CHAPTER ONE
I don't speak. Not a single word.
It's not a choice anymore, just a permanent fixture of who I am. People usually assume being mute makes you a great listener. In reality, it just makes you invisible. You become part of the background. In college, that means eating alone in the cafeteria, sitting in the very back row of massive lecture halls so the professors don't look your way, and spending Friday nights exactly like this: curled up in a cramped, overly air-conditioned dorm room, completely isolated from the rest of the world.
I am twenty years old, and my entire life consists of avoiding people. I know it's a flaw.
I know it borders on selfish. My mom used to tell me I was wasting my youth, hiding away instead of facing my challenges. Maybe she was right. But it's easier to hide. It's safer.
Tonight, my safe place was book number one hundred.
The Five Empyrean Cities.
It was a massive, unforgiving dark fantasy epic about five cities bound by fragile treaties and ancient, bloody grudges. I had spent the last three weeks devoured by it. Usually, in these kinds of stories, I root for the heroes.
The righteous ones. But this book was different. This time, I found myself obsessively tracking the villain. General Grant Castiglione.
The author spared no expense in making him a monster. He was twenty-eight years old, the supreme commander of The Capital—the absolute, authoritarian heart of the Empyrean realm. He rode a massive dragon, enforced the decrees of a tyrannical empire, and slaughtered entire armies without blinking. He was written as possessive, cold-hearted, and entirely vile.
Yet, I couldn't stand the way his story was ending.
I swiped the glowing screen of my tablet.
11:55 PM.
The hero from the North City and that storm-chasing captain from Damaris were cornering him. They were going to execute him. It felt so cheap. Grant was brutal, yes, but he was a product of the endless wars between the five cities. Astrelle's snobby scholars, Gravenne's life-draining Siphoners—they were all just as terrible, only they hid their cruelty behind fragile politics.
Grant was the only one honest about his violence.
11:58 PM.
I read the lines where his dragon fell from the sky, shot down by heavy artillery. My chest tightened. It wasn't fair. I was friendless, naive, and making terrible choices in my own life—like isolating myself to the point of genuine misery—but I could still recognize when a character deserved a chance to fight back.
11:59 PM.
I reached the final paragraph of the chapter.
The hero's blade pierced Grant's neck, claiming his head. The villain was dead.
The digital clock on my nightstand shifted.
12:00 AM.
Midnight.
My tablet screen glitched violently. A sharp, high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, vibrating into my teeth. The bulb in my desk lamp popped, plunging me into absolute darkness. I tried to sit up, but gravity suddenly felt entirely wrong. The floor dropped out from under me like a trapdoor.
My vision went pitch black.
I woke up to the smell of rot.
It was a putrid, suffocating stench—like wet animal hair, moldy grain, and stale urine. I gasped, coughing violently. The air was freezing. It wasn't the artificial chill of my dorm room; it bit into my lungs like shattered glass.
I tried to push myself up. My hands scraped against something rough and sharp. Wood splinters. Damp straw. Packed dirt.
My eyes snapped open, trying to adjust to the gloom. There was no tablet. No dorm room.
No cheap poster on the wall. I was lying on the floor inside a dilapidated wooden structure. A barn. The wind howled through massive gaps in the rotted wooden walls, bringing in biting flakes of snow.
I shivered violently. My clothes were gone.
Instead of my sweatpants and oversized hoodie, I was wearing a coarse, scratchy tunic that offered zero protection against the bitter cold.
Panic, raw and blinding, seized my chest.
I scrambled backward until my spine hit a heavy wooden post. I opened my mouth to shout for help. I begged my vocal cords to work. Please. Just this once. Please. Nothing.
Only a pathetic, raspy wheeze escaped my lips. I grabbed my throat, my fingers digging into my skin. I couldn't speak. I was completely defenseless. Where was I? Was I kidnapped?
Before I could even process the terror, the barn door was kicked open.
The rusted hinges screamed in protest. A large shadow filled the doorway, backlit by the pale, cloudy moonlight.
A man stepped inside.
He was wretched. His clothes were filthy rags, layered unevenly to fight off the cold. He smelled worse than the rotting hay in the barn—a nauseating wave of cheap, fermented alcohol, old sweat, and vomit hit my nose before he even opened his mouth.
"There you are," he slurred. His voice was thick, mean, and sloshing with drunkenness.
