How painfully ironic it was for dear Talia, now Cressida.
Once, she was a woman who spent her life trying to prove her worth; now, she inhabited the body of a girl who had done anything to pretend she already had it.
The role of a minor villainess was nothing new.
It wasn't just in manhwas or novels, they were everywhere in shoujo stories: the petty antagonist surrounded by simpering followers, fueled by envy and insecurity, doomed to chase after a male lead who never looked her way.
They either grew up spoiled or simply grew up wrong.
"Is this how the gods choose to punish me?" she whispered, fingertips brushing her jaw.
After all, she bore a sin.
A terrible, unforgivable sin she would rather bury than name.
A guilt that crawled to her back like a shadow, refusing to fade no matter how many times she tried to forget.
"The fact that I reincarnated in this body means death was never an escape for what I've done."
If she died again, would it stop there?
Would her soul drift from one vessel to the next, or would she finally be forced to remain?
There was only one way to find out.
Under the pale night, she tore through drawers and desk compartments, one after another, until her fingers grazed something sharp.
In her final moments before, she hadn't cared about dying.
It had come as the inevitable sum of every mistake she'd refused to face. And now, though this might seem like a second chance, she knew better; this life wasn't a gift to live idly. It was a sentence. A chance not to start over, but to make amends for the ruin she left behind.
"There it is."
Her trembling hand closed around the scissors' handle, and without hesitation, she drew the blade across her wrist, enough for the blood to spill freely.
But before the crimson could stain the floor, something suddenly felt cold.
║[SYSTEM WARNING]║
║Unauthorized termination detected.║
║The host is not permitted to die.║
║Attempting to override existential continuity protocol...║
"W-What?!"
The wound sealed itself with a faint hiss of light, leaving behind only a thin, silvery scar.
"I'm… immortal…" Disbelief was heavy in her throat.
It explained everything, how she had survived that stab without a trace.
But something didn't add up. From what she remembered, Cressida wasn't immortal. She had been nothing more than a disposable pawn tangled in noble politics, especially under Agrona, the main villainess. Whenever schemes collapsed or scandals erupted, Cressida was the first to be offered as sacrifice.
A foolish woman painted as wicked. Naïve enough to serve evil, yet too powerless to ever be it.
║[SYSTEM ALERT]║
║Scheduled Event Detected: "The Grand Assembly"║
║Time: Tomorrow, 09:00 A.M.║
║Classification: Critical Narrative Event║
║NOTICE: Participation is optional. Both choices carry irreversible consequences.║
║[Join the Event] — Intervene and alter the course of the story.║
║[Ignore the Event] — Allow destiny to proceed unchallenged.║
║Warning: Once a choice is made, it cannot be undone. You will not regress upon failure. You will simply return to life.║
"So no matter what I do, each has a consequence, huh?"
A butterfly effect.
Even the smallest action such as a single word or a breath out of place could ripple outward and reshape the future in unimaginable ways.
A butterfly flaps its wings, and somewhere across the world, a storm begins.
In practice, it meant that if she sneezed at the wrong time, someone's engagement might collapse, a kingdom might fall, or the main villainess might suddenly decide she's her new best friend.
Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
"I would rather not be involved with that woman… or anyone," she muttered, sinking into the chair.
The title of the Novel she got transmigrated into was the War of Seduction, a reverse harem story.
Each man was a "jewel," a key capable of unlocking power, redemption, or ruin, depending on who seduced them first.
Tomorrow's critical event: the return of the Crown Prince.
It was the grand reintroduction of the kingdom's most dangerous variable, a golden heir draped in charm and politics, the kind of man whose smile could ignite wars and whose absence had left nobles starving for power.
It was the night when Agrona, the regressor villainess, would confront the self-aware heroine.
Neither of them knew the other's secret; Agrona was a regressor who's repeated her life countless times by dying, and the heroine was a self-aware character who knew that the world was fiction. But there was one thing they knew: they both had doomed endings.
"No," she tapped the "Ignore The Event" option without a hint of hesitation.
First of all, the whole thing was so painfully cringe.
Second, she hated this novel. It was aggressively mediocre, the kind of story that thought tropes counted as depth and that giving every man tragic eyes made them interesting.
And third, the fun one, she still didn't know who had her killed. Whoever it was, they'd probably faint when they realized their scapegoat was walking around again.
Now that was something worth living for.