I was exhausted.Not the kind of tired you feel after a long day. Not even the soul-crushing fatigue that used to hit me after pulling an all-nighter writing a manuscript only for it to get rejected with a half-hearted "lacks market appeal." No—this was a deeper kind of exhaustion. The kind that wraps around your bones and drags you down like a weighted chain. The kind that makes you forget what it ever felt like to be rested.
Every single inch of my frail, thirteen-year-old body ached.My arms, sore from hauling water in splintered wooden buckets. My back, stiff from bending over in the fields for hours. My knees, bruised from scrubbing mud-caked floors on all fours. My hands… gods, my hands. Once soft and unblemished—used only to type and occasionally turn pages—were now raw and cracked, covered in dirt, scabs, and deep blisters that split open if I even looked at them wrong. My fingers had thickened, hardened by work. My nails, once neat and polished, were now jagged and brown from grime I couldn't scrub out.
And my feet.Don't even get me started on my feet.
Calloused and filthy, they throbbed with every step. Shoes were a luxury we couldn't afford, and every day I walked barefoot across jagged stones, goat droppings, and gods-know-what else without so much as a bandage to show for it. Sometimes I'd step on a thorn or a sharp piece of straw and just keep walking, too numb to care.
The days bled together.Wake up before the rooster crowed. Haul water before the sun rose. Milk the goat if she wasn't in one of her demonic moods. Feed the chickens. Sweep the dirt floor (yes, we actually swept dirt). Clean the animal pens. Cook if it was my turn, which it often was. Then work the fields. Hoeing. Weeding. Gathering. Sweating.
Eat whatever slop Mira managed to throw together—usually thin porridge or hard bread that tasted like sawdust—and then collapse onto the hay mattress at night, squeezed between Joren and one of the twins, too tired to even think, let alone dream.
And speaking of Joren—I love him. I really do. In that distant, obligatory, older-sibling way.
But if he asked me one more time if worms had feelings, I was going to hurl myself into the nearest well.
He was always there.Clinging to my arm, tugging my skirt, asking questions, begging me to play stick-fighting or chase or make up stories. He followed me like a second shadow—one with muddy hands and endless energy and a voice that never stopped squeaking. If I turned a corner, he turned with me. If I tried to sneak away, he'd wail like I was abandoning him forever. I couldn't breathe without him noticing.
"Why does the sun sleep, Aira?""Do bugs get lonely?""Why does the goat hate me?""Can we eat the dirt if we mix it with water and pretend it's pudding?"
Every question chipped away at my sanity. I wasn't a mother. I wasn't even a proper big sister. I was a writer. I wrote about kids, sure—but they were plot devices, cute accessories for the heroine to protect or adopt. I never imagined I'd be elbow-deep in goat dung trying to keep one from running into a creek while two others screamed about wanting more gruel.
I didn't sign up for this.This wasn't reincarnation.This was cosmic mockery.
Where were my sparkling gowns and mysterious powers?Where was my destined love interest—the aloof prince with a tragic past who only opened up to me?Where was my secret lineage? My awakening magic? My golden-eyed protector?
Nowhere.
I didn't get to be the chosen one.I didn't even get to be the background noble girl who dies early to motivate the hero.I got stuck as Aira.
A name I had scribbled onto a nameless peasant girl in a background village, just to add realism to the world I had built. She didn't have a story arc. She didn't have development. She didn't even have a face in my notes. Just "Aira – farmer's daughter (used for wheat trade example, chapter 7)."
That was it.And now I was her.
This village wasn't even on the map. It was a vague location I had written into my lore to explain where wheat came from before it reached the cities. That's all it was. A setting. A stage.
And now it was my prison.
I had created this world. Every kingdom. Every noble house. Every political alliance and backstab. Every magical system, with rules and flaws and loopholes so clever I once bragged about them on forums. And somehow, out of all the magnificent things I had made…
I ended up in the most miserable, forgotten, irrelevant corner of it.
I stood that evening, watching the sun sink low behind the hills, the sky painted orange and red like the whole world was on fire.
My hands were shaking. My arms heavy. My mouth dry. And behind me, I heard Mira calling us in for dinner—probably boiled roots again.
