1. Somewhere between dreams and fantasies

”What do you think is the difference between a dream and a fantasy?”

The steady hum of the air conditioning unit felt more overbearing than usual today, even though there was nothing outright unusual about the situation otherwise. The walls were the same, the window was the same, and this man sitting in front of me was also the same as always.

In my experience, there are three types of people when it comes to dealing with dying patients. The most common response is always pity. They feel bad for you, or maybe for themselves for having to deal with you.

The second type ignores it or acts like they’re ignorant of it. Perhaps the sight or thought of death frightens them, so they don’t want to think about it. Simple as that.

This man who sat before me was a good example of the third because he considered me a form of entertainment. He had a morbid curiosity towards death and spouted this pseudo-philosophical nonsense because he was excited to hear what a dying person had to say about his questions.

It’s like I was a zoo animal he somehow couldn’t grow tired of.

“A dream is something a person can hope to achieve with effort. Fantasies skip the effort part and focus only on the reward.”

My answer clearly bothered him. He was surely hoping for something profound or grim to write about on social media. The side of his mouth always twitched when he was told something, he didn’t want to hear.

To this day, I still hate him and everything he represents as a human being.

A middle-aged man with nothing better to do with his life, outside of indulging in shameless behavior like this while at work. Day after day, I wished for him to simply shut up and do his job.

I had seen him for the vast majority of my life. Countless years of his stupid questions, and today was no exception.

“Your surgery will start in an hour.” His statement was cold.

My answer was not what he hoped for… but having known him for years, it’s not like I didn’t expect this. I’m sure in his egocentric world, I lost my value as a human as soon as I was no longer giving him fuel for his ‘The wisdom of the dying’-blog.

Just for the record, it had close to no traffic whatsoever. I checked.

Having spent my entire life poked… prodded… and split open by doctors, generally made it really difficult to feel any sort of attachment to them.

The inner walls of the hallways had recently been painted to be more colorful, and yet somehow, no matter how I stared at them, all I could see was the usual gray and white. It was almost as if hospitals had the power to drain all color from things.

I knew I was dying. I had been dying ever since I was born. Some kind of issues with my heart, to avoid going too far into medical jargon.

… And, to call the heart mine was a bit of an overstatement. My original heart was probably bubbling in some weird jar somewhere in the hospital storage.

Another transplant was waiting today. In a little bit, I was to be opened up again, but I really wondered why.

What was the point of extending my life by a couple of years?

Even if I lived, I’d be locked away in my hospital room. It’s not a particularly joyful way of life. After being stuck here for so long, I really started wondering if this kind of empty morality was really worth anything. The only reason they kept me alive was to experiment on my body… but they kept claiming it was because ‘life is valuable’. I didn’t really see any value in mine, so why would they keep me alive just for the sake of it?

I couldn’t figure it out. Furthermore, I felt like my existence didn’t genuinely equate to much outside of bringing pain to everyone. Even my parents stopped visiting me a good while ago. I couldn’t honestly blame them, since they were in a completely hopeless situation because of me.

The cost of keeping me alive forced them to work like horses from day to night with no breaks. There was no money left for them whatsoever, so they could barely eat. They couldn’t just stop funneling money for my sake either, or society would judge them brutally and mercilessly without a care for being ‘neglectful and evil’.

They were trapped in a web of endless misery weaved purely out of my existence. Their relationship was on the rocks because of the stress, and I’m sure they despised me with all of their hearts for getting them tangled up like this.

So, I couldn’t help but wonder… what really was the point of continuously investing endless funds into my survival?

I was never able to make any kinds of friends outside the internet. Surely, nobody would miss me if I just disappeared one day.

I have seen it multiple times. Someone just stops posting on a website or chatting server, and instead of really looking into it, people just move on. I couldn’t imagine it being any different with me either. Nobody there knew who I was, what I looked like, or anything about me outside the games we played together.

… Not that there was much to know in the first place.

All I ever did was play video games on my laptop, read, and answer stupid questions. That pretty much summed up my life.

If I answered the doctor’s question completely honestly. The answer would maybe have been something more like “There is no difference. Some people can’t gun for their dreams even if they wanted to put in the effort because life is not equal, so their dreams remain no different from fantasies.”

I’m certain that would have become his social media quote of the week.

As I got taken to the operating room, it was difficult to think about much. Upon birth, I was confirmed to have a serious heart defect. I was able to have a somewhat normal life until I was around ten, but ever since then I’ve been stuck here in this hospital. My heart was so weak, I couldn’t exert myself in any sense. Moving around too much was bad for me, so I was just about skin and bones. Getting impassioned about things to the point of having my heart race was also out of the question. Saying I was a bit detached emotionally due to this was probably a pretty gross understatement.

When I was eleven, I had my first heart transplant.

Despite the successful surgery, I remained fragile. I couldn’t go to school in person anymore, so I attended online classes, but I never really understood why. People seemed to have this… strange sense of normalcy they had to keep up. I had the right to a ‘normal life’ despite my circumstances, is what they called it, and yet somehow, to me, it always felt more like I had the responsibility to be as normal as possible regardless of my clearly abnormal existence.

What the hell was the point of me cramming pointless knowledge into my head, when I was going to die soon anyway? Was it to distract me from the inevitable end? Was it to make it so I don’t seem so different from everyone else, so people wouldn’t get frightened or reminded too much of mortality through me? What was the point of simulating a ‘normal life’ when there was no way I was going to have one anyway?

I for sure didn’t see a point. All I wanted to do was play video games on my laptop and read. Getting to go on fantastical adventures to forget the misery of reality for a moment felt much more sensible than studying what atoms do when they interact.

