Isobel was an unassuming girl. A slender build and quiet personality made for a lacklustre impression on others. She’d have been all but invisible to the world if not for her illness, even then, she barely knew anyone outside of the hospital.

The Atthill family was extremely wealthy. The kind of wealth that afforded them the luxury of private doctors, nurses, and their own hospital wing. It was in that hospital wing where Isobel lived her unassuming life.

Her disease was rare. Less than 1% of the entire population of planet Earth had it and because of that, there was no cure. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be cured, nothing is ever permanent with proper funding, time and the brightest minds working on it, but why would they?

1% of the eight-billion-person population was no small number of people, but next to more common ailments like cancer, why would researchers spend their time researching Isobel’s illness?

Medical advancement was a numbers game. There was only a finite amount of time and resources and the general consensus was to work on saving the most people possible from the most common ailments.

Isobel didn’t mind though; she’d known she was fated to die young for as long as she could remember and she had accepted it.

It might not have been fair. God knew it was a tragedy for a person to die before reaching adulthood. It is a horrendous misfortune for a parent to outlive their child and naturally her parents fought the uphill battle of saving her life with gusto.

Isobel, however, had already accepted her fate. In a way it was kind of freeing, knowing roughly when you were going to die.

Her fate was no different from anyone else’s. Most humans lived their lives expecting to die sometime after seventy. Sure, expecting to die before reaching twenty was a much shorter time frame, but she had never known anything else, so was it really that upsetting?

Death is only sad for those who are left behind.

That was a sentiment that both comforted and distressed her. She didn’t want her parents to forget to live their own lives for the sake of trying to extend hers in vain.

Her mother and father were both scientists. They were famous researchers, renowned in their respective fields. Hailing from two powerful families, their arranged union brought another level of prestige and prosperity to the proud Atthill line.

Neither of them cared much for family politics though.

With the exception of playing outside like a normal child, Isobel wanted for nothing. If she desired something and money could buy it, she had it.

Her personal hospital wing was a nerdy hoarder’s dream. There were DVDs, manga, books, light novels, and video game boxes stacked to the ceiling in every part of her room.

She had taken to media like a fish to water. It was her window into the outside world, the only way she could experience anything outside of the clinical monotony of hospital life.

It was escapism at its finest.

The thing about being terminally ill is that no one expects anything of you. You’re a subject of pity, useless to wider society, and that suited Isobel just fine.

Without the burden of schooling, work, social interactions, or physical activity, all of her time was her own. She’d have to be an idiot not to get the most out of it.

So she spent her days playing the latest video games, watching and rewatching movies and reading every book she could find on the internet, ordering physical copies when she could find them.

In the early days when she was growing up, she’d see her parents every day. They’d practically moved into her hospital wing, and when they weren’t working they were together as a family.

Her father might not have been able to push her on the swing and her mother couldn’t take her swimming, which was her favourite hobby, but they were together. A perfect and happy family unit.

Isobel could say with a smile that she had the perfect family life with loving parents who spent time with her. But that didn’t last.

By the time of her twelfth birthday, she barely saw her father anymore. He worked constantly. He had dedicated himself to finding a cure for his beloved daughter and no matter his wife’s concerns of overwork or his daughter’s pleas to spend time together, he wouldn’t stop.

He was consumed by his desire to save her. That’s what Isobel had to believe. She felt awful for him for his endeavour was doomed to fail. She didn’t need him to save her, she just needed him.

Yet he couldn’t see past his single-tracked goal of finding a cure.

Her mother was different. She still worked on a cure, but she balanced her life much better than her husband. She made a point of spending a few hours with her daughter every day.

Though the older she got, the wearier her mother became. Having a daughter with such a short natural life span must have taken its toll on her emotionally. She wore that agony in the lines on her face, lines that most people didn’t get at such a young age.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Her hair had turned grey by the age of 35 and Isobel knew it was because of her.

On her fifteenth birthday, her father had been absent. He was working, as usual. Her mother had spent the day with her however, and they played old video games together, watched The Princess Bride, their favourite movie, and even played some old board games that Isobel’s mother had bought her as a surprise.

It was truly a great birthday, but Isobel was much more perceptive to the feelings of others than she let on. So she noticed the tiredness behind her mother’s eyes. She saw the smiles that didn’t quite reach them. She heard the tinge of sadness behind her every word.

It was heartbreaking. To cause so much pain to those around you by simply existing was a fate she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

As Isobel moved into her later teens she would not get to experience the usual coming-of-age celebrations that most adults the world over enjoy. She would not share her first alcoholic beverage with her parents because her condition wouldn’t allow for it.

She would not meet someone, fall in harmless teenage lust, call it love and then cry when her partner inevitably moved across the country to attend a different college to her.

