The sheets smelled like lavender and old parchment.
Warm sunlight poured through the tall, arched window, casting soft patterns over the ivory canopy bed. A gentle breeze danced through the pale curtains, and somewhere in the distance, bells chimed the morning hour.
It was perfect.
Too perfect.
I sat up slowly, my body feeling lighter, smaller—wrong.
My fingers were delicate, pale like porcelain. My arms thin. The oversized silk nightgown slid off one shoulder as I looked around in dazed silence.
Where was I?
The room looked like it belonged in a storybook: gold trim along every wall, polished floors like glass, and a mirror so tall it nearly reached the ceiling. This was no hospital. No hotel. No place I had ever known.
Then I saw her.
In the mirror.
A child.
Seven years old, maybe eight. Long waves of silver-gold hair tumbled down her back like spilled moonlight. Her eyes—my eyes—were a soft, confused shade of lavender.
"…No way."
I pressed my fingers to my face. The girl did the same.
That's when the memory hit me—like a scream I had forgotten how to hear.
A book.
A story.
A nameless princess who died before the plot began.
She wasn't the heroine. She wasn't the villainess.
She was... forgotten.
Her name was Eliora.
And she died at age seven.
From a fever.
Three days from now.
And I—
I was her.
---
[To be continued…]
In three days, the story begins. But this time… I'll still be alive to read it.