Science was supposed to be helping me, and yet I was still dying.

If anything, I think magic was much more likely to help me at this point than science.

With magic, the happy ending was always in sight, even in the most miserable circumstances. If only I had magic, I could gain control of my life again. Like a final straw, it was the one thing I couldn’t stop grasping onto.

As a teenager, I enjoyed drawing magical sigils on my arms. They were from my favorite game. It had witches as the enemy, but despite their evil nature, they also had incredible healing powers. The witches had no illness or faulty hearts. In fact, they didn’t have hearts in the first place.

I loved them then… And I still love them to this day.

I adored everything about them; the powers, the aesthetic, the elegance and fear they commanded. I often wore a big witch hat my parents got me for my fourteenth birthday when I played my games.

Something about… controlling fear instead of living endlessly in it… It really connected with me.

I truly idolized witches.

They were everything I ever wanted.

But.

No matter how precisely I drew the symbols on my arms. No matter how well I learned all the chants and prayers the game had.

Regardless of what I did, I never gained control. Because magic doesn’t exist.

Life isn’t a storybook, so there is no drama arc. I highly doubt there is a divine plan or a God either. If there is… I’m sure that God REALLY hates me. I don’t quite know why whatever was up there hated me so much, since I never really did much outside of sitting in my bed. It was quite difficult to be religiously virtuous in my situation, but it was just as hard to be sinful.

Because of this, I never figured out what God would have wanted from me anyway. Either way… if a higher power does exist, I’m sure I messed my life up one way or another to be dealt a hand like this.

Maybe I was a real asshole in a past life? Hah… I wouldn’t put it past me…

The air smelled sterile. People whose identities were shrouded by their masks walked around idly. This was everyday work for them. I wonder if you can ever grow bored with heart surgery.

The operating room was full of machinery I had seen before. I had been here multiple times. The humming of the air conditioner began slowly growing louder.

I wonder if there even was an air conditioner in the surgery suite. Somehow, I couldn’t really remember at the moment. The humming was growing so loud, that it got hard to focus on anything other than it.

The ceiling gradually grew distorted.

As I cursed my existence and wished to never have been born in this world… As I cursed God or whatever was out there for my fate… I began hallucinating.

All the sounds were suddenly gone, all the color of the room was gone, all the people around me were gone.

It was all white.

Completely pure white with black outlines, like an unfinished drawing.

I was laying on my back on the operating table, staring at the ceiling, unable to move, when a face began pushing through the solid white I was forced to look at.

Like a liquid, a human-like shape began bubbling through and approaching me slowly.

It was a woman with completely white skin. Calling it white might have been an understatement. It was ghastly to the point it felt almost as if it were radiating a cold, dispassionate light.

I couldn’t quite grasp any features of her face, even when she came closer… outside a smile.

A completely emotionless smile, like that of a puppet trying to mimic human emotion. Something about it felt incredibly inhuman.

An undeniable sense of fear began growing within me. It felt primordial and instinctive, like something my body was hard-coded to be terrified of.

The pale woman gradually crept further from ceiling, reaching her hands out for me.

I couldn’t move. All I could do was gawk back, as her glowing skin made contact with mine.

It felt like a thousand shards of glass began mercilessly ripping into my face, gouging the skin off. After the skin was the muscles… then the bones… then the marrow… until nothing was left. I couldn’t scream or even move. All I could do was stare into the endless white of her hand as it eventually covered my line of sight.

Everything was so bright… My head was pounding. My eyes felt dry and tired as vision began returning slightly.

“…ch…”

I felt like there was something… echoing in the distance.

“..ait….i….how…e….”

The voices seemed a bit closer… Ah… It must have been the doctors… I suppose it’s time for three more ye-

“YOU WITCH!! YOU DESERVE NOTHING BUT DEATH!”

I jolted my eyes open. My head was pounding, and everything was blurry. There were people shouting something… at someone? I couldn’t see properly. The ground was cold… Did I fall off the bed due to a seizure or something? I think this floor was made of stone. Was the hospital floor made of stone? I’m pretty sure it had a more plastic-like texture to it…

My vision began to focus, and the first thing that caught me off-guard was color. In that instant, I knew I wasn’t in the hospital.

A vivid twilight blanketed the gigantic hall I was in. Everything was orange to the point it looked almost as if it were on fire. The voices echoing in the surrounding space were foreign to me. They were shouting, but I couldn’t hear them properly. I didn’t care about the voices, though. All I could do was look around in awe, for it was my first time seeing something so beautiful in my life.

I was laying on a floor made of stone… I think it might have been marble. It’s not like I had ever seen marble in real life, so I could have been wrong too. It just looked similar to how the mineral was usually depicted in video games.

It felt incredibly smooth for stone, almost like there was a thin layer of glass covering it.

Something dark was obscuring my line of sight partially, and it felt a bit itchy against my face.

As I tried to wave the darkness in front of my face away, I came to realize it was my own hair. My hair wasn’t long… or dark…. Hastily grasping for it, I found my hands full of black and silky hair. It was a bit wavy and covered my face. I tugged on it just a few times to make sure it was actually attached to my head.

I probably looked a bit weird in doing so.

My hair had somehow become jet black, like the darkest night.

I seemed to be wearing a violet, yet simple dress of some kind. I think I might have had high heels on too, but that’s about everything I could see or feel from my position. From the whole ensemble, I deduced I was maybe wearing clothes meant for a ball of some kind.

image [https://i.imgur.com/QELOBCE.png]

Before me, a bunch of men and women I didn’t recognize at all were screaming at me. While my eyesight was still very blurry, I could tell the people around me were also dressed up for a ball. There was a young woman surrounded by a group of tall men pointing at me. She was screaming… maybe at me?