Nor would she take a gap year and go backpacking around Europe or South Asia, meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, and finding herself.

All of these things that movies had trained her to expect, would never come to be. Her life was not finally beginning as the Hollywood tropes so often suggested, it was ending.

At the age of eighteen, she entered her twilight years. Her condition worsened and even engaging with the media she so loved was a challenge.

Her body began shutting down. She lacked energy. The end was closing in, and yet she was at peace with it. It would be easy to curse her short life. To look at the world around her and feel bitterness.

There were so many experiences that others took for granted. A first kiss, playing football in the street with your friends, going to parties, being able to walk unassisted.

Yes, it would be easy to be overcome by jealousy. To look to the sky and curse God for abandoning her. But what use was there in that?

There was no happiness to be found in comparing her life to the lives of others. Despite what people like to tell themselves, equality is, and will always be a lie.

People are not born equal and they never have been. So comparing oneself to others is a fool’s errand.

Isobel genuinely believed that, and as she made peace with her death, hospital machines beeping angrily around her as worried doctors and nurses burst into her room and began trying to save her, she had only one regret.

She wished she’d have been able to spend more time with her father.

The panicked voices of the hospital staff began to fade as her vision turned to black. She’d soon be at peace, having lived a life of escapism and multi-media indulgence. She was sure that to many it sounded like paradise.

Then she woke up.

She found herself in a jungle, surrounded by… palm trees.

Isobel had never been in a jungle before, she’d never even been outside. How had she gotten here, and where the hell was here anyway?

She pushed herself off the ground and moved towards the nearest tree, stroking it with her palm. It felt firm yet smooth with small, evenly placed ridges running the length of the thin trunk.

Amazing, who would have thought that this was what palm trees felt like? She thought to herself, marvelling at the simple pleasure of nature. A pleasure she had never known, until now.

“Wait, am I walking?!” She exclaimed, looking down at her legs with wide, excited eyes.

She tried jumping and it… worked. Her legs worked, without any assistance or anything. There was no pain, no exhaustion, just… movement.

So this is what jumping feels like. I’ve really been missing out.

She hopped around the little clearing where she had woken up, giggling to herself like a maniac as her hospital clothes flapped merrily up and down.

If anyone had been watching her they’d have thought she was an escaped mental patient, but she didn’t care.

Then time stopped. Like, literally stopped. Isobel was floating in mid-air, frozen. A phenomenon that defied all scientific logic as she knew it.

An overly happy voice filled her ears and words appeared in her vision, like a notification from a video game:

Welcome players, to Celestia!

You are the newest residents of this little slice of heaven, lucky you.

This is a world filled with peoples of all races, monsters, magic and even the odd dragon or two.

How great does that sound? It’s literally every nerd’s dream come true right?

So, what’s the catch?

You’re being hunted!

That’s right folks, all 10,000 of you have been gifted a brand-new tattoo, completely free of charge. Each tattoo is a wholly unique and different part of a map. The Celestial Map to be precise, not that I expect you to know what that means.

Our prestigious hunters are oh so very eager to put that map back together again, piece by agonising piece.

They see you when you’re sleeping. They know when you’re awake. They want to skin you all alive so run or you’ll get flayed!

The map is on your skin and starting now, the hunt is on.

Good look out there, players. We hope you enjoy your stay in the idyllic and welcoming world of Celestia.

“Well, that settles it then.” She said to herself as time resumed and she dropped to the floor. “I’ve been isekai’d… awesome!”

Isobel was aware that talking to one’s self aloud would have been considered a little unhinged back home, but if there was no one around to hear her did it really make a difference if she spoke to herself or not?

She ran around in a circle some more, enjoying the freedom of movement which she had never before experienced.

Once she ran out of breath and had to take a moment to calm down, she smiled.

“This is my second life.” She grinned up at the clear blue sky. “I’m going to live without fear and I’m going to try and make some real-life, honest-to-goodness friends, and I’m going to do all the things I never could back on Earth.”

She grinned from ear to ear as she looked around the palm tree jungle. This was her chance to experience something new. Who needs escapism when you can live it? Fantasy was her favourite genre. Maybe there would be a wise old wizard with a pointy hat and white hair to guide her.

Maybe she could be a wizard and learn spells and shit.

Who knew?

“I’m gonna need a new name if I’m going to start a new life.” She mused to herself. Her mother had always called her Izzy for short. She’d liked it well enough, but she didn’t feel much like an Izzy anymore.

Izzy was her hospital name and she wasn’t sick now.

“I guess I could just shorten my name the other way?” She said with a shrug. “Yeah, that works. In this world, I’ll be known as Bell, and I’m going to be a mother fucking wizard! I wonder if they have the fireball spell in Celestia. That spell was always super OP in games.”