"Ghah!"

Zhao Chan-juan was startled awake by something that she could only describe as her heart stopping beating. Many years ago, she and her friends were gathered under their covers during a sleepover and were telling each other superstitions before bed, and one of them was that if you died in your dreams, you actually died in real life! This superstition filled her mind as she blinked in the darkness, raising a hand to her chest to feel for her own heartbeat. "It's okay... It's okay. I'm okay." She could feel her heart. She could feel the humid air fill her nostrils as she breathed in deeply. Sweat covered her body from the sudden start, but she wasn't sure why the air was so thick in her bedroom.

She rolled over so that she could climb down from her bed, but underneath her was not her cotton sheets or her thick mattress, no, underneath her was a straw mat that crinkled as she moved, and below that was nothing but cool, hard stone. Zhao Chan-juan pushed her hand on the stone and jumped up, stumbling in the darkness. "Too dark..." she mumbled, feeling her brain and throat going fuzzy as she realized she was no longer in her bedroom. She needed to find some light. Had she been kidnapped?

Feeling like she was going to faint, she paused and leaned against the wall of the large cave she was in, breathing in deeply and trying to calm herself. When doing so, she could hear the sound of water trickling. She opened her eyes and turned towards the sound, seeing a small patch in the distance that was illuminated by what she figured was moonlight.

...

When Zhao Chan-juan reached the pool of water, she nervously looked up. There was a hole in the stone, but definitely not one she could reach, and even if she did, not one she could not fit through. She reached a hand up, closing one eye so she could "touch" the moon, something she did since she was small to calm herself down when she had anxiety. But when she did so, she felt a fresh wave of panic hit her. This... Was not her hand? The hand in front of her was more weathered and too thin. She looked down quickly, to the pool of water which appeared as a black hole in the darkness. She could barely see herself, but she... Was not herself.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The woman looking back was older and taller, with a beautiful shape that was hidden away due to the much too thin appearance of her body. Her hair was long, a silvery-white instead of her chestnut color, and her face... Instead of a slightly chubby sixteen-year-old girl, she looked as if she was in her mid-20s. Beautiful, but definitely more mature.

She looked away and took a deep breath. This was not happening. Zhao Chan-juan sat down by the pool, feeling weak. Since she was small, she had smuggled novels into her house, that she knew her parents wouldn't agree with. They were all rather mature, filled with murder and sex and all sorts of things a young woman shouldn't be interested in according to her parents. But she found them far more interesting than fairy tales and poppy romances. These novels, though, often started out the same... The main character reincarnated into a new body.

"This isn't real..." she said to herself, trying to fill the silence. The woman sat cross-legged, placed her hands on her lap, and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She focused on her heart beating, the feeling of being in this new body, the smell and feel of the cave air and she tried to remember something that she didn't even know.

Having slowed down from her panic state, she was able to think clearly.

Cheng Yue.

That was who she was. She licked her bottom lip, scrunching her closed eyes tighter. Flashes of memories filled her mind, faster than she could grasp them. She was imprisoned. She had a young son and he was gone. She killed many people, in a way that made the villagers think she was possessed. She was thrown into this cave, to sit and starve until her most likely execution.

Cheng Yue opened her eyes. She didn't know how she got into this body, but she did have an extremely strong desire to find her young boy.

Even if she, as Zhao Chan-juan, didn't know him... The feeling was still as if this was her main goal for being here. At the moment, it's all that mattered. She wouldn't sit around and wait for others like the women in her novels, she hated them. All of her novels were with men in the lead and they were strong, fearless, and cool. The women went on about marriage and finances... Cheng Yue snorted. She would not be a weak young miss.