Chapter 1
The New Beginning
When Laurine Samaniego opened her eyes, the silence struck first.It wasn't the soft quiet of peace — it was the heavy, sterile kind. The kind that presses against your ribs, reminding you that you're breathing when you shouldn't be.
Light spilled across marble floors, filtered through drapes embroidered with silver thread. The fabric moved faintly with the wind, whispering secrets through the room, a sound too delicate to belong to any hospital, too serene to belong to a crash site.
She blinked once. Twice.
The ceiling above her shimmered faintly, painted with lilies and celestial patterns.
This isn't the plane.This isn't the wreckage.
Her palms pressed against the mattress, not metal, not twisted debris, but silk sheets cool to the touch. She looked down. Her hands were wrong. Too pale, too soft. No calluses, no faint bruises from IV lines. The hands of someone who'd never held a scalpel, never scrubbed for surgery, never burned from antiseptic.
The realization slid in slowly, like a scalpel through cloth.
She wasn't dead.She wasn't Laurine Samaniego, at least, not entirely.
The scent of roses lingered in the air, mixed with lavender and parchment. A strange calm enveloped her body, the calm that only shock could mimic.
Then the door burst open.
"Princess Amethyst! You're awake!"
The words cut through the stillness.A young maid rushed inside, skirts brushing the marble, eyes wide and wet. Her voice trembled between disbelief and joy."By the heavens, Your Highness! You've been unconscious for days! I thought— I thought you wouldn't wake!"
Laurine's mind froze around the first word. Princess.
"What did you just call me?" Her voice sounded wrong
Soft, high, foreign.
The maid stopped mid-step. "Y-your Highness… it's me. Ana. Your maid. You— you fell into the lake that night, and—"Her voice broke. "Everyone thought you tried to take your own life."
Attempted suicide.
The term landed like cold water against Laurine's skin.Her doctor's brain kicked in reflexively:Symptoms: Unexplained coma. Possible drowning trauma. Amnesia. Emotional distress.Diagnosis: Inconsistent with voluntary self-harm.Conclusion: The patient didn't jump. She was pushed.
Laurine blinked, her pulse steadying with grim clarity.No, not Laurine. Not anymore.
She was in the body of Princess Amethyst Celestria Rosaire IV, the forgotten daughter of the Rosaire Empire.
She remembered that name. From a book she once read — The Song of the Silver Crown.
A story she had devoured on sleepless nights after hospital shifts, a tale of nobility and ruin. The princess with violet eyes, frail and unloved.
The one who was executed during the rebellion.
Amethyst wasn't supposed to die early.
Wasn't supposed to die, being pushed into a lake under the moonlight. Declared dead before dawn.
So why was Laurine breathing now?
Why did this body still live?
She swallowed, forcing the words out carefully. "Ana, I… don't remember much."
Ana's face crumpled, tears welling anew. "Oh, Your Highness— it wasn't your fault! If only I had stayed by your side, you wouldn't have—"She couldn't finish. Her voice dissolved into quiet sobs.
Laurine reached out, tentative, foreign hands comforting a stranger's grief. "It's all right," she said gently. "You did nothing wrong."
But the words trembled as she said them, because she didn't know if she was lying.
Behind her eyelids, a flash:Moonlight breaking over a dark lake. The echo of a scream. Cold hands are dragging her under.Then everything went black.
__________________
When she opened her eyes again, the room had changed. The sunlight had bled to gold, shadows stretching long across the marble. A tray of untouched food sat near the door, fragrant with honey and warm bread.
Laurine sat up slowly. Her body responded with unfamiliar grace.The dizziness lingered, but her mind was clearing — enough to observe, to analyze.
All right, Laurine. You've been isekai'd — into a body that was supposed to die. In a world that runs on faith and deceit. You're not the author's victim anymore.
Her gaze moved around the room — gilded canopy, violet curtains, carved furniture. Luxurious, yes. But sterile.A cage pretending to be a sanctuary.
She approached the desk by the window. The drawers were neatly arranged, the ink pot untouched. There, beside a sealed letter, lay a small violet journal.
The handwriting was delicate, neat — Amethyst's.
Three months before the official announcement of my engagement with the Duke, my eighteenth birthday.I fear he will come. They say he is ruthless. I feel his shadow in my dreams. Father does not see me. Mother is gone. I am alone.
Laurine's throat tightened.She traced the ink with her finger, her medical mind briefly silenced by empathy.This girl, this body she now inhabited, had been terrified, observant, isolated.Not naïve. Just unseen.
