivotal characters.]
[Invest DP to unlock and cultivate latent talents.]
[Current DP: 0]
Destiny Points? Latent talents? My head throbbed, a dull, phantom ache from a champagne-fueled headache I never personally earned. I was tired. So, so tired. In my past life as Rina, I juggled a full-time architecture course load with a part-time job that barely covered my rent. Sleep was a luxury, and this bed felt like heaven.
Just five more minutes… I already submitted the final draft of the blueprints…
A satisfied, sleepy smile touched my lips. But it was fleeting, shattered by a voice as cold and sharp as splintered ice.
"It is past noon, Lady Seraphina."
My eyes shot open. It wasn't a dream. That voice was real, and it was right beside me. I slowly, cautiously, turned my head.
And my breath caught in my throat.
Sitting in a chair by the bedside was a young man who looked as if he'd been sculpted from winter moonlight. His silver hair fell in pristine layers around a face of breathtaking, emotionless beauty. His eyes, the color of a stormy sky, held no warmth, only a chillingly polite sense of duty. He was a perfect, living illustration.
"Kaelen… Valerius?" I whispered, the name tasting foreign on my tongue.
A flicker of something—surprise? annoyance?—crossed his flawless features before being suppressed. A single corner of his lips quirked upward in a gesture that was technically a smile but generated all the warmth of a glacier.
"You have finally deigned to remember my name. I am honored."
Somehow, his tone suggested he was anything but.
"What… what are you doing in my room?" I managed, clutching the silk sheets to my chest.
Kaelen's ghost of a smile remained. "The Baron assigned me to your personal guard, my lady."
"My guard? Why?"
"To prevent a repeat of last night's… incident."
My mind was a blank. "Last night, I…?"
"You were… displeased," he stated, his voice a flat monotone. "At the capital's most exclusive boutique, you destroyed three crystal perfume atomizers, a rack of imported silk gowns, and a full-length Chevorian glass mirror. Oh," he added, as if remembering a footnote, "and you also threw a diamond-encrusted hair ornament at the Viscountess Elara's prized poodle."
…I am innocent. I swear. I was in my apartment, wrestling with CAD software and crying over my student loans.
But my head was beginning to pound in earnest now. A second-hand hangover, a truly unique form of suffering.
"Water," I croaked. "Please."
He produced a glass from a nearby table with silent efficiency. As I gulped it down, my eyes roamed the magnificent room, and a dreadful detail snapped into focus.
Red paper tags.
They were stuck everywhere. On the corner of the grand armoire, the leg of the vanity table, the frame of a beautiful landscape painting. There was even one on the bedpost right beside my head.
No… it can't be.
My blood ran cold. The scene was identical to the novel's opening description.
Kaelen followed my gaze, his expression unreadable. "Have you forgotten already, my lady? Those are seizure notices. They were posted yesterday."
The dam of my denial broke. It was all true.
The noble house I now belonged to, the Barony of de Valois, was ruined. The Baron and Baroness, my new parents, had been swindled by a charismatic con artist, losing their fortune and lands in a single disastrous deal. Seraphina de Valois, their only daughter? In the novel, she was a vain, useless villainess who throws tantrums while her family collapses, eventually dying alone and penniless in a forgotten alleyway.
Her fall from grace was a mere footnote, a catalyst for the true protagonist, Kaelen Valerius, to leave the ruined estate and begin his epic journey.
So, I've been reincarnated as a bratty, bankrupt noble girl who dies in the first few chapters? Me?!
The joy of waking up in a fantasy world evaporated, replaced by a chillingly familiar dread.
A few hours later, I stood before a full-length mirror—one of the few pieces of furniture without a glaring red tag. The girl staring back was a stranger. She had hair the color of spun moonlight and eyes like amethysts, her features delicate and beautiful. But there was a spoiled, petulant curve to her lips that I instantly despised.
This was Seraphina de Valois. This was me, now.
To be honest, a part of me wasn't entirely repulsed by the idea. My life as Rina had been a relentless grind. I was an orphan, my parents having lost everything to a real estate scam eerily similar to this one. They'd passed away from the stress, leaving me with a mountain of debt I had to legally renounce just to survive. The low-income scholarship was the only thing that kept my dream of becoming an architect alive.
My life had been a tiny, two-pyeong goshiwon room, instant noodles, and the constant, gnawing fear of failure. I'd survived on sheer grit and the free kimchi provided by the goshiwon owner.
And now I'm a Baron's daughter. A bankrupt one, sure, but still. I much preferred being a frontier noble to some high-ranking duke caught in the capital's political web. Treason was a messy business. Here, in the countryside, I could live quietly. If, and this was a very big if, I could solve the monumental debt crisis.
Why did I have to arrive at this exact moment? I wanted to grab the novel's author by the collar and shake them. If I had arrived a few months earlier, maybe I could have warned the Baron.
But what's done is done. If I don't act, the Baron and Baroness will fall into despair and take their own lives within the year. The estate will be auctioned off, and I'll become a beggar.
It's just like back in Korea, I thought, a bitter taste filling my mouth. Never again. I won't let that happen again.
I had to make money. An astronomical amount of it.
"Kaelen," I said to the silent knight standing guard by the door.
"Yes, my lady."
"This barony… do we have any assets left?"
"None to speak of."
"What if we asked the people of the domain for donations?"
He paused. "A donation drive?"
"Something like that… no, never mind." I shook my head. Forcing money from already struggling tenants without a good reason would only breed resentment. And it wouldn't be nearly enough.
The novel's timeline was a death sentence. The debt was due in two years, but my parents' hope would run out in one. Five months after their deaths, Seraphina's story ends with her coughing up blood in a slum.
