The first thing I noticed was the scent.
Not blood. Not ozone. Not the metallic tang of magic spent on a dying battlefield.
Lavender. Linen. And the faint, sweet perfume of roses from an open window.
My eyes flew open. Sunlight—real, gentle, morning sunlight—streamed across my face, painting golden patterns on a canopy of lavender silk above me. I lay in a bed softer than any pallet I'd slept on in seven years of campaigning. The sheets were cool against my skin. My skin…
I lifted a hand. I lifted a stranger's hand.
The stranger's hand was slender, in contrast to my calloused hand. My pale skin had been tanned by the sun and wind. The nails were perfectly shaped and painted a delicate pearl, not ragged and stained with dirt and healing herbs. There was no scar across the knuckles from where a demon's claw had caught me at the Battle of Greywall. No old burns from mischanneling holy fire.
This was not my body.
But I'm alive.
The thought came with a tidal wave of disorientation. I remembered steel. I remembered Cassian's smiling face above me. I remembered Kaelen's hand falling from my cheek.
Kaelen.
Grief, sharp and fresh as a new wound, lanced through me. I pressed the stranger's hand to my chest, feeling the frantic drumbeat of a heart that shouldn't be beating. He's dead. He died for me. And I… what am I?
Panic, cold and slick, began to rise. I pushed it down with the discipline of a saint who had faced down demon hordes. Observe. Assess. Survive. The old mantras surfaced through the fog.
I sat up. The room spun for a moment before settling. It was large, opulent, and utterly foreign. A noblewoman's chamber. Gilded furniture, a vanity cluttered with crystal bottles, a bookshelf filled with leather-bound volumes and... romance novels. A writing desk held neat stacks of parchment and sealing wax.
My gaze caught on a small, enameled clock on the nightstand.
Spring, Day 23, Year 1425 of the Imperial Calendar.
The date hit me like a physical blow, driving the air from lungs that weren't mine.
Seven years. I was seven years in the past.
Memories that weren't mine surged forward, breaking through a dam I didn't know existed.
A girl with silver-blonde hair, laughing in a sun-drenched garden. A stern-faced duke—another duke, who might be my father—was turning away at the dinner table. Turning away at the dinner table. The sharp, perfumed smile of a strawberry-blonde girl named Seraphina. The sting of a slap across my face from a teacher. The crushing weight of loneliness in a crowded academy hall. The dizzying, infatuated gaze at a golden-haired prince across a ballroom. The terror, the utter confusion, as guards dragged me from my bed, accusations of treason and poison ringing in my ears. The cold stone of a dungeon floor. The final walk to the scaffold as summer crowds jeered…
"No," I breathed, the voice leaving my lips unfamiliar—softer, higher, laced with a noble's precise diction. "No, no, no."
I stumbled from the bed, my legs—shorter, weaker—nearly buckling. I caught myself on the bedpost, my head pounding with the dual ache of Selene's death and Rosalind's life.
Rosalind Evangeline Thorne.
I knew that name. Every noble in the empire knew that name by the end of the summer of 1425. The scheming, jealous daughter of Duke Thorne. The villainess who tried to poison Crown Prince Cassian in a fit of lovesick rage. The traitor was executed publicly as an example.
I was in the body of the most infamous noblewoman of the decade. And the execution date—I counted frantically in my mind—was roughly three months from now.
A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. I had escaped death only to be delivered to the gallows with a countdown.
I needed to see. I needed proof.
I half-ran, half-staggered to the large, ornate mirror that stood opposite the bed. The young woman who stared back made me freeze.
It was not my face. Selene's face had been softer and rounder, with the humble simplicity of an orphan raised by monks. This face was all aristocratic angles—a sharper jaw, higher cheekbones, and a more delicate nose. The hair was a shade darker than my silver, a rich silver-blonde that fell in heavy waves past her—my—shoulders. The eyes…
I leaned closer. The eyes were a stunning, clear violet. Not Selene's gentle blue-grey. But as I stared, as the panic and grief and sheer absurdity of my situation churned inside this new vessel, I saw it. A flicker. A faint, radiant ring of gold ignited around the pupil, burning for just a second before fading back into violet.
My holy power. It was here. It is sealed within this untrained, noble body, yet it is still present. A spark in the darkness.
"You poor girl," I whispered to the reflection, to the original soul who had inhabited this body. The memories of her final months were a haze of confusion and fear. She hadn't poisoned that tea. She'd been set up, manipulated like a pawn on a chessboard. She'd been a lonely, naive girl who loved too openly and trusted the wrong friend, and it had gotten her killed.
My trust had also led to Kaelen's death.
A new resolve, hard and cold as northern iron, forged itself in my chest. The grief was still there, a raw, open wound. But it was now encased in purpose.
If I am here… if the present is a second chance… then the timeline is not fixed.
