The wind cut like a knife on winter nights, and at the Santa Clara orphanage, the stone walls barely held back the cold that seeped through the cracks. Emilia was born on one of those nights, left at the orphanage’s doorstep wrapped in a tattered blanket, her faint cry barely audible beneath the storm. No one knew who left her there, and no one asked. In a place like Santa Clara, where children arrived like shadows and grew up amidst hunger and empty promises, origin stories were a luxury no one could afford.

  Life at the orphanage wasn’t cruel, but it wasn’t kind either. The nuns, with their weary faces and cracked hands, did what they could with the meager resources they had. Some days, the soup was little more than water with a faint trace of potato, and the blankets were so thin that Emilia and the other children slept huddled together to share warmth. But there were also moments of laughter, makeshift games with sticks and stones, and whispered stories under the sheets when the nuns weren’t watching. Emilia, with her big eyes and perpetually messy brown hair, was a quiet but clever girl, always finding ways to dodge chores so she could lie under a tree and daydream.

  “Emilia, you were born with the sin of laziness,” Sister Marta would tease, pinching her cheek when she caught her idling. The other nuns laughed, and Emilia blushed, but deep down, she liked the idea. Being lazy sounded like a life of freedom, of not having to chase chickens to steal an egg or scrub floors until her arms ached. But childhood doesn’t last forever, and at Santa Clara, it lasted even less.

  When Emilia turned fourteen, the world changed. The orphanage was on the brink of collapse: donations had dried up, and debts piled up like dust in the corners. The nuns, exhausted, couldn’t sustain it alone. Emilia, no longer a child, made a decision. She wouldn’t let the only home she’d ever known crumble. She began to work. First, scrubbing floors in the homes of wealthy families. Then, sewing in a workshop where the air reeked of sweat and desperation. Later, hauling crates in a market at dawn. She took any job, no matter how grueling, and every coin she earned went to the orphanage.

  The years passed in a blur. Emilia, now twenty-five, barely recognized her own reflection. Her hands, once soft, were rough and calloused. Her eyes, which had once sparkled with childish dreams, were now sunken with exhaustion. She worked until the sun rose and set again, sometimes sleeping no more than a couple of hours in a corner of the workshop or on the orphanage floor. She wanted to rest. She wanted to be the girl who hid under a tree, imagining castles and adventures. But she couldn’t. The orphanage depended on her, on the other adults who had grown up there, and on the few nuns who remained. Every new child who arrived, with sunken cheeks and frightened eyes, was a reminder of why she couldn’t stop.

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

  Still, her efforts bore fruit. Little by little, the orphanage began to stabilize. An unexpected donation, a new employer who paid well, a decent harvest from the small garden Emilia had helped cultivate. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. For the first time in years, Emilia felt she could breathe. And then, a miracle came: two days off. Two whole days for herself, free of work, responsibilities, and the weight of the world on her shoulders. The nuns insisted, practically forced her to take the break. “Go, Emilia,” Sister Marta said with a tired but warm smile. “Rest. You’ve earned it.”

  That night, Emilia lay in a bed that, for the first time in a long while, she didn’t share with anyone. She closed her eyes, imagining what it would be like to wake up without rushing, without a clock screaming at her to run. She dreamed of staying in bed all day, of reading a book that wasn’t a ledger, of being, even if just for a moment, the lazy girl she’d always wanted to be.

  But Emilia didn’t wake up.

  Exhaustion, silent and treacherous, had claimed her body. Her heart, which had beaten so fiercely for so long, simply stopped. She died quietly, in the darkness, with a faint smile on her lips.

  When she opened her eyes again, she wasn’t in the orphanage. She wasn’t in her world. The room around her was an impossible dream: red velvet curtains, a bed so large it could have held all the children of Santa Clara, and a full-length mirror with a golden frame reflecting a stranger. A girl with pale skin, golden blonde hair, and green eyes that gleamed with an arrogance Emilia didn’t recognize. It wasn’t her body. It wasn’t her life.

  Emilia had awakened in the body of Lady Celeste de Varnholt, one of the seven daughters of a baron. A spoiled, cruel, and arrogant girl, known for treating servants as if they were less than the dirt beneath her shoes. A villainess in a world Emilia didn’t understand, a world of magic, monsters, and dungeons that sprawled like veins beneath the earth. A cruel world, where strength was everything and weakness was a death sentence.