She was shouting something about abuse… jealousy… love.

I couldn’t understand.

I figured I had to be dreaming. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Surely, I’d wake up in my miserable bed again soon. This was probably some sort of hallucination caused by the painkillers. That white figure from the ceiling… It was definitely a mere hallucination too.

The weight of several adult men crushing me jolted me out of my moment. The guards were dogpiling me, grasping for my limbs in almost what felt like panic.

It really hurt. Their armor dug into my body, leaving bleeding scrapes all over as they roughly forced me to stand. I was still reeling from the pain as I suddenly got slapped. My eyes finally began focusing.

A classical beauty with hair of gold stood before me. A young lady, maybe in her early twenties, with eyes like the purest emeralds. She wore a fancy ballroom dress that matched with her bright hair color.

But the pain and aching all over my body was nothing. I couldn’t help but stare wide-eyed in all directions.

Everything was so beautiful. Stunningly beautiful even. I think my eyes started to get strained from me looking everywhere in my attempt to absorb the scenery before me through my retinas.

The giant hall, the people, everything. My eyes darted around as I let the twilight glow in. It felt like something out of a fantasy novel. Everything surrounding me had a gently sparkling and an intense sense of saturation to it. Like all the colors of my previous life, were amplified by a hundredfold.

Everywhere I looked, I could see these very faint glimmering sparkles appearing in my peripheral vision. Tiny shining orbs flashing in and then disappearing before my eyes could fully comprehend their presence.

As my line of sight slowly returned to the golden-haired beauty before me, I noticed she seemed to be lecturing to me about something. I had a really hard time focusing on her words, because there were glimmering little sparkles slowly rising out of her body too, only to disappear as quickly as they appeared.

I couldn’t help but wonder if she was an angel. Furthermore, I pondered if I had been taken to heaven, but then… why did I have my hair color swapped…? Did heaven have…a dress code or something?

Slowly, awareness began returning, and I realized I was probably not in heaven.

The woman was ranting to me about something really shallow. Something about… Not deserving the kindness of the crown prince? Something about… being a traitor. Something about trying to hurt her.

The men behind her seemed to hold her in high regard. They nodded their heads at her words, some stared at her with adoration, almost as if enchanted by her mere presence. The men were quite handsome. Nothing short of a reverse harem group. In fact! I’m somewhat confident it probably WAS a reverse harem situation with how adoringly all the guys were staring at her.

The golden-haired beauty had a strange quirk to her speech. Something the men behind her seemed to be unable to see. Or maybe they were simply too blinded by their love to see it, even if it was quite blatant if you asked me.

Whenever the talking subject would change to praising herself or being honorable, the side of her mouth would begin twinging upwards. It was like one half of her face was showing her true emotions, and the other half was still managing to fake it.

She seemed to really enjoy talking about herself.

She was ranting about her being the victim to some… petty crimes, but the way she worded everything made it sound more like she was praising herself.

“I’ve done nothing but bring smiles to the faces of the denizens of this kingdom! What have I done to deserve your spite and jealousy?!” Even in victimizing herself, she couldn’t shut up about what a great person she was.

I had spent my entire life in bed without much to do. Looking at people was one of my few sources of entertainment.

Trying to analyze the microexpressions of those around me was something akin to a game to me. Figuring out when one of my nurses was having a bad day by how she’d react to my speech was a pretty effective way to stave off boredom from time to time.

Not that you really needed to be particularly good at reading people in this situation. This girl was so blatantly narcissistic, even a child would probably be able to recognize what was going on with her expressions.

The way she tried to hide her ego contorted her features in a rather unappealing manner. A waste for such a pretty face. She wore big and decorative earrings and a dress adorned with gold and gemstones. Her outfit shuffled subtly as she moved around and shouted at me. Judging by the sounds her footsteps made, it was easy to assume she was wearing high heels. She was the textbook definition of a beautiful western princess.

Like Cinderella, it seemed like she had been wronged by me somehow. I don’t exactly know what I did… But I guessbeing it wasn’t actually anything too serious, considering how happy the victim was to talk about it.

I suppose I was Cinderella’s ugly step-sister in this situation, then?

Her obviously dramatized words seemed to be getting to her audience. The crowd grew more and more audibly outraged the more she spoke. They began screaming about the death penalty, and about burning the witch.

I guess I was in the process of being falsely accused of something? It seemed the golden princess was having a good time listing all the bad things I had supposedly done to her. Her brainless audience hollered like a group of monkeys as she kept going, clearly reveling in her moment of glory and falsified justice.

Now, you might be wondering why I was so confident she was falsely accusing me? It was simply due to the fact, that she didn’t try to calm down the crowd at all whenever she pointed out one of my… evil deeds.

Let me give an example.

“She spilled water on my brand-new clothes just two weeks ago!” The little princess narrated.

“BURN THE WITCH!! KILL HER!!” The crowd screeched in response.

You probably understand what I mean now. The reactions of the crowd were completely excessive in relation to the seriousness of the crime, and yet the girl did nothing to soothe the fury of the mob.

It was almost a bit funny to see the absurd overreactions of the crowd to the incredible offenses this poor young woman had to live through.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

These villainess accusation scenarios are a common trope in novels and manga for women. The gist of things is, that a person from the normal world gets reincarnated into their favorite novel, only to discover they’re the villainess character instead of the heroine.