Joren was at my side, tugging on my shirt."Did you know birds talk to each other, Aira? I think they're saying your name."
I didn't respond. I didn't even look at him. I just kept staring at the horizon, my eyes unfocused.
And in that moment, I realized something I had been avoiding since I first opened my eyes in this cursed body.
This wasn't a dream.This wasn't a mistake.This was real.
I was Aira.A nameless peasant in a world I thought I understood.And now?
Now I was learning just how cruel my own imagination could be.
I used to think Seraphis was beautiful.
Back when it was just a map on my wall and a file on my laptop, it seemed enchanting—this sprawling fantasy world with high castles and enchanted forests, legendary heroes and ancient bloodlines. I built it piece by piece, stitching together kingdoms from the ashes of fallen empires, populating it with noble houses and forgotten gods. And when I wanted a "touch of realism," I modeled the common folk after the 15th and 16th centuries of Europe. Thought it gave the world more depth. More weight.
I was an idiot.
It turns out, the peasant life I designed? It wasn't charming. It wasn't humble.It was hell.
Every morning, I wake up before the sun even touches the sky. Not to the sound of birdsong or a magical bell, but to my mother's tired voice snapping at us to get up. The floor beneath me is cold, packed dirt, and I'm already shivering by the time I pull on the same tattered dress I've worn for five days straight. It smells. I smell. We all smell. And I've stopped caring, because there's no other option.
My first job is to fetch water from the river.The river is a twenty-minute walk downhill. That means forty minutes round-trip, with a wooden bucket that feels like it was carved by a sadist and filled with bricks. My arms scream before I'm even halfway back. The handle digs into my raw palms until I think I'm going to bleed. My bare feet squish through mud, cold and sharp, every pebble and thorn a little betrayal from the ground itself.
We don't even have a well. Not a single one in this wretched village.
And if I drop the bucket? Spill it?Too bad. Back I go. No one helps. No one says thank you.
Then comes the real work.
Farm labor sounds rustic and picturesque when you're writing it from a coffee shop. Pulling weeds under the sun, feeding animals, planting seeds, all that poetic crap.
Let me tell you the truth: it's endless, filthy torture.
The weeds don't just "pull out" easily—they fight back. They tear at your fingers, leave you covered in cuts and mud. The sun isn't warm—it burns. And the animals? Gods, the animals. We have two goats and five chickens, and I hate every one of them. The goats like to kick. The chickens bite. Their pens are full of manure, and guess who gets to clean it with her bare hands? That's right. Me. No gloves. No shovel. Just a rag wrapped around my palm like it makes any difference.
My back hurts constantly. My fingers are cracked and bleeding. My knees are scabbed from kneeling in gravel and straw. I don't even remember what it feels like to not ache somewhere.
And food?Don't get me started on food.
We eat the same damn thing every day.Stale bread that's so hard I could use it to bludgeon someone. Soup that's mostly water with a few root vegetables floating in it like bloated corpses. Sometimes, on special occasions, we get a strip of salted meat so tough I chew it for five minutes and still end up swallowing it whole.
There's no sugar. No salt. No spices.Nothing tastes like anything.
Once, I found a sprig of mint growing by the side of the house. I was so excited I cried.I used it to flavor the soup. Mira called it a "waste." She scolded me for using something "frivolous." I wanted to scream.
Bathing? Hah. What a joke.
There's no tub. No soap, unless you count the foul-smelling lard soap Mira makes twice a year that smells like death and burns your skin. Water is too precious to waste, so I bathe with a damp cloth when I can. I try to scrub away the sweat and dirt, but it never works. I stink. My hair is greasy and tangled. My skin is always itchy.
And even if, by some miracle, I find time to clean myself, I sleep in the same cramped corner of the house with seven other children who reek just as bad—sometimes worse.
There's no room of my own. No space. No peace. Just a single pile of hay, shared with three squirming siblings who talk in their sleep and fart constantly. The air is thick—moist with sweat, sour breath, and the stench of unwashed clothes. If one of the twins wets the bed—and they always do—I have to sleep in the wet spot, or on the dirt floor. I'm not even the youngest. I don't get priority.