The next entries spoke of gossip, minor nobles, petty rivalries, and notes disguised as diary pages.Then, the last line before the ink cut off:
I heard whispers near the Queen's Palace tonight… I should not go, and yet—
Laurine closed the journal.That was the night of the lake.
You were investigating something, she thought. And they silenced you for it.
She exhaled, slowly.The pattern was too familiar, the abuse of power hidden behind ceremony, the ignorance of those sworn to protect. It was a pathology.And she'd seen this disease before, only now, it wore crowns instead of scrubs.
A soft knock at the door. Ana entered again, carrying folded clothes and a glass vial of deep blue liquid."Your Highness," she said gently, "the palace physician left your tonic. For your heart."
Laurine's eyes narrowed.The liquid shimmered darkly in the light, too viscous. Too familiar.
Composition: high concentration extract, possibly botanical.
Coloration: cobalt blue.
Differential diagnosis: sedative compound, mild paralytic, long-term toxicity — pattern consistent with slow poison.
Suspect: the physician. Or the one who gives the orders.
She smiled faintly. "Later, perhaps. My stomach isn't ready."
Ana hesitated. "Please, Your Highness. The Queen insisted—"
"Later," Laurine repeated, firmer. The maid froze, then curtsied obediently.
As Ana turned to leave, Laurine's gaze softened. "Tell me, Ana… what do you know of the Duke of Valleria?"
The maid's expression changed instantly, fear flickering beneath politeness.
"Lord Lucien Devereux Valleria?" she whispered.
"They say he's unlike anyone at court. Cold as winter. Brilliant as steel. He fought the border wars when he was barely grown, nineteenth perhaps... and returned with victory. The King trusts him. The nobles envy him. But the rest of us…"She lowered her voice. "We fear him."
Lucien.
Laurine's memory caught the name like a pulse.In the story, he was the crown's blade — and its executioner. The man who would ignite rebellion, not for ambition, but for justice.And this fragile princess, the one whose body she now wore, had been one of his victims. Killed during the execution of the royals.
"How old is he?" she asked softly.
"Twenty-five, I think. His father, the late Duke Aldric, was executed for questioning the King's decrees. Lord Lucien has served the crown since then, perhaps out of loyalty… or vengeance."
Vengeance, Laurine thought.
That was the word the novel never said aloud — but it was written in every action of his.
"And he's my fiancé?"
Ana nodded hesitantly. "Yes, Your Highness. The engagement was decreed six months ago. Your eighteenth birthday banquet will make it official, three months from now."
Three months.Three months before the banquet.Three months before the rebellion begins.
Laurine's pulse steadied.Timeline established.Objective: survive past the event horizon.
She leaned back, watching the play of sunlight on the curtains. "And the unrest, Ana? What do you hear in the halls?"
Ana paled. "You shouldn't speak of it, Your Highness. The walls have ears."
"Then whisper."
The maid hesitated, then obeyed. "They say the people are starving. Taxes rise, and the nobles feast. The King turns his eyes away. Some whisper of revolt… and others say the Duke is watching, waiting."
Exactly as she remembered.The empire was sick, and Lucien was the surgeon preparing to cut.
"Thank you, Ana," Laurine murmured. "That's all for now."
When the maid left, the room fell silent again — save for the faint rattle of the vial she had left behind.
Laurine stared at it on the table. The surface shimmered with a holy sigil. The Queen's mark.
Treatment masquerading as devotion, she thought. How poetic.
Her fingers brushed the vial once before pushing it aside.
Her violet reflection glimmered faintly in the glass — eyes that were never meant to exist.
The child of a heretic queen. The patient of a poisonous one.
And somewhere, beyond the palace walls, a rebellion was already beginning to breathe.
When Ana left, the room returned to silence. Only the faint hum of evening insects and the flutter of the violet curtains broke it. The vial still sat on the bedside table, glowing faintly under the light.
The Queen's "medicine."
Laurine stared at it for a long time.
In her old life, poison meant one of two things: a homicide or a suicide.Here, it meant faith.
The bottle was sealed with the insignia of the Church of the Radiant Sun — a gold sigil pressed into wax. She had seen that same crest burned into medical ledgers back in the hospital wing of her memories: a mark of divine approval that kept physicians loyal to the throne.
But she knew better. In science, purity meant proof. In this world, purity meant obedience.
Symptoms: chronic fatigue, pallor, loss of appetite, arrhythmia.Differential diagnosis: chronic toxicity, prolonged exposure to sedative compounds.Prognosis: fatal, in three to six months.
Three months — the same time until the banquet.
Her hands clenched softly at her sides. The body's memory carried weakness, but her mind was sharp, alive, adapting faster than fear could catch her.