I froze. I stopped breathing. I pressed myself harder against the wooden post, desperately hoping the shadows would swallow me whole.
My heart hammered against my ribs desperately.
He stumbled forward, kicking a rusted metal bucket out of his way. It clattered loudly against the wood. "Thought you could hide from me? Thought you could just run off in the middle of the night?"
I shook my head frantically. I held my hands up in front of my face in defense. I don't know you, I wanted to scream. I don't know where I am. You have the wrong person. He didn't care. He lunged.
His rough, calloused hand closed around my upper arm. His grip was like a vice, pinching my skin painfully through the thin fabric of the tunic. He yanked me upward with reckless strength. I stumbled to my feet, my bare toes scraping against the frozen dirt and sharp stones.
I thrashed. I tried to pry his thick fingers off my arm, scratching at his knuckles, but I was just a college student. I had never been in a physical fight in my life. I didn't know how to throw a punch. He was much stronger, fueled by rage and cheap liquor.
"Little bitch," he spat, his foul breath washing over my face, making my stomach heave. "My own flesh and blood, trying to leave her old man to rot."
Daughter?
My mind spun. I wasn't his daughter. I was Dove Miller. My dad was an accountant in Ohio. We had pasta on Sundays. This wasn't real.
I hit his chest with my free hand. I kicked his shins. It was useless. He just laughed land backhanded me.
The slap cracked loudly in the empty barn. My head snapped to the side. The metallic taste of blood immediately flooded my mouth. My ears rang. I collapsed to my knees, taking him down with me because he flat-out refused to let go of my arm.
Tears pricked my hazel eyes. The helplessness was crushing. I couldn't explain anything. I couldn't reason with him.
"You think you're too good for this place?" he sneered. He began dragging me by my arm across the floor. I scrambled to keep my footing, but I kept slipping on patches of frozen mud. "You think you can just run away to Astrelle City? Find some rich, star-worshipping scholar to take you in and dress you in silk? Or maybe you thought you could brave the North City? You wouldn't last a day. The Hunters up there are carved from frost and steel. They'd gut you before you took two steps into their territory."
My blood ran completely cold. Colder than the wind howling outside.
Astrelle City. North City. No. That was impossible. It had to be a coincidence. But deep down, as the freezing mud caked my bare legs, I knew it wasn't. Those were exact names from the book. Book number one hundred.
I stared up at the wretched man in absolute horror. He wasn't just a random kidnapper in a random barn. I had transmigrated. I was inside The Five Empyrean Cities.
"I owe heavy debts," the man grunted, shifting his grip from my arm to the roots of my hair, forcing my head back so I had to look at him.
Sharp pain shot across my scalp. His eyes were wild, pupils dilated with a mix of fear and booze. "The tax collectors from Gravenne are bleeding us dry. Their Siphoners take our coin, and if we don't have it, they take our life force. But that's nothing compared to what's coming. I need coin right now, and I'm selling you to the fighting pits tonight to get it."
I grabbed his wrist, silently begging him to stop. My chest heaved as panic truly set in.
The reality of this world was nothing like reading it on a tablet screen. There was no protagonist coming to save me. This was a dark, unforgiving place. Survival here wasn't guaranteed; it was a myth.
"You don't understand," the drunkard rambled. He looked toward the rotting roof of the barn, as if the sky itself was listening to him. "We don't have time. None of us have time."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper. "The Capital sent out the decree today. Do you hear me? The Obsidian Citadel is mobilizing."
I stopped struggling. A heavy dread pooled in my stomach.
"He's coming," the man whimpered, genuine tears of terror welling in his bloodshot eyes. "The shadow of the wings. Entire armies are dead, and now he's flying here. General Grant Castiglione. The Dragon Rider."
My breath hitched.
Grant. The villain. The ruthless, spiteful commander who brought death wherever he went. The man whose tragic ending I had just read. Except he wasn't dead. Not here. Not yet.
"He's coming to burn this whole border down," the man sobbed, violently pulling me toward the open barn door. "And I'm not dying here because of you. I'm selling you before the General turns us all to ash."
I dug my heels into the dirt, fighting with everything I had left. The freezing wind slapped my face as he dragged me out into the harsh night. I looked up at the sky. There were no stars. Only thick, rolling storm clouds, heavy with the promise of destruction.
General Grant was alive.
He was coming.
And I was transmigrated into a novel as a nameless background character.