The story often comes to a climax in a scene, where the villainess is accused of abusing the heroine, but with the powers of knowing the story of the novel, the villainess has become loved by all, and instead turns the tables on the heroine.

I read a few books like this. I’m somewhat familiar with the trope…

…

I lied… I’m VERY familiar with the trope, but that was beside the point.

I didn’t recognize this scene from any of the novels I read. It always annoyed me how I couldn’t find a single novel about a witch as a main character. There is no way I wouldn’t remember a situation involving a crowd accusing the villainess of being one.

I didn’t recognize any of these people as characters from any novels I read. Not the princess nor the men swarming around her.

Not to mention my pitch-black hair. The main characters rarely ever had black hair in these novels. Red hair and other powerful colors were a pretty common character-trait among villainesses. It probably symbolized their… fiery personality or something.

Either way, none of what was transpiring before me rang a bell.

Did I get reincarnated into a novel?

Did I die?

Was this a drug-induced hallucination? Somehow, the longer I looked around, the less I wished for it to be one. The beauty of this world was far beyond that of my gray past. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.

I’m sure I’d get even more depressed than now if I found out this was just a fleeting creation of my own mind.

The golden-haired woman was now talking to me in a pitying tone. I spent my entire life being pitied by people, so it was straightforward for me to detect when someone was simply acting like they had sympathy for me. Somehow, I don’t think she even knew what real pity is like.

This woman was having the time of her life, reveling in my supposed misery. I’m sure she would have found it very annoying if I suddenly started gushing about how pretty everything looks around here, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut.

“It wouldn’t be right to go against the hallowed laws of our kingdom. She will not be sentenced to death. I forbid it… Let us let the judge decide her fate… fairly.” … Something about the fact that she was giving commands to the people around us rubbed me off the wrong way. She seemed a bit young to be someone fully in charge, and yet all the surrounding lunatics followed her every word like it was some holy scripture manifesting at the moment.

Her words were coated in a layer of faux compassion. Alongside the misleading statements, she gestured like a dainty little princess. It was a bit… painful to watch. You know… kind of like when you see people in real life trying to unironically act like they’re anime characters. The more I watched her prance around, the closer to my limit, I was pushed.

My limit of not laughing, that is. I knew laughter of this caliber would be bad for my heart, so I decided to try to calm my nerves and cool it down.

The guards began slowly dragging me out of the room, while I grit my teeth to not begin giggling at her like a lunatic.

Even as I was pulled further away, I could see the men rushing to their little canary of a woman, praising her courage and telling her she did the right thing. I finally lost it when she began sobbing in their arms about how scary it was.

“PHUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” I scream-laughed like a maniac, causing the guards to squeal in horror as they picked up the pace of gently escorting me along the apparent castle corridors.

She was such a terrible actress. It was like the entire group was a damn comedy routine. I suppose love does truly blind people.

… Or maybe I just got reincarnated into a world where the average IQ of the people matches the room temperature… In Celsius, mind you.

…

The castle prison was honestly quite creative. The cells were carved straight into the bedrock underneath the building itself.

It was miserably wet, so my feet made quiet splashing noises simply from walking around. I guess there must have been a water vein running through the ground somewhere nearby. I felt like if I listened hard enough, somewhere in the distance the faint noise of water falling could be heard.

It was freezing, so I did my best to sit on a wooden plank held by metal chains burrowed into the walls. It was my ‘bed’, I guess.

At this point, it was pretty clear I got reincarnated. This was no dream. How could I tell? I did the pinch test. The most scientific method of finding out if you’re in a dream.

I feel it might have been some kind of trashy harem novel… or a game of similar caliber. The only strange part was how I had no memory of this.

Either way! Trashy harem novel or not, I was happy.

You might be curious to why anyone would be happy in such a bad situation, but if you’d be provided the opportunity to guess three times, I’m sure you’d get it right.

Anything was better than my old life. ANYTHING. Even though my body was somewhat weak and malnourished, it was still infinitely better than my old body.

I WAS JUST DOGPILED BY A BUNCH OF MEN IN ARMOR AND I DIDN’T DIE! I even laughed! In my past, just a giggling fit could result in complications of all kinds!

Scrawny or not! This new body was way better than anything I had had in my life! AND BLACK HAIR?! I could totally pull off a witch-look with a body like this!

Have you ever had an experience of being really troubled and stressed out over something? Getting over a major source of mental strain comes with an incredible feeling of freedom. Imagine that times ten, and I’m sure you’ll understand how I was feeling at the moment.

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! I AM HEREEEEEEE!! I LIVEEEEEE!”

To the dismay of the guards, I’d sometimes spend hours doing nothing but screaming my lungs out to test if my heart would be troubled by overexerting myself.

Or maybe I just wanted to mess with them a little bit.

“HYAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!! I CAN DO ANYTHING!!!” I screamed.

“EEEEEKK! P-PLEASE DON’T HURT MEEEEE!” One of the guards squealed in horror.

He was a massive pile of muscle wearing heavy armor. A juggernaut, to say the least! He seemed to have a heart of an elephant, to the point where he was terrified of mice like myself.

They were clearly afraid of me for whatever reason. Maybe because the golden-haired girl called me a witch?

What the hell kind of witch doesn’t even know how to cast spells. It was more than obvious enough I was being falsely accused, but these idiots clearly couldn’t care less either way. Might be I was a scapegoat for some kind of political reasons? Who knows…

“WHOOOOOO KNOWWWWWWWSSS!!!” I screamed with joy while the guard was whimpering in the furthest corner away from my cell.