The Queen doesn't heal her. She preserves her weakness. Keeps her docile.
Laurine placed the vial back on the table and stepped toward the window. Below her, the palace gardens stretched like a painting — silver fountains, marble statues, and beyond them, the faint shimmer of the Lake of Reflection, half-covered in mist.
That was where Amethyst had died — or rather, where she had ended.And Laurine had begun.
She pressed a hand to the glass. The air was colder now, carrying a whisper from the water's edge. It smelled of lilies — her mother's scent, she realized, though she didn't know how she knew that.
Lady Celestine Lysandra Rosaire. The name rose like a memory not her own.The Moon of Rosaire. The healer who had fallen from grace.
Laurine had read about her once, in a passing footnote of the novel — a single line:
The late Queen Celestine, accused of heresy, perished in illness.
But standing here, in this room that had once belonged to her, Laurine felt the lie behind the words.
Celestine Valemont, the scholar-queen who had defied the Church's monopoly on medicine, had been condemned for her compassion. Her research in healing arts had been branded heretical. The Queen Isadora had ensured the narrative that "divine will" had punished arrogance.
And her child — this frail princess — had inherited her mother's curse.
Laurine's reflection in the glass caught the last of the sunlight.Violet eyes.Not a mark of divinity, but of heresy.
Her fingers brushed the windowpane. "So that's why they want you gone," she murmured. "You were never weak, were you? Just too much like your mother."
When darkness deepened, she began to search. Not frantically — methodically, like examining a patient's vitals.
She started with the wardrobe, then the dresser, tracing her fingers along seams, tapping for hollow spaces. The palace was old, its bones used to hiding secrets.
At the corner of the bedframe, she heard it: a faint, uneven sound. One plank felt looser than the rest. She pried it free with careful pressure — and found a small hollow space beneath.
Inside lay a folded parchment and an ornate silver dagger, its edge dulled from time but still sharp enough to gleam under the candlelight.
The parchment was creased, the handwriting faint but unmistakable — Amethyst's.
If you ever remember, hide this. They are watching.
The letters were smudged, as though written in haste. The ink trailed off, the last stroke blurred by water — maybe the lake's.
Laurine held the note for a long time. The past and present blurred for a heartbeat, and she wasn't sure whose hands were trembling — Amethyst's or hers.
Symptoms: recurrent visual flashbacks, emotional dissonance, and identity conflict.Diagnosis: soul fusion, not replacement.Prognosis: unstable, but adaptive.
She smiled faintly at her own absurdity. Even now, she was charting her condition.
A doctor dissecting her own reincarnation.
But it helped. Structure meant control.And control was survival.
She placed the dagger back in its sheath and turned toward the desk. The candle flickered, its light dancing across the parchment.
Laurine sat and pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her.Her handwriting was steadier than she expected — familiar, precise. She began to write.
Not a diary. Not like Amethyst's frightened notes. This was a medical file.
Subject: Princess Amethyst Celestria Rosaire IVCondition: Suspected poisoning by prolonged exposure to Lunara root (sacred compound).Vector: Palace physician, under royal and clerical directive.Accomplices: House Blestaire. Queen Isadora.Timeline: Three months before formal engagement banquet.Secondary Risk: Political instability. Rebellion in progress.Objective: Prevent death, identify toxin source, alter historical trajectory.
She paused, tapping the quill against the parchment.
Treatment plan:
Cease exposure — refuse the Queen's vials, feign compliance.
Gather allies — Ana, Sir Rion, possibly the Duke (observe before trust).
Reconstruct the cause of the rebellion.
Survive the banquet.
The ink bled slightly into the paper as she added the final line:
If the disease is corruption, then reform is the cure.
She leaned back, exhaling. Outside, the last traces of sunset bled into violet — the same hue as her eyes.
The irony wasn't lost on her.The King had named her Amethyst to symbolize purity, resistance to intoxication.And yet, poison had been in her veins since birth.
The Queen thought she had created a frail pawn.The Church believed they had silenced a heretic's line.
But neither knew what had returned to this body.
Not a meek princess.Not a heretic's child.But a doctor — and a scientist — who had built life from dying cells and refused to surrender even to death itself.
Laurine stood, the candlelight haloing her silhouette. The capital shimmered below her — vast, gilded, and rotting.
"Fine," she whispered. "If this empire is my patient, I'll treat it."
Her reflection in the window looked back — violet eyes sharp with a light that didn't belong to this world.
And beneath her breath, she made the promise that would bind both souls — the doctor and the princess — together.
"I am Laurine Samaniego.I am Amethyst Celestria Rosaire.And I do not die here."