She stumbled towards the riverbank, thanking the heavens for the full moon. The hem of the ridiculous dress dragged in the mud and she swallowed all the curse words down her throat. She knelt carefully at the water's edge, the damp cold of the stones seeping through the velvet. The water was shockingly cold but crystal clear. She could see every pebble, every grain of sand on the bottom.
She plunged her hands in, a little surprised at the chill, and began scrubbing the dirt from her skin and from under her nails. As the last of the grime washed away in the current, she cupped some water, intending to splash her face, hoping the cold shock would clear the last of the fog from her brain.
That's when she saw it.
Staring back at her from the water's placid surface was a stranger.
Kemmy froze, her hands hovering just above the river. Thanks to the moon, the reflection was as clear as any mirror. It showed a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, with a heart-shaped face of startling beauty. Her skin was the color of porcelain, flawless and pale. Her lips were a natural, soft rose, shaped in a subtle pout.
But it was the hair and eyes that were most arresting. The hair wasn't her own practical, shoulder-length braids that she had on when meeting the bastard Charles, but a cascade of pure, raven-black silk that fell in loose waves to the middle of her back. And her eyes… her eyes were not her familiar hazel. They were a deep, vibrant green, the color of new leaves in spring, framed by thick, dark lashes.
It was the face of a fairy-tale princess.
It was definitely not her face.
A scream built in her throat, but it died as a strangled gasp. This was impossible. It had to be a trick of the light, a distortion in the water. She took a deep breath before leaning closer, her heart hammering against her ribs. The reflection mimicked her every move, its green eyes wide with the same terror that was consuming her.
She reached up a shaking hand and touched her cheek. The woman in the water did the same. The skin beneath her fingertips was soft and real. It was her own face, and yet, it wasn't.
The face was familiar. The realization struck her with force that felt like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of her. She had seen this face before. But where? It wasn't an actress, or a model. It was… a drawing.
The realization lit up in her mind like a light bulb. It had been an illustration.
Her mind, frantic and terrified, scrambled for the memory. It came to her in a flash, as vivid as the face in the river. A book she had finished just last week. A popular fantasy novel called The Sunstone Prophecy. The author, known for her incredible world-building, had commissioned a fantasy artist to create hyper-realistic, life-like portraits of the main characters, which were included in a special edition of the book.
Kemmy had spent hours studying them, marveling at how the artist had brought the characters to life. The noble male lead, the kind-hearted heroine, the wise old father to the heroine… and the villainess.
The beautiful, tragic, and utterly cruel villainess, Zarlina Terkini. A woman with hair as black as a starless night and eyes as green as poison.
A woman whose face was now staring back at her from the reflection in the river.
The world seemed to dissolve around her. The rain, the trees, the cold – all of it all faded into a dull, roaring buzz in her ears. The pounding in her head intensified until she thought her skull would split open.
The car. The accident. She hadn't just been hit. The crushing weight of the impact, the sudden, silent darkness… it hadn't been unconsciousness. It had been death.
She had died.
That bastard Charles had angered her so much that she had actually gotten hit by a car and died.
She hadn't woken up on the side of the road. She had woken up here. In this body. In this world.
The scream that had been trapped in her throat finally tore itself free, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror that echoed through the silent forest. She stared at the beautiful, cursed face in the water, and for the first time since she gained consciousness, she started to understand the situation that she was in.
She was Kemmy. And she was dead
Dead.
Her scream tore through the unnervingly silent trees until her lungs burned and her voice gave out. When she was all screamed out, she was left gasping, her body trembling uncontrollably, kneeling at the edge of the river with her hands braced against the cold, wet stones.
Kemmy crouched by the riverbank long after her scream had faded into the forest. The water shimmered faintly, the light of the moon carving lines of silver on the surface, and the stranger's reflection still stared back at her. Zarlina Terkini. The villainess.
Her heart was still hammering, but her brain had finally begun to piece through the fog of panic. If she really was inside the book, then there had to be a reason. Characters didn't just collapse in the middle of nowhere for no reason.
She sucked in a shaky breath. Think. Think, Kemmy. You read this story. You know what happens.
The beautiful, cursed face of Zarlina Terkini stared back at her from the water, its green eyes wide with a horror that was all her own.
Dead. I'm dead.
The word repeated itself in her mind over and over, a frantic, looping mantra of disbelief. The life she knew – her career, her apartment, her friends, even the idiotic bastard Charles – was long gone. Wiped clean. The realization of it was so immense and so absolutely crushing, that her mind could barely grasp it. One moment she was a twenty-first-century woman furious about her boyfriend's infidelity, the next she was a character in a book, wearing a ridiculous velvet gown in the middle of a forest.
Her panic grew, manifesting like it was a physical thing, a cold claw scraping at the inside of her chest. She wanted to scream again, to run until she collapsed, to somehow escape this impossible reality. But where would she run? What would she do? Zarlina Terkini, the woman whose body she now inhabited, was despised, hated by almost all those who knew, and destined for a gruesome end all alone with no one to care for or mourn her death.
Forcing down the hysteria that had begun to climb up her throat once more, Kemmy drew in a shaky breath, the cold, damp air stinging her lungs. Crying and screaming had never solved anything. She had to think. If she was truly in the world of The Sunstone Prophecy, then panic was a luxury she couldn't afford. Survival had to be her main priority.