Mira's POV
I couldn't stop staring at my hands.
They trembled in the weak light filtering through the cell window. Small, delicate hands with long fingers and nails bitten down to the quick. Bruises circled both wrists like ugly bracelets.
These weren't my hands. My hands had a scar from when I burned myself making ramen last month. My hands had short, practical nails because I typed all day.
These hands belonged to someone else.
Stop it, I told myself, pressing those strange hands against my face. This is just shock. You hit your head. You're hallucinating. Any second now, you'll wake up at your desk and—
Pain exploded across my palm.
I'd bitten down hard, my teeth breaking the skin. Blood welled up, bright red and very, very real.
The pain was real. The blood was real.
This wasn't a dream.
"No, no, no," I whispered, scrambling backward until my back hit the cold stone wall. My breathing came too fast, making my chest hurt. "This can't be happening. People don't just wake up in different bodies. That's not—that's not possible!"
But I'd read enough fantasy novels to know exactly what this was.
Transmigration. Reincarnation. Body-swapping. Whatever you wanted to call it, the impossible thing that only happened in stories.
Except now it was happening to me.
I looked around the cell frantically, searching for something—anything—to prove I was wrong. But everything screamed medieval fantasy world. The stone walls covered in moss. The iron bars that looked hand-forged. The smell of mildew and something worse I didn't want to think about.
And then I saw it.
In the corner of the cell, almost hidden in shadow, was a broken piece of mirror. Just a shard, maybe the size of my palm, but it was enough.
My legs shook as I crawled toward it. Every part of me screamed not to look, because once I looked, once I saw, there would be no more denying it.
I picked up the mirror shard with shaking hands.
The face staring back at me was breathtaking.
High cheekbones. Full lips. Huge eyes the color of emeralds. Hair like spun gold, even though it was dirty and tangled. The kind of face that belonged on magazine covers or movie screens.
The kind of face I'd seen illustrated a hundred times in the novel "Crown of Thorns."
Seraphina Blackwood's face.
The mirror fell from my numb fingers and shattered on the stone floor.
"I'm her," I whispered. "I'm actually her. I'm the villainess."
And then the memories came.
They slammed into my brain like a truck, fast and brutal and overwhelming. Memories that weren't mine but somehow were, flooding through my head in a chaotic rush.
A little girl with golden hair being told she's worthless by her own father.
A teenager desperately trying to earn love through any means necessary.
A young woman making terrible choices because she didn't know any better.
Seraphina hadn't been born evil. She'd been made cruel by a world that treated her like garbage.
The memories showed me everything the novel never explained. How Seraphina's mother died when she was five, and her father blamed her for it. How he remarried quickly and favored his new wife's children over his own daughter. How Seraphina learned that love was something you had to fight for, steal, manipulate to get, because nobody would ever just give it to you.
How she became desperate enough to use dark magic, to scheme against the heroine, to cling to the Crown Prince like he was her last chance at mattering to anyone.
The novel had painted her as purely evil.
But the memories showed me a girl who'd been broken long before the story began.
Tears ran down my face—no, Seraphina's face—no, my face now.
"You weren't a villain," I whispered to the girl whose body I'd stolen. "You were just hurt. And nobody cared enough to help you."
Just like me, a dark voice in my head added. Nobody cared about Mira Chen either. That's why you died alone at your desk and weren't found for who knows how long.
The thought made me want to throw up.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Multiple sets, moving with purpose.
I scrambled to my feet, my heart hammering. The guards were coming back. But why? They'd said three days. Why return so soon?
Keys jangled. The cell door screeched open.
A woman entered, and I knew immediately who she was.
High Priestess Evangeline Saintclaire looked exactly like her description in the novel. Beautiful in an ethereal way, with silver-blonde hair and pale blue eyes that seemed to glow with inner light. She wore flowing white robes that made her look like an angel.
But I'd read the novel. I knew what she really was.
She smiled at me, and it was the kindest, warmest smile I'd ever seen. Which made it a thousand times more terrifying.
"Poor child," she said softly, kneeling beside me like a mother comforting a daughter. "You must be so confused. So frightened."
I pressed myself against the wall, my whole body shaking. "Stay away from me."
Her smile never wavered. "I'm not here to hurt you, dear. I'm here to explain. You deserve to know the truth before... well. Before the end."
"What truth?" My voice came out as a croak.
Evangeline reached out and gently touched my cheek. Her hand was warm, soft, everything a holy priestess's hand should be.
"You're not from this world, are you?" she asked.
My blood turned to ice.
She knew.
"I can see it in your eyes," she continued, her voice honey-sweet. "The confusion. The foreignness. You woke up in this body without knowing how you got here, didn't you?"
I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Could barely breathe.
"It's because I summoned you," Evangeline said, and her smile grew wider. "From your world to ours. I pulled your soul across dimensions and placed it in Seraphina Blackwood's empty body."
"Why?" I finally managed to whisper. "Why would you do that?"
"Because we needed a sacrifice," she said simply, as if she was explaining why she'd bought bread at the market. "The prophecy is very clear: only the villainess's death can prevent the Dark Lord from destroying our kingdom. And a villainess needs a soul to kill."
My stomach dropped. "The real Seraphina..."
"Was already dead when you arrived. Her soul departed three days ago. Convenient timing, really." Evangeline stood, smoothing her pristine robes. "I've been doing this for years. Pulling souls from other worlds, placing them in bodies that need to die. It's much easier than killing actual people. Dimensional souls have no families here, no friends, no one who will miss them."
"You're insane," I breathed.
"I'm practical," she corrected. "And in three days, you'll die as Seraphina Blackwood. Your execution will fulfill the prophecy, the Dark Lord's power will weaken, and our kingdom will be saved. You should be honored."
She turned to leave, her white robes swirling around her like angel wings.
"Wait!" I lurched forward, desperation overriding fear. "Please, I don't want to die! I just died in my own world, I can't—I can't die again!"
Evangeline looked back at me with something that might have been pity. "Everyone dies eventually, dear. At least your death will mean something. That's more than most people get."
She walked out. The guards slammed the cell door shut and locked it.
I was alone again.
Except I wasn't Mira Chen anymore. I wasn't even really Seraphina Blackwood.
I was a borrowed soul in a dead girl's body, summoned across dimensions specifically to be killed, in a world where the rules of reality had gone completely insane.
And in three days, I would be executed for crimes I didn't commit, to fulfill a prophecy I didn't believe in, because a holy woman who was actually a monster needed a sacrifice.
I slid down the wall, pulling my knees to my chest.
But then—a thought.
A small, fierce thought that cut through the panic.
I've read this story. I know how it ends.
The novel never mentioned that Seraphina wasn't the original soul. Never mentioned the High Priestess summoning people from other worlds. Never explained any of this.
Which meant the novel I'd read wasn't the whole truth.
And if the story I knew was wrong...
Maybe the ending could be different too.
I looked down at my borrowed hands, curled into fists.
"Three days," I whispered to the empty cell. "I have three days to figure out how to survive."
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Seraphina's memories whispered back: Then use them. Use every trick I learned. Every scheme. Every desperate play.
Because this time, the villainess isn't going to die.
A sound made me freeze.
Scraping. Like something heavy being dragged across stone.
It was coming from the wall behind me.
I pressed my ear against the cold stone and heard it clearly now—someone was on the other side, digging through the wall.
Someone was trying to break into my cell.
But who? And why?
The scraping stopped.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it, a voice whispered through a crack in the stone:
"Seraphina Blackwood. If you want to live, don't scream. And don't trust anything the priestess told you. The prophecy is a lie."