“Why did I agree to this… Mom always told me it’d be honorable to be a knight… but nobody said anything about it being this scary…!” I could somewhat make out what the man was muttering to himself, causing another burst of laughter to escape my new body.

Being locked in a prison is highly underrated. It’s honestly not bad at all.

The little sparkles from before were still here, causing everything to look incredibly vibrant. To pass the time, I began observing the beforementioned lights more closely.

They seemed to be affected by the wind! When people walked past the cell, the little glimmers would drift around like tiny dust particles in the draft before disappearing.

I could somehow manipulate the direction they were shifting in by moving my hands around. It was quite exciting! Magical even! I truly felt like a witch making the sparkles move around. Admittedly, my accuracy with them wasn’t particularly good.

OH! Random note I made while stuck in the cell! Did you know mold tastes a bit like dirt? I discovered this while I was served a delightful plate of moldy bread. Why do I know what dirt tastes like? A girl has to have her secrets.

Ahem… What I’m trying to say here, is that despite the bleak circumstances I was faced with, I felt happy. It was such a departure from the repetitive and bland nature of my past. Everything was new and exciting. I could jump around and scream as much as I wanted, so I felt ironically free despite being jailed.

“HEY GUARD!!” I shouted.

“Hieeeekkk!!” He replied in his manly voice.

“Tell me what these sparkles are, please!” I figured I should be direct with my words, or he might just avoid me like always.

“Nnnnnn…” The man sobbed in his corner, trying his best to ignore me.

“Come on! I promise I won’t eat you if you tell me! OTHER WISE!! I’LL INVADE YOUR NIGHTMARES AND BURN MYSELF FOREVER INTO YOUR SOUL!!”

Admittedly, I might have gotten a bit too excited about the whole… witch accusation thing. Don’t judge me, okay? I could never really go to anime conventions and stuff to act out all of my shameful role-playing dreams, so I wanted to indulge in such a bit.

“PLEASE DON’T!! PLEASE!!” The man was a mess of tears as he rushed to me. “I’LL ANSWER! I’LL ANSWER TO ALL OF YOUR QUESTIONS! PLEASE HAVE MERCY!!”

I honestly felt almost bad for him. Almost. “Well! Explain to me what these glowing little sparkles are then!” I nodded at him sternly, waving my hand around, leaving a trail of the tiny fleeting glimmers behind.

“T-tiny… sparkles…?” The man sobbed quietly.

“Yeah. They’re a bit hard to see, but they’re all over the place. These.” I repeated the gesture.

The man slowly grew more and more troubled. He seemed confused and tried shaking his own hand before his face. “I… I don’t quite… understand what you mean…” He quivered fearfully.

“You mean… You can’t see them? They’re all over the place. The little shinies!” I began insisting a bit, which in turn obviously got the guy scared again.

“I’M SORRRYYYYHHH!! PLEASE DON’T KILL MEEEEE!” The man began ugly-crying like his entire life was over…

After managing to calm him down and send him away, I came to the conclusion the man couldn’t probably see the sparkles. It was a bit odd. They were so incredibly present everywhere. Maybe I was just going crazy? Or perhaps my eyes got damaged in the reincarnation process somehow.

Sadly, my moment of pondering over it came to a swift halt as I was dragged out. The dress I had worn previously was filthy and torn to the point it caused the guards to grimace as they saw me.

I soon found myself standing before a judge in a hall decorated in a royal red and gold. People were standing to the both of my sides on high balconies of sorts. In front, there was the judge behind a podium.

He was an old man wearing glasses and had noticeable dark circles under his eyes, which emphasized the rather ugly, smug smirk to his face. It was more than obvious enough, that this wasn’t going to be a trial.

This was going to be a witch-trial.

For anyone not in the know of what this means. Witch trials are a thing we had in my past life too. I remember reading a bunch of stories in books about them. Basically, the trials were only trials in the name. They were merciless accusation festivals by religious zealots who just really didn’t like someone in town. They were a way to get rid of unwanted people in the “NAME OF GOD!”. These trials were famous for how one-sided and unfair they were. There were even records of children as young as five-years-old being accused of being witches.

These real-life villainess accusation events generally ended with the “witches” being burned to death or thrown into rivers.

In modern day, I guess the more comparable thing to a witch trial is when people make baseless accusations on social media, and idiots online start supporting those baseless accusations, simply because they disliked the person being accused to begin with and wanted to see them suffer. Evidence is not necessary in these witch trials. In fact! It’s highly COUNTERPRODUCTIVE! So, even if I were to ask for evidence, I’m sure they would come up with an excuse to why they don’t need any. I grit my teeth and waited anxiously for what was to come.

A quiet uproar slowly cascaded over the hall. The blonde princess had entered from a balcony to the right into the same area the judge was sitting in. She spoke something to the man, who seemed almost shocked by her words.

“You should pray to whatever demons you believe in. You truly are fortunate to have been tried in our kingdom.” The judge began speaking, but I didn’t quite understand what he meant by all this.

The door to the room opened behind me, and two armed men pushed a trolley with something covered by a white cloth.

“You’ve been given a choice by our merciful princess.” The wrinkled judge’s voice was full of contempt. He had a croaking… frog-like presence to his vocal output.

Seemed like calling this a witch trial was an overstatement too! There was no trial. I was being dealt punishment without even being heard out straight off the bat.

Upon having the cloth pulled off, a strange rock was revealed. I think it was a rock anyways. It was quite smooth, almost like it had been smoothed out by water. Back in the hospital, my parents sometimes brought me a few from the beach… That was… when they were still happy and hopeful.