Privacy? That concept doesn't exist here.Want to cry? Better do it while chopping turnips so no one notices.Want to sit down and breathe? Too bad—there's always something else to do.
And the worst part?
No one cares.
Not the villagers. Not the family. Not the world.This isn't some tragic setup where people pity me or a mentor figure swoops in to say I have great potential. I'm just one of many. Just another tired girl in a village of tired people doing tired work.
And I made this world.
I did this.
In my old life, I'd written long, indulgent scenes about peasant markets with colorful fruit stalls and bakers shouting cheerfully. I'd written of "simple village life" as if it were a peaceful retreat from the troubles of the nobility.
But here? There's no peace.Only filth. Cold. Hunger. Pain.
And it never ends.
I'm living in a cage of my own creation, surrounded by the very things I once thought added "depth" to my fantasy setting.
Congratulations, Akira Tsukihara. You've outdone yourself.You created a living nightmare and forgot to write an escape route.
I'm not the author anymore.I'm the victim.
And no one is coming to save me.
As if being a starving, overworked peasant in a dirt-stained village wasn't hell enough… I was also a girl.
And in this world, that meant I was worth even less.
Less than a man.Less than livestock, sometimes.Certainly less than the woman I had once been.
In Seraphis—my Seraphis—women weren't people. Not really. They were bodies. Assets. Wombs with legs. Bargaining chips to be married off like livestock or breeding stock to produce the next generation of equally miserable children. I knew that when I wrote it. I designed it that way—for realism. For texture. For drama.
But now? Now I had to live in it.
And gods help me, I was suffocating.
It started with the way Mira looked at me. Not just with the exhaustion of a mother who had too many mouths to feed—but with calculation. Planning. Readiness. Like I was already a resource she could trade in.
She'd already begun talking about marriage.
Not love. Not affection.Marriage.
"It's better to find someone early," she said one night as we scrubbed pots with sand and ash. "A man who can keep you fed. Someone decent enough, if we're lucky."
I said nothing. I just kept scrubbing, my fingernails already blackened, my hands raw. But inside, my stomach twisted into knots.
I was thirteen.
In my old world, I'd barely started high school at thirteen. I was still fighting acne and writing angsty stories about unrequited love in spiral-bound notebooks. But here? Thirteen meant I was on the verge of being "marriageable."
I'd heard whispers. Talk in the village. Girls married off at twelve. Eleven, even. Some to boys just a few years older, but many to men well into their twenties. Thirties. Older. Men with rough hands and weather-worn faces, looking for someone young enough to bear children without dying in childbirth. That was the only qualification they cared about.
The thought made my skin crawl. I wanted to vomit. To scream. To run.
But there was nowhere to go.
I had no rights. None.
I couldn't own land. I couldn't inherit anything. I couldn't work outside the home unless it was under a man's supervision. I wasn't allowed to learn to read or write. Not that Mira knew that I already could—though sometimes I caught her looking at me strangely when I asked too many questions or spoke too clearly.
"Don't act too clever," she'd mutter. "People don't like clever girls."
That warning rang in my ears constantly. Because here, in this world I had made, knowledge was dangerous. An educated woman was considered unnatural. Suspicious. A threat.
The women in this village? Most of them couldn't even sign their names. They left X's on contracts they didn't understand and handed over their futures with quiet resignation. If they ever dared to ask questions, they were mocked. Corrected. Silenced.
And then… there was the Church.
Oh, how I loathed them.
The priests stood tall in their spotless robes, with their silver crosses and their cold smiles, preaching obedience from cracked pulpits while their eyes wandered far too low for comfort. Their sermons were always the same: a woman's virtue was her obedience. Her silence. Her womb.
"Women were made to serve," they said. "To submit to their husbands and fathers. To nurture the family and bear the burden of sin."
If a girl stepped out of line? If she spoke too loudly? Refused a marriage? Questioned the Church?
Witch.
That word was a death sentence.
There were stories—real ones, not just legends. Stories of women who'd spoken too boldly and were dragged from their homes, accused of cavorting with demons or poisoning livestock. Their families couldn't stop it. No one could. The village would gather, stones would be thrown, and eventually, someone would light the pyre.