Damn it all. The parallels to my old life were uncanny and infuriating.
"Tsk. I'm going for a walk." When my head gets cluttered, I walk. It was a habit from my life as Rina. It was free, after all.
As I left the room with Kaelen trailing behind me like a beautiful, silver-haired shadow, I nearly collided with a graceful, middle-aged woman. Her face was etched with a quiet sorrow, but she carried herself with an elegance that defied her worries.
Isabella de Valois, my mind supplied. My mother.
"Going out to cause more trouble, Seraphina?" she asked, her voice weary. Her gaze wasn't angry, just… disappointed. And filled with a worry that twisted my gut.
"Please, be moderate," she sighed, before sweeping past me down the hall.
I stood frozen for a moment. She didn't suspect a thing. I should have been relieved, but a strange bitterness settled in my chest. Seraphina's reputation was apparently so consistently awful that this detached concern was the best I could hope for. It reminded me of my own mother, silently handing me a bowl of hangover soup after a wild night during my freshman year—a memory from a life I could never return to.
My steps out of the mansion were brisk and heavy with thought. The villagers we passed on the road flinched away as if I were a plague. They bowed their heads, their faces pale with fear, avoiding my eyes at all costs.
Right. This is the kind of person Seraphina was. The novel called her the "Scourge of Silverwood." A spoiled terror who threw things when angered and verbally abused anyone she deemed beneath her.
A humorless smile touched my lips. "Hey, Kaelen," I said, not breaking my stride.
"My lady?"
"Why does everyone look like they've seen a ghost? Shouldn't they at least pretend to like the lord's daughter?"
"Under normal circumstances, yes," he replied, his voice as crisp as autumn leaves.
"And these are not normal circumstances?"
"Correct. This is a state of emergency."
I stopped and turned to him. "An emergency?"
"A state of emergency is declared when a significant threat to the livelihood and safety of the domain's residents appears."
I raised an eyebrow. "...And that threat is me?"
"Yes," he said, without a hint of irony.
"Wow. You don't pull your punches, do you?"
"Pull my punches?" he repeated, a sliver of confusion in his stormy eyes.
"It means you're brutally honest. A 'fact assault,' if you will."
He stared at me, his expression suggesting I'd started speaking in tongues. But even in his confusion, he was as elegant as a painting. Right. This was Kaelen. The paragon of chivalry. A man who couldn't tell a lie or compromise with injustice. Of course he despised a brat like Seraphina. And yet, the novel said he stayed by her side out of loyalty to the Baron until the very end.
He's a good man, I concluded. A grand master swordsman in the making, and he was currently my personal, and very judgmental, escort.
Lost in thought, I stumbled on an uneven cobblestone. I flailed, my hand shooting out to catch myself—and my fingers brushed against the cold, hard pommel of the sword at Kaelen's hip.
A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up my arm.
For a dizzying second, the world fell away. All I could feel was the weight and perfect balance of the blade, the thrum of latent power sleeping within the steel. It felt… right. Like a missing piece of my soul had just clicked into place.
I snatched my hand back as if burned, my heart hammering. Kaelen gave me a questioning look, but I just shook my head, my mind reeling from the strange, exhilarating sensation.
My feet, apparently operating on muscle memory from their previous owner, had led me to the very boutique I had supposedly terrorized. The sign was cracked, and the front window was boarded up.
"My lady?" Kaelen's voice cut through my daze. "Are you returning?"
"Of course," I said, turning to leave. Drinking during the day was Seraphina's style, not mine. I had a crisis to solve.
"That is disappointing."
I froze. "...What?"
"I am disappointed, Lady Seraphina. I had hoped you came to offer your apologies and make amends."
His words were like little daggers. "This boutique is the owner's entire life's work. A single parent caring for an ailing mother, who, I'm told, is suffering terribly from the late winter chill."
"So I tormented this poor soul?" I asked, a wave of second-hand guilt washing over me.
"Yes," he confirmed. "The owner told me their mother's condition has worsened with the cold, and after yesterday's incident… they feel they are at their breaking point. You must not turn away from the consequences of your actions. As the future lady of this domain—"
"Wait," I cut him off, a sudden spark igniting in my mind. "Stop. What did you say about the mother?"
"That her health is poor, and she suffers from the cold?"
"The cold," I repeated, my architect's brain kicking into high gear. "How do they heat their homes here? A fireplace?"
Kaelen looked at me, perplexed. "Of course. How else?"
Of course. It hit me then. My own lavish bedroom in the manor had a grand fireplace, but no other heating system. Fireplaces were horribly inefficient, losing most of their heat straight up the chimney. Commoner homes would be even worse, likely relying on a single kitchen stove to heat the entire house.
They don't know about underfloor heating.
The Romans had the hypocaust. My own Korean ancestors had the ondol. A system that warms the entire floor from below.
The implementation would be complex. It would require tearing up floors, advanced insulation, and careful management of fuel. But the drawbacks…
I can overcome them. No, I can turn them into an opportunity.
My specialized knowledge. Rina the architect's knowledge.
A plan began to form, a blueprint sketched in my mind. A way to fight back against the grim, seemingly inescapable reality of our debt. A way to raise a fortune.
The big picture was drawn.
Confidence surged through me, silencing the last of my fears. This was it. This was my chance. It wasn't just about saving one old woman from the cold. It was bigger. A massive construction project that could save this entire barony.
Ignoring Kaelen's stunned expression, I turned on my heel and pushed open the door to the ruined boutique, a revolutionary proposal already forming on my lips.