“Place your hand upon this stone and swear you’ll graciously move out of our kingdom. You’ll be pardoned for your wrongdoings if you do… Or be exiled into the poisonous swamps of Ravica for all eternity!” His voice boomed through the hall quite dramatically.

Now, this was obviously suspicious. I was basically told to just nicely go away with no repercussions whatsoever, or be exiled to the swamps of… whateverica? Why would anybody ever go to the swamps?

Or…so I would have said…if not for that stone in front of me. Now, I called it a stone just a moment ago, but I genuinely don’t know if that was truly the case.

It was oval in shape, kind of flat and extremely dark. In the center of it was a notably eerie drawing or painting of some kind. It might have also been carved into the stone itself, to be totally honest.

The strange dark piece was about the size of a grown man’s chest. The pattern on it looked a bit like a hand, but it had too many fingers. I counted almost ten. Every finger had a little crudely drawn eye at the tip, all the eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling.

Suddenly, this felt a lot less like a harem novel, and a lot more like a horror one. The air surrounding the rock was completely gray, as if it was absorbing away the saturation from everything around it.

There were two guards standing next to it, and one of them looked noticeably pale. Upon looking at him more closely, I noticed the sparkles coming out of his body were being drained into the rock. Their vibrancy disappeared as soon as they got close enough to the strange object, slowly disappearing and turning to colorless nothingness as they made contact with the dark piece.

It felt totally out of place, like a horror movie prop suddenly appearing in a light-hearted romantic comedy. Something about the sight of it felt incredibly wrong and chilling. Not to the extent of the primordial fear that pale woman injected me with… but still quite something.

A murmur echoed through the hall.

It was clear all of them were upset over the princess providing me with the option of being pardoned with something as seemingly small as a promise, and yet, here I was staring at that piece of rock. A horrid shiver went down my spine every time I looked at it. I had no memory of ever seeing or reading about anything like this.

There is no way in hell I wouldn’t remember such a distinctive set-piece in a novel.

This realization really ruined my theory of this being a novel or a game I knew from my past life.

What the hell kinda horror story was this supposed to be!? Why was nobody batting an eye at this. This stone looked like a cursed object owned by a dark cult, and here it was in the golden hued halls of the castle. Why was it brought here by the order of the princess of all people?!

Could these people truly not see the air around the rock turning gray? Could they not see the sparkles? The armored guard in the cell said so… But I simply thought he was too panicked to understand what I was even talking about.

“I’d like to…” There was something completely messed up here. I could totally understand seeing an ugly and blatantly evil looking person bringing this damn dark artifact into the room, but why was the main-character bringing it in?! AND WHY WAS SHE GRINNING LIKE A VULTURE WAITING FOR PREY WHEN I BEGAN SPEAKING!? What the hell was wrong with this place?!

Let me emphasize that. The girl looked positively BLOODTHIRSTY as she yearned to hear my words. What the hell was wrong with this place?!

“You’d like to…?” The judge grumbled in an annoyed tone.

“I’d like… to be exiled.” I finally spoke out loud.

I could instantly tell I chose the right option. The incredibly burning hatred the golden princess stared at me with was visceral. It’s clear she wasn’t expecting me to choose the swamps.

“W-wait! Maybe you’re confused!” She began speaking, her voice was shaky, and her face was definitely not that of a dainty princess anymore. She really was bad at hiding her true emotions. “The swamps of Ravica are a horrible place! You can just go live in some village if you just swear…!” She continued in a tone that somehow made me almost feel she was desperate for me to touch the stone.

“No. I don’t think I am confused. I’d like to be exiled, please.” I stated matter-of-factly. It really felt like there was something suspicious going on. I had no interest in playing into the hand of this woman.

“Ungrateful vermin…” The judge grumbled.

The entire hall was dedicated to howling at me like dogs in heat after my answer.

There was no opportunity for me to even talk, as I was quickly judged guilty of high treason and attempted murder.

It was clear the princess was unhappy about my answer. She was biting her lip to the point of causing it to bleed while glaring daggers at me as I stood there while people from the balconies threw small items at me in protest.

I don’t know why she was so desperate to have me touch the black object, but to be completely fair. I didn’t really care. Not only that, but I honestly wanted to get back at her a bit, no matter how petty the method.

I got two birds with one stone! I didn’t want to touch that creepy thing… and I wanted to annoy the princess! A vein popped on her forehead as I winked at her. She seemed like she’d be fun to tease.

I remained silent in the uproar of the jury. I’m sure I could have said something to annoy them further, but I decided against it. I’m a specialist when it comes down to understanding when resistance is futile.

Wasting my breath on this scummy bunch wasn’t something I had plans for. In fact, I was elated to be exiled, for exile meant freedom. The one thing I NEVER had in my life. Who in their right mind would not be overjoyed by something like this?

I felt like I was a prisoner in my own body for the entirety of my past life. Being given this joy of free roaming was nothing short of a reward.

The princess was frustrated over the outcome, but she wasn’t able to just force me to touch the stone either, as it would go against her carefully constructed character…

With that, the trial came to a conclusion.

I was dragged out without much fanfare. Seemed like the exile was to be made into a reality post-haste. A wooden caravan with iron bars awaited me at the gates of the castle.

Surely if I really was a witch, these shoddy iron bars wouldn’t hold me back… and yet nobody questioned this. I grew ever-stronger in my belief that the people in this kingdom must have been a part of some unholy mouth-breather cult. Seemed like, no matter where I looked, there were imbeciles to be seen.