Burned.Alive.For daring to think.
The "lucky" ones were sent to the convents. But even that was a prison. Cold stone walls, silence, fasting, prayer. A slow death in the name of purity.
This wasn't fantasy anymore.This was a nightmare.And I had built it.
When I crafted Seraphis, I'd thought this patriarchal structure would make the female protagonist's rise more satisfying. I wanted her to triumph against the odds. To defy the system and inspire revolution. I wanted catharsis. Meaning. Drama.
But there is no catharsis when you're at the bottom.No strength to rise when every day drains a little more of your spirit.No fire to spark a revolution when you're too exhausted to think straight.
I wasn't the heroine of this story.I was a pawn on a broken board.
And the world I had written?It hated me.
You think you know what horror is until you watch a child convulsing with fever while rats scurry around the edges of the house and there's nothing you can do but wait for them to die.
This world—my world, Seraphis—was cruel in a way I had never truly understood. In my books, I described it as "gritty" or "realistic," proud of the way I painted tragedy into the margins for dramatic flavor. But now that I was living it? Now that I had a name, a face, a body that could suffer?
It wasn't "gritty."It was hell.
Let's start with disease.
It was everywhere. In the water, in the air, in the straw we slept on and the animals we kept. You couldn't go a day without hearing that someone had taken ill. A fever. A cough. A swollen wound. It didn't take much. One wrong cut, one infected scratch, and it could be the end.
We had no doctors. Not really.
No clean hospitals. No sterile tools. No understanding of germs.
The closest thing we had were herbalists—half-blind old women who boiled bark and moss in greasy pots, or priests who smeared ashes on the forehead and called it divine healing. Sometimes they helped. Sometimes they killed you faster.
I once watched a man get his leg amputated by a village butcher. His shinbone had turned black from rot. They tied a leather strap around his thigh and used a rusted cleaver while two other men held him down. He screamed until his throat bled. Then he died from the shock. The flies didn't even wait for him to go cold.
That was medicine in Seraphis.
That was my medicine.
And then there was the war.
The Kingdom of Seraphis was always at war. With its neighbors, with rebels, with itself. I wrote it that way—"constant conflict adds stakes." I thought it would heighten the tension, deepen the world.
What it did was turn every village into a battlefield.
Soldiers passed through like locusts, armored and armed, smelling of blood and horse sweat. They didn't ask permission. They didn't need to. They took what they wanted—food, animals, clothes. Sometimes even people.
Especially women.
We were property to them. Entertainment. Distraction.
Once, a group of soldiers came through on their way to the southern front. They laughed, drank, spit in the well, and tried to drag two village girls off into the woods. One of them bit a soldier's hand. He broke her jaw and threw her down like garbage.
No one stopped him. No one could.
If a family protested, they'd be called traitors. Hanged, or worse.
That's what "justice" looked like.
Punishment was everywhere—but never for the right people.
Steal a loaf of bread? Lose a hand.Lie to the wrong person? They'd cut out your tongue.Talk back to the priest? That could be branded heresy—and heresy meant death.
Real death. Not quick, not painless. Theatrical.
Public executions were entertainment. People brought their children to watch. There were vendors selling boiled roots and fermented cider while a man's intestines were slowly pulled from his body by a crank. People cheered. They laughed. They cheered when a thief's fingers were crushed with a mallet, one by one, like they were snapping bones in a bird's wing.
I saw a girl, maybe fifteen, accused of stealing a ring from her mistress. They stripped her, tied her to a post, and beat her until her back looked like raw meat. Then they paraded her through the village with a sign that read "Whore and Thief."
I recognized her.
She'd given me a piece of bread once when I was starving.
I wanted to scream. But I didn't. I just watched with everyone else. Because if you looked away, or cried too loudly, they might think you had something to hide.
And through it all, standing tall in their gilded robes, were the priests.
The holy men. The keepers of "divine will."
I had loved writing about the Church of Seraphis. Its ornate cathedrals. Its secret power. Its dark rituals beneath the surface. I thought it added mystique. Gravitas.
In practice? It was just corruption. Decay. Hypocrisy dressed in silk.
