Yvette felt her lungs burning.
For a moment, she didn't understand why. Her chest tightened, air refused to enter, and coldness pressed against her skin like a thousand icy needles. Her eyes fluttered open blurry, stinging and all she could see was blue and green, swirling above her like a distorted painting.
Water.
Why am I in water?
The thought crawled slowly through her mind, mixing with panic.
Her body reacted before her mind caught up. Her legs kicked, her arms thrashed weakly, and bubbles escaped her mouth as she tried to scream but only swallowed more cold liquid. Pain shot through her throat. The world spun in strange colors, and she could feel herself sinking deeper.
I can't breathe… I can't-
Her body trembled violently as instinct took over. She pushed upward, her hands clawing through the heavy water. Her chest screamed for oxygen. Her throat burned. Her vision dimmed.
Then
She broke through the surface.
Air slammed into her lungs like fire and relief all at once. Yvette gasped, coughing hard, waves splashing around her as she fought to stay afloat. Her hair clung to her skin, heavy and freezing. Her breaths came out rough, desperate, shaky.
She lifted her head, blinking away water.
A river.
A wide, unfamiliar river surrounded by towering trees, their leaves a deep emerald that glowed faintly under the morning sun. The light felt different warmer, softer, almost unreal. The air carried a scent she didn't recognize: sweet, earthy, comforting, ancient.
Where… was she?
Yvette dragged herself toward the riverbank, fingers digging into the muddy soil. Her arms trembled with every movement, but she forced herself out, coughing water until her lungs stopped burning. Her knees sank into the soft earth as she hunched over, breathing heavily.
Then she froze.
Her skin?
Bare. Completely bare.
"W–what…?" she whispered, hugging herself quickly though no one was around.
She looked down, cheeks burning with embarrassment, a sharp contrast to the icy water still dripping from her body.
Where were my clothes?
Why was am I naked?
Why was am I even in a river?-
Yvette said in her mind
A sense of wrongness crawled down her spine.
Everything looked… ancient.
The trees.
The air.
The sky.
Even the sound of the water felt like it didn't belong to the world she knew.
"This… isn't home," she whispered.
Her voice trembled not from the cold, but from shock.
---
Just hours ago
or maybe minutes, or maybe a lifetime
she had been Thaira, a normal college student, fighting a battle she knew she would lose.
She remembered the white hospital walls.
She remembered the IV lines.
She remembered the ache in her bones, so deep that even breathing hurt.
Stage 4 cancer.
The diagnosis had shattered her world when she was barely starting to live it. She had spent two years in that hospital bed watching her friends move on, watching the seasons change outside her window, watching her own body decay slowly.
Her hair had fallen out first.
Then her weight.
Then her strength.
And finally, her hope.
She remembered the night she cried so hard her entire body shook, begging for just one more chance at life a chance to feel sunlight on her skin, to hear laughter without oxygen tubes, to breathe without pain.
But that chance never came.
The doctors grew quieter.
The nurses grew gentler.
Her mother cried every night.
And Thaira learned how to accept death.
Her final memory was a dimly lit hospital room.
Her mother asleep beside her.
The quiet beeping of the machine.
Her chest growing heavier.
Her breaths becoming shorter.
Her vision fading into darkness.
And then…
Nothing.
Until now.
--
Yvette lifted trembling fingers to her face.
Soft.
Warm.
Alive.
Her hair long, thick, and black fell past her shoulders. She grabbed a handful of it, shocked. She had lost all her hair in the hospital, yet now it was silky and healthy, shining under the sunlight.
Her skin had color.
Her hands weren't shaking from weakness.
Her breath didn't hurt.
"I'm… alive," she whispered, tears forming in her eyes.
But how?
She scanned her surroundings again. The forest was untouched, too perfect. The river was clear enough to see her reflection flickering on the surface. Birds she couldn't name chirped from the branches. A soft breeze kissed her skin, carrying a scent of unfamiliar flowers.
This wasn't Earth.
She was certain of it.
She stood slowly, wobbling a little, covering herself with her arms as she looked around for anything that could help her clothes, shelter, a sign of civilization.
But there was nothing.
Only endless trees and strange glowing insects drifting in the morning light, like tiny floating stars.
"This can't be real…" she whispered.
Yet her heartbeat was too loud.
Her breath too warm.
Her fear too sharp.
It felt real.
She looked at her reflection in the river.
The girl staring back wasn't Thaira.
She was younger—maybe 17 or 18—with pale skin, long lashes, and bright blue eyes that shimmered like gemstones. Her features were delicate, almost royal in appearance. Her hair, dark and glossy, framed her face like a halo.
Yvette swallowed hard.
This wasn't her original face.
"Who… am I?" she whispered.
Her heart began to race. She didn't know where she was, why she was here, or even whose body she was inside.
Then something clicked in her mind.
Reincarnation.
Stories she used to read villainess novels, magic worlds, fantasy kingdoms flashed through her thoughts. But she wasn't inside a novel she recognized. The world around her felt too different, too alive, too foreign.
"What if I'm really in another world…?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
It felt unreal. Impossible.
Yet everything around her screamed that it was the truth.
---
Hours passed as she walked through the forest, still covering herself as best as she could. The trees thinned eventually, and she reached a dirt path leading toward a distant palace its towers white and gold, gleaming under the sky like it was carved from starlight.
She didn't know why, but her feet led her there.
As she approached the gates, two armored guards stared at her in shock. Their eyes widened as if they had seen a ghost. They whispered to each other, tense and confused.
"Princess… Yvette?" one guard murmured.
Princess?
Yvette froze.
Before she could speak, a group of servants rushed toward her, gasping and covering her with a cloak. Their hands shook. Their eyes darted around nervously, as if afraid of something or someone.
"She's alive?" one whispered.
"Is this really the princess?"
"But she looks… different."
"Maybe she hit her head?"
They looked at her with odd expressions fear, confusion, suspicion.
As if something about her was wrong.
As if she didn't belong to the body she now inhabited.
As if the real Yvette, the princess, had been someone evil.
Someone feared.
Someone hated.
Someone she knew nothing about.
Yvette swallowed, heart pounding.
She had reincarnated into a world full of magic…
a world where she was a princess…
A villainous princess everyone seemed terrified of.
And she had no idea why....