The caravan was much more comfortable than the jail cell, simply because it wasn’t wet or particularly cold. The ride out of town was a bit bumpy, but not to the point of discomfort.

My eyes widened at the sight awaiting me behind the castle walls. It was truly breathtaking.

A vast field of flowers was in full bloom, gently waving in the wind, sending some multicolored petals flying all over. It seemed to be the heart of summer, and the air was warm and full of life.

The guards riding the carriage were clearly disturbed by my audible joy at every sight. This only made me want to be louder about my elation.

“WAAAAH! IS THAT A BUTTERFLY!? A BUTTERFLY! It’s so pretty! Did you two see that?!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?! What are you getting so giddy over!?”

The grouchier of the guards barked at me. He had a grumpy face to match his tone of voice. He was like a living caricature of what an angry middle-aged man looks like.

Every annoyed wrinkle on his face was very emphasized and noticeable. He was also a sad victim of the notorious short-and-stout-syndrome, which plagued stereotypically evil people like him. The fancy embroidered vest he was wearing was strained against the oppressive pressure of his gut.

He was accompanied by a skinny and taller man with an oddly pointy mustache. The kind of pointy you only see in ancient photos. It was almost equal in its ridiculousness to the amount of anger the little fat guy had in him. The undersides of his eyes were really dark. I bet he didn’t sleep a whole lot.

His outfit was similar to his companions, but the issue this time was that it was far too big, causing it to drape over his frame.

Despite these two being a particular eyesore, the rest of the scenery was positively fantastic.

The trees in the forests were so deep in color I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“OOOHHH! A squirrel!! How cute!! It’s like a mouse living in a tree! A tree-mouse!! What wonder!!” At this point, I was just getting excited over stuff to annoy the clowns driving the carriage.

“SHUT UP!!!!” The grumpy shorty slammed his fists against the iron bars of my cage. My plans of pissing them off were successful! Soon afterward, I did quiet down to marvel at the scenery again, though.

There were faint lights flickering in-between the branches. I couldn’t help but hope they were fairies, but they could just as well have been fireflies. While the people back in the kingdom spoke of witches and magic, I hadn’t seen any proof of magic actually existing in this world yet. People spoke of magic and witches in the world of my past too, but that doesn’t mean they ever existed there.

To be fair, even if there was no magic in this world, finding solace in the fact that I had gotten fantastically reincarnated was making me happy enough.

Even if this world was just another earth, it was nothing short of paradise to me, since I had a healthy new body.

A body like this was all I had ever hoped for. Maybe all those spells and magic I practiced as a teen really did do something.

Days turned to nights, and the sights I saw were slowly turning a bit bleaker as the swamp most likely drew near.

I was so excited, I didn’t end up sleeping a wink through the nights. Healthy bodies are truly remarkable! Or maybe the frog-like croaking of the pudgy man as he snored made it impossible to fall asleep to begin with.

It suddenly made a whole lot of sense why the skinny guy had such dark rings under his eyes.

Even the darker areas were fascinating to me. I saw a non-human frog for the first time too. I think it must have been eating a bug. It was just staring at the caravan as we passed, munching on something.

Something about the sights of this new world made my imagination bubble wild. What if this world really had magic in it? I almost wanted to start drawing the magic sigils I practiced rigorously in my youth on my arms, but I somehow had a feeling they probably didn’t have permanent markers here in this world.

Maybe I could try to paint them on? That could work too! I get that this was just wishful thinking, since the mana symbols were simply things I saw in a game… but… they were really cool.

If it turns out this world has magic, possibly I’ll get some painted on myself just to look cooler, even if they won’t have any magical properties.

As I was distracted by my own musings, the caravan stopped. By now, we had travelled maybe a good five days. A thick fog surrounded us to the point where it was challenging to see further than five or so meters ahead. It was shifting around slightly, like a thin blanket with a life of its own. I couldn’t feel any wind, which made it quite mysterious how it was moving.

“Okay. I think we’re deep enough.” The grouchy frogman spoke.

“A-are you sure we didn’t go too far? Haven’t you heard the rumors?!” The skinny man replied. There was a noticeable presence of what sounded like fear in his voice.

“Shut your mouth. We’ll be going back right after we take care of the witch!”

And with that, the man hopped off of the carriage and pulled out his sword. I raised an eyebrow as he approached the part of the caravan I was locked in.

Without a warning, he suddenly jabbed the sword at me through the bars. It sunk into my left arm. The pain was searing and cold. It was as if I could feel every piece of muscle fiber being cut by the rusty and dull blade.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I grasped the bleeding arm in horror.

The man chuckled to himself. “Hah… So, witches bleed red too?”

The other man approached behind me, trying to stab the sword at me too. He was much shakier and ended up missing.

“Weren’t you supposed to exile me?!” I screamed at the two, one of whom was taken back a bit.

“Getting exiled is just political jargon for being executed outside the border of the kingdom! Nobody ain’t complaining if a witch or two disappears into the mists of these swamps!” The short man’s laughter was disgusting. Like he was choking on his own tongue, he croaked as he began trying to swipe at me more.

This was cowardice beyond any sense. Two grown men were attempting to stab at me while I was locked in the damn cage. I had just gotten a new life, and now I was to be killed by these damn crooks?!

“DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME! I’LL CURSE YOU BOTH TO DEATH!!” I screamed. It was obviously a bluff, but the meeker man yelped in horror, backing away a bit.

“Yeah, yeah! You probably ain’t even a real witch! A real one would have escaped long ago! Bah!” The frogman gurgled contently. I suppose they were a bit less stupid… and a lot nastier than I thought.