The clergy lived in luxury. They drank wine from silver goblets and feasted on lamb and honey while peasants like me gnawed on bone and hoped for rain. They sold indulgences like market wares—pay a silver coin, and your sins were erased. Couldn't afford it? Sorry. Burn in hell.
They taught obedience. Silence. Submission.
Especially for women.
"God made man in His image," they preached. "And woman to serve him."
They said suffering was holy. That our pain made us pure. That we should be grateful for our hunger, our wounds, our grief—because they brought us closer to the divine.
I wanted to take their scrolls and shove them down their sanctimonious throats.
Because when my little sister Layna caught a fever and began coughing up blood, the priest gave us a candle and a jar of holy water and told us to pray harder.
She died three nights later.
And he never even came to bury her.
This was the world I built.
This was the world I chose.
And now I was trapped in it. With no magic. No miracle. No escape.
Just the endless march of misery I once thought made for "authentic storytelling."
Funny, isn't it?
When you strip away the fantasy, all that's left is pain.
There was no waking up from this.
No white light. No second reincarnation. No magical message from the heavens explaining the rules of the game.
I was just… here. In a world I had built from ink and dreams, trapped inside the body of a girl I had never even given a name until I became her.
Aira.
That was me now. A name as plain and forgettable as the life it belonged to.
This wasn't a fantasy anymore. It wasn't fiction. It wasn't a story with a clever twist or a satisfying arc. This was my reality.
And it was a nightmare.
I had designed Seraphis to be unforgiving. Gritty. Harsh.
But in my stories, all that cruelty existed to make the protagonist shine. To highlight their strength, their defiance, their growth.
Now I saw the truth.
There was no shining here. Only dirt and blood and hunger. Only pain.
And I wasn't the protagonist.
There was no mysterious grimoire in my attic. No ancient artifact hidden beneath the floorboards. No old mentor whispering, "You're the chosen one."
There was nothing. Not a single hint of plot armor. Not even a cliché to cling to.
If this was a story, I wasn't the heroine.
I was the background noise. The scenery. The body count.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the outlines of the world I once proudly built.
I remembered the noble courts of Virellen, where silk flowed like water and scandals were traded like currency. I remembered the silver halls of Aerith Academy, where magic could bend the laws of reality and every student held a destiny.
But those places felt like distant planets now. Unreachable stars. Glittering illusions behind a curtain of filth and shit and aching muscles.
Here, in this rotting village, I was just a commoner girl with callused hands and an empty belly. A girl who woke up every morning before the sun and dragged her feet through frozen mud to haul buckets of water for people who didn't even see her as a person.
And no one—no one—was coming to save me.
There was no portal. No cheat skill. No prince in disguise.
There was only me.
Sometimes, at night, I would stare at the rafters above our straw-stuffed sleeping nook and wonder how long I could keep this up.
How long could a soul survive on nothing but anger and regret?
How many more days could I live like this before I just… gave up?
But even in my lowest moments—even when the pain in my body felt deeper than the bones—I couldn't stop thinking one thing:
This was my fault.
All of it. Every sickness, every injustice, every drop of misery—I had written it. I had put it into the world for the sake of "drama," for the thrill of building a setting that felt "real."
I thought I was clever.
Now I was just cursed.
And yet… something inside me refused to die.
It wasn't hope. I had none of that.
It wasn't courage. I wasn't brave—I was scared every day.
But it was something darker. Sharper.
Spite.
I was angry.
Angry at the gods. Angry at the world. Angry at myself.
I hated Seraphis. I hated its systems. I hated every page I had written that led to this.
But most of all—I hated being powerless.
So if there was a way out, I would find it.
If there was knowledge, I would steal it.
If there was power, I would take it—no matter what it cost me.
I had created this nightmare, yes.
But I would find a way to rewrite it.
To rip out its spine and craft a new story from its bones.
Even if I had to do it alone.
Even if I had to become something monstrous.
But not yet.
For now, all I could do was endure.
Another day. Another bucket of water. Another sleepless night.
I would wait. Watch. Learn. Survive.
And when the time came—when the first crack appeared in this cursed world—
I would be ready.
Because I may not be the heroine.
But I would make damn sure I wasn't just another victim.
Not anymore.