Rain poured like shards of glass against the city's cold pavement. Streetlights flickered and buzzed overhead, casting long shadows over the alleyway where a single pair of footsteps echoed. Iris kept her head down, hoodie pulled tight, arms wrapped around the groceries she had just bought.
"Just ten more minutes," she muttered. "Then I can eat and collapse into bed."
The city didn't care if you were tired. It didn't care if you worked two shifts in a diner and spent nights studying coding on a cracked laptop in a shared room with moldy walls. It didn't care if you were an orphan with no family, no safety net, no one to cry to.
And apparently, neither did fate.
She heard it too late—the sharp scuff of boots on wet ground.
Then a hand around her mouth.
A sharp pain in her side.
Iris's eyes widened as warmth spread through her stomach. She stumbled back, groceries falling, apples rolling into the gutter, the sound of plastic hitting cement.
The figure in front of her didn't speak. A hood covered their face, rain bouncing off their coat.
She reached out, blood mixing with water. "Why…?"
Her knees gave out.
The sky above was dark and endless. Her breath came slower and slower. Her last thought wasn't about revenge, or fear, or the unfairness of it all.
It was a whisper inside her chest.
"I never got to be loved."
---
"Time of death: 12:43 A.M."
"She had no ID?"
"No emergency contacts. Nothing."
"Another orphan… sad. Let the city bury her."
---
It was warm.
Too warm.
Iris's eyes fluttered open slowly, breath catching.
She wasn't outside.
She was on a bed.
A massive, ornate bed with silk curtains and gold trim. A chandelier hung above her, dripping with crystals. The scent of roses and lavender filled the room.
What…?
She sat up so quickly the blankets fell off her shoulders. Her hands—smaller. Paler. Softer.
Her heart raced.
This wasn't her body.
This wasn't her room.
This wasn't her world.
She stumbled out of bed and rushed to the tall mirror by the window. Her reflection stared back—
And she screamed.
Hair like molten fire cascaded down her back. Green eyes glowed like emeralds in sunlight. Pale skin, flawless lips, a face that looked straight out of an artist's dream.
A face she recognized.
"Salira… Hasrima…?"
The name dropped from her lips like a curse.
She stepped back, shaking.
This wasn't just some stranger's face.
This was the face of the villainess from her favorite fantasy novel, "The Rose of the Northern Throne."
Salira Hasrima.
Daughter of the abusive Marquis Hasrima. Fiancée of the empire's first prince—until she rejected him for the love of her life, Duke Alpher. Except… Alpher was in love with her younger sister, Flora.
And Flora?
Perfect. Beloved. Worshipped.
Salira, eaten by jealousy, had tried to poison her sister and was executed by Alpher himself.
A tragic ending for a tragic character.
Iris remembered reading the final chapter in tears, heart aching at the reveal: that Prince Adam, the cold, feared first son of the emperor, had loved Salira all along.
And Salira never knew.
She had been too obsessed with Alpher to see it.
Until it was too late.
Iris stood frozen in front of the mirror, fingers curling against her nightgown.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—this can't be real. I died. I was stabbed. I'm… I'm dead."
She turned toward the window, yanking the curtains open. But the view only confirmed her fears.
This wasn't Earth.
Outside was a garden so massive and symmetrical it could only exist in fantasy. Marble fountains, silver-winged birds, and towers rising like spears to the sky.
Her hands trembled.
"Is this a dream?" she whispered.
But it wasn't.
The door opened behind her. She jumped.
A maid entered, her voice calm. "My lady, the banquet begins in two hours. Shall I begin your bath?"
Iris's mouth went dry.
Banquet.
Wait—the banquet?!
The same banquet where Prince Adam would propose to Salira.
The same one where Salira would humiliate him in front of the nobility by rejecting him and begging to marry Alpher instead.
The moment everything started to fall apart.
The moment Adam began to walk the path of war.
The moment Salira sealed her own fate.
"No," Iris said, too loud, too panicked.
The maid blinked. "Pardon, my lady?"
"I—" Iris caught herself. She swallowed and forced a calmer tone. "I'll be ready soon. Please prepare the bath."
The maid bowed and exited.
Iris sat heavily on the bed, heart pounding so loud she could hear it in her ears.
This is real.
She had died… and awoken as Salira Hasrima.
But she wasn't Salira. She would never be her.
And she wouldn't die the way she did in the novel.
If this was real—if she was actually living inside the story—then she had a chance.
A terrifying, impossible, one-shot chance.
She closed her eyes.
"Prince Adam," she whispered. "I'll say yes."
Because she remembered how the novel ended.
The empire would fall. Flora would become empress, loved and adored. Salira would be forgotten, scorned in history. And Adam—the boy they called cold, heartless, brutal—would become the greatest emperor the world had ever seen.
But no one knew that the reason he built his empire was to bury the pain of a woman he had once loved.
That he took Flora not because he wanted her—but because Salira had chosen someone else.
That he never smiled again.
Until the end.
Iris opened her eyes.
Not this time.
This time, she would change it all.
She didn't want the empire.
She didn't want Alpher.
She didn't even want revenge.
She just wanted one thing.
To be loved as herself.
As Iris.