My body felt cold. The blood loss was getting to me. I could no longer move my left arm. The fingers had lost all feeling.

I wasn’t planning on giving up, but fear was slowly creeping its way up my body. A cold, miserable feeling I remembered from my past life very well. I had given up on life… but it was because there was nothing left for me.

Now I had everything! Everything I had ever wanted, and these people were trying to rip it away from me once more!

I let out a most blood-curdling scream I could manage. It was the only act of defiance I could muster in this hopeless situation.

My body was exhausted, and I finally slumped down.

“Har! Finally done with the resistance, eh? Damn witch! You had us sweating for no reason!” The disgusting excuse of a man boasted triumphantly.

“Uh… B-boss… We should… l-leave…” The lanky man began whimpering.

“Yeah, yeah! Right after I’m done with this one!”

“N-no, I mean… now!!” He screamed, pointing into the mist.

Before the grouchy guard could respond, an enormous wolf-like creature burst through the white veil. It targeted the man’s neck with incredible precision, ripping it open in a rain of blood instantly. The ravenous beast wasted no time in tearing through the cloth of his outfit, ripping the man into a mess without letting him make a single noise.

“IT’S THE CURSE!!! IT’S THE CURSEEE!!!” Screaming, the bony man began running away, hiding behind the cage I was in.

The enormous wolf-beast smashed right into the carriage with enough force to send it flying. The man behind it got his leg crushed underneath its weight.

“NO! NO! PLEASE NO!!! PLEASE!! NOOOO!!” The trapped victim screamed as the beast slowly walked over to him. It was clearly intelligent enough to understand there was no need to chase after trapped prey.

My head was aching as I slowly got up. I hit my forehead on one of the bars, causing it to bleed slightly.

Everything was a blur.

The massive canine was lazily ripping apart the man’s limbs while he was screaming. It almost looked like the beast was reveling in his suffering. It was a haunting sight, only distorted in its horror by my adrenaline running wild.

The quiet whimpers of the man died down rapidly, while my world was still spinning a bit.

Some of the rustier bars of the cage I was trapped in had broken by the impact, allowing me to climb out.

As the wolf was done with its current meal, it seemed like my turn was up next.

I grabbed a broken, rusty bar to use as my only weapon. It was obvious enough running was futile, as the beast was large enough to catch up to me with a light trot. Fighting was the only way out of this.

Somehow, my body felt like it was full of energy despite my vision being slightly blurry. I’m guessing it was the adrenaline working in overdrive. I stared at the growling beast a small distance away from me. It was slightly obscured by the mist, only its glowing eyes piercing through fully.

The size of the living horror made it all too clear I’d have to hit some really vital spot to be able to do any damage to it. In fact, I was somewhat confident the wolf wouldn’t die even if I hit it really well with the worn-out piece of iron I had. It was the size of a dagger at best and was corroded by rust to the point of crumbling at the touch.

But… something about this felt off. Presently, I couldn’t put my finger on it at all, but I felt like something was missing.

Standing on this battlefield of mist, the beast drew closer. As it came fully into sight, it felt as if a wall of air hit me.

An enormous force of an unholy nature stood before me, and it was clear I was nothing but a piece of meat to it. My hopes, my dreams… Nothing meant anything here. In nature, only the strong live… and I was weak.

And yet… I couldn’t help but grin. A shaky, lunatic grin was slowly spreading across my face. I was probably growing insane… But realizing what was missing from this whole scenario somehow filled me with an incredible sense of power.

Fear mixed with excitement, elation, hope and defiance. I was terrified, and yet. I had no choice.

For the first time in my life, I had enough power to fight for control.

A control over my own life, a high privilege not everyone is born with. I wasn’t going to let go of this opportunity. Not now, not anymore. I was given a second chance, be it by magic, or by a God’s will, I didn’t care.

I was given a new life, so I had to do anything I could think of to keep it.

For some reason, this felt like a turning point. The moist air of the swamp felt still. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion as the beast began a wild rush toward me.

At that moment, I inhaled as much air as I could, then letting out the mightiest roar one can expect out of a scrawny dried-up woman.

Instead of trying to use the rusty spike as a weapon, I jabbed it into my own bleeding arm. To my surprise and shock, the upper parts of the arm still had some feeling left in it. The pain was beyond anything I had ever felt before. Every nerve ending screeching in agony as the filthy metal ripped through my soft flesh. The rusty steel was sturdy enough to cut through my skin with ease, allowing me to carve a magical sigil into my own body.

The beast was upon me, lunging into the air, ready to rip through my neck. I hoisted up my bleeding arm with my still functioning one, screaming. The faint glimmers in the air had grown more noticeable.

Light began amassing, my entire arm started to sparkle with the glow and then suddenly, a shaky, uneven burst of fire shot out of my palm, searing my entire arm into a burnt crisp.

If the pain from cutting the sigil on my arm was miserable, this one was immeasurable. My throat was sore from the bestial scream I let out as my limb dried up and turned black, beginning to crumble as sparks flew everywhere.

The fire formed into a more solid fireball, blasting out into the maw of the beast alongside the crackling and undulating air.

With a horrified howl of pain, the beast lit up like a firework, something exploding deep inside it. It began coughing black burnt blood as it staggered along by the momentum of its rush, stumbling past me.

The stench of burnt flesh was ever present.

Not just mine, but also that of the monster. Its lifeless corpse rested before me, smoke rising from its mouth and nostrils.

The glimmer of life had left its ferocious eyes…

I was still alive. Somehow.