"I remove you from the student council effective immediately. Pack your belongings and leave," the student council president, Akashi Shizuru, declared in a calm but commanding tone. Her cold gaze left no room for argument.

Everybody watched in awkward silence as the former treasurer stuffed her belongings into her backpack with a face red from embarrassment. She had mismanaged the student body's funds and deserved punishment. Still, a dishonorable discharge in front of the entire student council and the gathered class presidents was too harsh.

"We have the cultural festival coming up. Where will we find another treasurer on such short notice?" whispered the vice president sheepishly but flinched under his superior's glare.

"I will do her part until we can find someone fitting," Shizuru responded loudly enough for the former treasurer to hear on her way out. As the door closed, she shifted her glare to the secretary. "Yanagida, bring me a list of potential candidates by the end of the week. Council dismissed."

For a moment, silence permeated the room. Then, as if Shizuru's words finally sank in, everybody began to move and gather their documents. As the members left the room one by one, the president sat silently in her chair and observed their behavior. She could tell that her ruthless attitude would draw resentment, but that was only to be expected. After all, commoners could not understand the weight on the shoulders of a ruler.

And Akashi Shizuru was from a lineage of rulers, a chosen one born to lead. Her father was a member of the House of Representatives in the National Diet like his father was before him. Her mother was the owner of a world-renowned luxury brand, part of her family's multi-national conglomerate.

Shizuru's path to success had been set from the moment she was born. She would go on to live in a world far removed from her peers. Only for now did she have to deal with these lesser people whose only goal in life was subsistence.

Shizuru completed her paperwork diligently after everybody had left before getting up to look out the window. Her driver, Gotou, had already parked at the entrance to take her to karate training. She made him wait more recently due to the increased workload for the upcoming cultural festival. With the removal of the treasurer, it would only get worse.

As Shizuru exited the student council room, somebody stepped in her path. It was the former treasurer, Asakura Kiriko, who had waited here all this time.

"President Akashi, please reconsider my dismissal!" the plain girl with the thick-rimmed glasses implored. Shizuru was rarely surprised, but seeing this usually soft-spoken girl raise her voice confounded her. "Being removed from the student council will be a blemish on my record and hinder my future pros-"

"You should have considered that before you made those egregious mistakes, Asakura-san," Shizuru interrupted her with an emotionless gaze. She had no sympathy for people who came crawling back for a second chance when they should have used their first more wisely.

"You said it! They were mistakes. Anybody can make those mistakes," Kiriko argued with a desperate smile.

"If anybody can make those mistakes, why should I accept you back? I could find somebody else to do the job just as badly," said Shizuru with a scoff, and Kiriko's expression froze over. "We are the student council. We cannot afford to make mistakes, or it will affect the entire student body. Have a good day, Asakura-san."

The president walked past the devastated Kiriko and headed for the stairs without giving her another look. She had already wasted enough time on this failure.

"Please, I will do better! Just give me another chance!" But Kiriko did not give up and chased after Shizuru, who ignored her and continued down the corridor.

She had heard of such people from her parents many times. They could not take responsibility for their mistakes and step out of the way for somebody better suited to take their place. Instead, they dug in with their rotten claws to hold onto power and status even if they were unfit to wield it.

"Please, listen to me, president!" Kiriko grabbed Shizuru's arm and tried to stop her.

"Cease this unsightly behavior!" she spun around and flared up, yanking her arm away from the plain girl. But she encountered no resistance from the girl's loose grip, causing her to stumble sideways. Her foot slipped on the edge of the stairs, and her world spun over itself.

The last thing she saw was Kiriko's shocked expression atop the stairs. Then, oblivion.

She was surrounded by pure white. Had she hit her head so hard that the stars one usually saw from a hard fall covered her entire vision?

However, she realized that she could not feel her body. No, she could not feel anything at all. There was no sound, she drew no breath, and she could not blink. Panic rose in Shizuru's mind when a singular idea muscled its way to the forefront of her thoughts: The fall damaged her spine.

"The girl's life has come to an end." A reverberating disembodied voice that could belong to either a man or a woman echoed through the nothingness.

"I died?!" she screamed internally.

"My, the girl's mind remains." The voice spoke with a hint of fascination, evidently reading her thoughts. "The girl's end was sudden and painless."

"No, I can't be dead! I still have my whole life before me!" Shizuru panicked, but she did not breathe harder and had no heartbeat that could quicken. It only drove home the truth about her situation and made her thoughts spiral out of control.

"The girl had a whole life before her," said the voice calmly. "It is now over."

"No, bring me back! I was a chosen one! I was destined for greatness!" she demanded, irreverent of the fact she was perhaps speaking to a god.

"Many think like that. But death finds them all the same," explained the voice.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I haven't even lived my life yet!" Shizuru shouted in her mind, but she instinctively grasped the reality of her situation. She had died, and this was the afterlife. There was no going back.

"The girl should have considered that before making such a mistake," the voice stated with unwavering calmness. "Very well. The girl shall have a second chance. But for that, the girl has to fight. Lives are not granted easily, after all."

Before Shizuru could thank the god, her consciousness began to fade. The last thought running through her mind before the whiteness overwhelmed it was a question. What did the voice mean when it said she would have to fight?

She started to feel. Her body was enveloped by warmth, and a steady rhythmic drum played in the background.

Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub.

However, there was an orchestra of faster drums all around her, not following a particular rhythm and out of sync with the prevalent powerful beat that permeated her very being. And she felt the same quickened drum inside herself.

She was inside a womb, and she shared it with five siblings. A small part of her mind wondered if starting over from birth was the god's definition of a second chance. Yet, she distinctly remembered she was an only child. If she had five stillborn siblings, her parents would have told her.

