I stood in front of the long, claw-footed mirror and stared at the stranger looking back. Long brown hair. Round green eyes. A pretty face that felt too foreign. It had become my face two weeks ago, and for the past fortnight, I’ve failed to believe it suits me.

The last face I remember was gaunt and as pale as the hospital sheets. Cancer had gnawed through me before I even had the chance to fight back. By the time I noticed, the doctor was already gazing at me with pity.

So I did what anyone would have done in my position. I read. Four months of devouring stories to outpace reality, escaping into worlds full of magic, happy endings, and brooding men. I didn’t bother crying. Why would I?

That’s how I stumbled upon Princess Warrior. Honestly, the title sounded like a bad novel, and I almost skipped it, but the cover was too pretty, and I was shallow enough to click on it.

I thank every god for my shallowness.

The story wrecked me in the best way. Isolde, the protagonist, was a broken princess stitched together with sheer spite. She lost her kingdom, her family, her friends… all thanks to a tyrant emperor who made cruelty his hobby. But five years of imprisonment and abuse didn’t drown her. She found her way out, gathered allies, raised the kingdom from the ashes, and burned the empire down.

Isolde sat triumphant on her throne, back in her rightful place. She had what she wished for…

And yet, her smile was hollow.

I couldn’t accept that ending. After all that suffering, the author left her an empty shell. No love. No comfort. No warmth. Just a cold throne and court schemes. I hated it so much I spammed the author’s social media, asking for justice for our Isolde until the author blocked me.

My proudest contribution to web novels and literature.

I mourned her life harder than my own. When my body started giving out, when my thoughts began to blur and my consciousness thinned—she was the last thing on my mind.

Ah… how I wish to rewrite the ending… That was my last thought as I drifted into darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in my hospital bed. I wasn’t even myself.

I was in a whole different world.

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The first few days were miserable. Not the typical “I-woke-up-in-someone-else’s-body” scenario, but real suffering. The kind where you wake up and realize you’re inside a stranger’s body and wonder if it’s karma for binge-reading instead of touching grass.

Is this hell for readers?

I considered ending it more than once—just closing the book on myself, if you know what I mean. But then, I heard that name.

Isolde Crosstenberg. The first princess of the Crosstenberg Kingdom was about to be appointed as Crown Princess.

That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t just transmigrated randomly. I had been dumped straight into the last novel I obsessed ov—I mean, read.

Divine intervention or the universe’s poor joke? Who knows.

After realizing I had been godsent into this world, I spent days playing detective and gathering all the information I could.

I was now Alina Shaw. Second child of House Shaw—a marquess family with a seat on the council and too much land to manage. My parents, Eleanor and Pietro, were proper nobles. And Alan, my twin brother, was the smart one, making me the useless twin.

Money, a comfortable life… It was a good deal except for one thing: I wasn’t in the story—I never appeared even in a passing scene! I wasn’t just a side character. I wasn’t even that pathetic sidekick who commits a crime for the villain and dies after two lines.

I was noblelady #1. An extra who couldn’t be part of the heroine’s world!

Aren’t you supposed to transmigrate into a useful character?!

If I were going to be transmigrated, couldn’t I at least have gotten a useful role??

What’s the point of being here if I can’t be near Isolde?! What’s the point of being in her world if I can’t do anything to save her?!

Then it hit me. I was in her world. We weren’t close novel-wise, but I was here now.

And if I were to become close to her…

I could be her best friend forever!

…And save her, of course. Totally save her.

From then on, every scrap of gossip and newspaper became my treasure map. I jotted timelines, verified events, and there it was: the annual banquet celebrating the empress’s birthday. The same night, the emperor makes his move, and Crosstenberg falls.

That was in three months.

Three months. That’s all I had to change her ending.

Three months to spit in the author’s face and rewrite fate.

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A brief chapter to start this new journey~ I’m so excited to write a story that’s different from what I usually write, but I love Alina! She’s been living in my head since last year, and I finally listened. See you next chapter!