Kaelen was alive. Somewhere in the North, twenty-five-year-old Kaelen Aldric Frost was breathing, leading his knights, unaware that a Saint-turned-villainess was thinking of him. Cassian was here, at the Royal Academy, weaving his webs. The Demon King was still sealed. The Great War hadn't begun.
And I was trapped in the body of a condemned girl, armed with seven years of knowledge and the powers of a saint.
The priorities arranged themselves in my mind with military clarity.
First: Survive. The execution must not happen. Every action must bend toward dismantling the plot against Rosalind Thorne.
Second: Expose Cassian. He could not be allowed to ascend as the Hero-Emperor. His corruption had to be revealed before he gathered more power.
Third: Save Kaelen. This was the vow, the core of my new existence. I would not let him die on that battlefield for me. Not again. Even if he never knew me. Even if he looked at this face and saw only the troublesome daughter of a rival duke.
A soft chime, like distant temple bells, resonated not in the room but inside my skull. Before my eyes, elegant silver script materialized in the air, hovering between me and my reflection.
Timeline Alteration Detected.
Anomaly: Soul Transmigration.
Fate has been unlocked.
System Synchronizing…
Welcome, User.
I recoiled, my back hitting the edge of the vanity. The script pulsed gently. A system? Such things were the stuff of ancient legends, of heroes chosen by the gods. Cassian had possessed something like it—his unnatural luck, his rapid "growth." Had this been what he meant by "maximizing resources"?
Tentatively, I reached out a hand. My fingers passed through the script, which shimmered like mist.
Primary Directive Updated.
New Objective: BREAK THE CYCLE.
Authority: Administrator (Provisional).
Break the cycle? What cycle? Are you referring to the cycle of Heroes and Demon Kings? The system offered no further explanation. The silver script faded, leaving behind only a faint, persistent feeling—a new sense layered over my own, like a second layer of skin. When I focused, I could almost feel threads, faint and invisible, stretching out from me into the world. One, a pulsing, sickly red, felt anchored somewhere in this very academy. A thread of imminent death.
My own.
Right. No time for existential mysteries. Survival first.
I turned from the mirror and began to move. Rosalind's memories guided me to the wardrobe. I dressed with efficient speed, choosing a simple but high-quality day dress of dove grey—unobtrusive, not the flashy colors the original Rosalind favored to catch Cassian's eye. Every movement felt strange, the balance off, the strength lacking. I would need to train this body. Immediately.
A knock at the door made me jump.
"Lady Rosalind?" A maid's timid voice. "Are you awake? You asked to be reminded of the etiquette lesson with Lady Seraphina this morning."
Seraphina. The name sent a cold jolt through me. The friend. The betrayer. The one who would hand me the poisoned tea with a smile.
The anger that rose was not just Selene's, remembering Cassian's betrayal. It was also Rosalind's— a deep, wounded sense of injustice that had festered in the dark. I welcomed both.
I took a deep, steadying breath. This was the first test.
"I am awake," I called back, my voice carefully modulated to mimic the remembered cadence of Rosalind's speech, but I stripped the usual eager warmth from it. "Please inform Lady Seraphina I am unwell and will not be attending. A… lingering headache."
A pause. "Yes, my lady."
I heard the soft footsteps retreat. Good. Step one: create distance. The poisoning incident was weeks away yet. I had time to gather evidence, and understand the exact mechanics of the frame-up.
I walked to the window, pushing the rose-embroidered curtains aside. Below lay the manicured grounds of the Royal Lumina Academy. Students in their faction colors—gold for the Imperial faction, blue for the Reformists, and green for the Traditionalists—strolled between classes. Laughter floated through the spring air. It was a world of petty politics and teenage dramas— a world I had never known.
From this window, the original Rosalind had watched Cassian pass by, day after day, building a fantasy.
I saw only the battlefield to come. The pawns are moving on the board. And I saw, with chilling clarity, that I was not the only piece that had been repositioned. My presence here, the "Timeline Alteration," was a stone thrown into a pond. The ripples would spread. Cassian, with his system, might sense the disturbance. Kaelen… did he feel anything? In my past life, he'd claimed to have dreams of a silver-haired woman long before we met.
I let the curtain fall.
I was no longer Selene, the saint of self-sacrifice.
I was not yet Rosalind, the villainess of the story.
I was something new. A secret. A ghost with a mission.
My reflection in the window glass was a pale, determined blur. The violet eyes held a glint of hard-won gold.
"Three months," I said to the ghost in the mirror, to the memory of a duke with silver eyes. "I have three months to change our fate."
Somewhere in the palace wings of the academy, a charming crown prince smiled at his reflection, unaware his first pawn had just stepped off the board.
And far to the north, a duke with scars on his cheek woke from a dream of a falling saint and a pain in his chest, the taste of blood and regret so vivid it lingered on his tongue with his morning coffee.