The rain in the twenty-first century was never as poetic as the novels made it seem. It was cold, gray, and smelled of exhaust.
For the woman standing on the curb, life had been a series of careful, quiet disappointments.
Her greatest regret wasn't a grand tragedy, but the lack of one. She had lived thirty years with the precision of a ticking clock, never taking a risk, never raising her voice.
As the city bus hydroplaned across the intersection, headlights blooming like twin predatory moons, she realized with a sickening jolt that she had never once been truly happy.
The impact was a dull, heavy thud.
Then, the world simply ceased to exist.
[CRITICAL ERROR: SOUL #8299 HAS BYPASSED THE TERMINAL.]
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: SEARCHING FOR PROXIMITY VESSEL...]
[MATCH FOUND: GENEVIEVE MONTGOMERY. STATUS: EXPIRED.]
[FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION COMMENCING.]
The sensation was violent. It felt as though her soul were being threaded through a needle, pulled across centuries and slammed into a container that was rigid, cold, and heavy with the scent of death.
"Hah...!"
A gasp ripped through a throat that felt like it had been filled with dry sand.
Her eyes snapped open, but the world was a blur of shadows and flickering orange light.
This wasn't the asphalt.
This definitely wasn't rain.
She was lying on a monument of silk and heavy velvet, a dark canopy looming over her like the roof of a coffin.
She tried to move, but her limbs felt like leaden weights. The air was thick with the cloying scent of lavender and stale candle wax.
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at her chest. "Is this a dream? Am I in a coma?"
Then came the flood.
It wasn't a memory; it was a hostile takeover.
Images that weren't hers exploded behind her eyelids: the feeling of a heavy, brocade gown weighing down her shoulders; the sound of a King's hearty laughter as he called the person "the jewel of the court" the stinging salt of tears shed in secret as she watched noblewomen whisper behind their lace fans.
Genevieve.
The name echoed in her mind, carrying with it a lifetime of memories she hadn't lived.
She saw herself, the original Genevieve, clutching her chest in this very bed at midnight, her heart failing under the sheer pressure of a treasonous frame-up she couldn't outrun.
She felt the woman's final, lonely breath leave her body just seconds before what she heard in the abyss shoved a new soul into the vacuum.
"I... I'm still... breathing?" she rasped.
Her voice was different, a fragile, aristocratic soprano that made her skin crawl. She dragged herself to the edge of the bed, her feet hitting cold, polished floorboards. She staggered toward a tall, silver-framed mirror in the corner of the room.
The woman staring back was a stranger.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, with skin like cream and dark hair falling in disheveled waves over her shoulders.
But her eyes were wide with a modern, panicked intelligence that didn't belong to the eighteenth century.
"Genevieve Tatiana Montgomery. The third." she whispered, her fingers trembling as they traced the jawline of the face in the glass.
She remembered now.
The Montgomerys were the King's favorites, the only family he truly trusted in a court full of vipers.
And because of that favor, every noble in the country wanted them dead.
The original Genevieve had been killed by the weight of their jealousy, her heart stopping from the sheer terror of the traps being set for her on her father's behalf.
She feared death and died because of it.
It was kind of ironic.
She slumped against the cold glass, her mind reeling. The regret of her past life, the life she had wasted being "safe" flared up.
Yes, she would have killed for a do-over but this was too much.
The cool glass of the mirror pressed against her forehead, a grounding reality against the storm of foreign memories.
She closed her eyes, trying to reconcile the thirty-year-old woman who had died in the rain with the twenty-two-year-old girl whose heart had given out from sheer, unadulterated terror.
I lived thirty years being a shadow, she thought, her grip tightening on the mahogany frame of the mirror.
I was careful.
I was quiet.
And I died for nothing. This girl was twenty-two, her father's most precious jewel and the king's favorite, and she died because she was too afraid to fight back.
The irony was a bitter pill.
The original Genevieve had been a child in a woman's body, easily broken by the whispers of the court.
But the soul currently occupying her skin was different.
She was a grown woman who had seen the harshness of a modern world. She wouldn't throw a tantrum; she wouldn't weep until her heart stopped.
If this was her "do-over," she would make it count. She would grow this fragile, porcelain vessel into an outstanding woman—one who didn't just survive the vipers, but crushed them.
Suddenly, the "static" in her mind spiked. It wasn't ringing anymore; it was a cacophony of jubilant thoughts drifting from the hallway outside.
'She's finally cold. I can finally stop pretending to serve that spoiled brat.'
'The Montgomery fall begins tonight. Once the King sees the "evidence" in her desk, not even his love can save her father.'
'I hope they let me keep her sapphire earrings after the execution...'
Genevieve's eyes snapped open.
The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, searing clarity.
Every mind she touched was filled with the same celebratory malice.
This wasn't just a household; it was a tomb filled with scavengers.
"Everyone in this manor is an enemy." she realized, a chilling smile touching her new lips. "Good. I don't have to feel guilty about what comes next."
The heavy oak door groaned on its hinges.
A maid, Sarah—Genevieve remembered her now, the girl who had "accidentally" spilled tea on her favorite gown just to watch her cry..slipped into the room.
She was wearing a mask of faux-sorrow, a handkerchief pressed to her dry eyes.
"Oh, my poor Lady... to think you passed so young..." Sarah began, her voice a practiced wail.
But then, she looked at the bed.
It was empty.
Her gaze shifted to the mirror, where the "corpse" was standing.
Genevieve was upright, her posture regal, her dark hair cascading like a silken shroud. She didn't look like a dying girl. She looked like a vengeful spirit.