She was lulled back into sleep soon after, and her doubts faded with her waking mind.

An excruciating pain ran through her mind and startled her awake. Despite being blind still, she could sense that her little arm had disappeared. Her siblings were trashing about in a frenzy, wiggling their small bodies against hers until tiny needles brushed against her skin. Teeth.

They sunk into her back but were pulled away suddenly, creating a painful gash in their wake. It was then that she felt there was no umbilical cord. No nutrients were entering her system. Her siblings had awakened before her and instinctively knew that eating each other was the only path to survival.

The tiny voice in her mind telling her that all of this was wrong, that this was not how human babies were born, was drowned out by pain and overwhelming hunger.

Of the six heartbeats in this sanctuary before birth, only three others remained. The warmth of the womb and the unchanged rhythm of her mother's heart told her everything was in order. They were meant to kill each other, and only the strongest would survive to be born into this world.

It felt like a lifetime ago that a voice had told her to fight. She had been reincarnated as an animal!

She remembered her time as a human, living in a peaceful nation far from viciousness and cruelty. She had never been in a real fight before, only in karate tournaments. Now, she would have to kill and cannibalize her unborn siblings to start her new life.

What did she do to deserve this?

One of her struggling siblings brushed against the stump of her missing arm. Pain shot through her body, and she convulsed. Her consciousness faltered as an overwhelming urge to feed washed over her mind. Her jaws opened on their own, taking in the amniotic fluid saturated with the blood of her dismembered siblings. The taste caused her bestial instincts to take over.

She felt one of her siblings' limbs before her and bit down on it with all her little strength. Her nerves fired all across her body, and she began to instinctively shake her head to saw off the part inside her mouth. Within a few strokes, nourishing flesh came free, and she greedily swallowed it.

It was far from enough.

The next time she regained control over her thoughts, only her mother's slow and steady heartbeat remained beside her own quick drumming one. Floating inside the now lonely haven, she felt content and perhaps even a little proud of herself. A distant memory told her she was a chosen one, and dying in the womb was not how her story would end.

She could open her eyes now and saw a twilight of red and orange. Her arm had regrown, and the blood had been cleared from the amniotic fluid, leaving behind a clear liquid illuminated by the light falling through her mother's stomach wall. Even though she had killed all her siblings, her mind was unburdened by that fact. She did what she had to.

A part of her dreaded the thought of leaving this warm and peaceful embrace eventually, but she slipped into slumber before it could grow roots in her heart.

Suddenly, she was assaulted by tightness all around before light blinded her eyes. Something grabbed her head, and she instinctively twisted her neck to bite it, drawing blood and eliciting a surprised scream. That's when she realized that she was in the process of being born.

Snapping her eyes open, she blinked them a few times to remove the fluids clinging to her face. The first thing she saw was a ceiling made from cloth. All this time, she had thought she would be a predatory wild animal born in a forest or maybe even the ocean. Seeing signs of civilization confused her.

A pair of large hands grabbed her roughly and pulled her up, and the grayish-white face of a rugged-looking man with sharp blue eyes filled her view. His red hair connected seamlessly to his full beard, giving him a leonine appearance. The intense eyes checked her body all over, then stopped on her eyes before his thin lips parted to reveal three rows of shark-like teeth. It was the look of a predator that had found prey.

Tears inadvertently filled the newborn girl's eyes as the intimidating glare overwhelmed her. Despite remembering her past life, she began crying like the baby that she was. The man's expression froze over in surprise. Another pair of hands took her out of his grasp, and a voice behind her spoke in a scolding tone. The sounds were muffled because of the liquids still in her ears, but the words did not sound Japanese.

She was moved halfway across the room and placed in a warm bath. The woman leaning over her looked human except for the bluish complexion of her skin and the pointy ears. But before she could contemplate what that meant, she was wrapped in a soft cloth.

Finally, the newborn was carried into the loving embrace of a woman lying on a bed made from pillows and soft furs. Her face, rimmed with flowing red hair, resembled the man who handled her roughly moments ago. When she opened her mouth, there were also three rows of sharp teeth.

It dawned on her that this was her mother, and the man was her father.

Suddenly, the tent's door flap was brushed aside, and two boys stormed inside. They also had grayish-white skin and red mane-like hair and looked like perfect twins. Speaking excitedly, they ran past her father and surrounded her from both sides. She could not understand what they said while grinning at her with the murderous teeth all her family members sported. They were likely her brothers.

For a moment, she caught herself feeling joy at the thought that she would not grow up as an only child. But then she remembered that she had been born alone due to her own actions. Nausea rose from the pit of her stomach, and she felt the urge to vomit.

But one of the boys suddenly poked her cheek with a sharp claw growing in place of a human's nails. Even though she was a newborn baby, it did not pierce her skin, and all other thoughts were blown away when the boy on the other side approached her with his mouth wide open.

Her mother's palm hit the boy straight on the nose with a scolding yell, and she pushed him away. She repeated the same to his twin, even though he had not done anything. She ordered them to leave along with their father, who shot the newborn girl one last dubious look before grabbing the two boys by their tails.

They were flattened and segmented, with a bulbous final segment sporting a curved stinger like a scorpion's tail. It grew from the bases of their spines and could reach over their heads. The father pulled the boys out of the tent while holding open the door flap with his own tail.

She saw that her mother also had one, hanging off the bed to her side. The girl put conscious thought into her body's form for the first time and found that she had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, just like a human.

However, the cloth wrapped around her lower body bulged from the inside. Even though she could not see it now, she surely had the same kind of tail as the rest of her family. Hers was likely much smaller and less mobile as she had only been born, but she could wiggle it about.

She originally thought she had been reincarnated as an animal, but this was the last piece of evidence that this was an entirely different world. This was her second chance.