CHAPTER TWO
He threw me into a dark room.
I hit the floor hard. The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind me, followed immediately by the harsh, metallic grinding of a deadbolt sliding into place.
I didn't move. I stayed exactly where I landed, my cheek pressed against the freezing dirt.
My arm throbbed violently where the man had gripped me. My jaw ached from his backhand.
Every instinct I possessed—every ingrained habit from twenty years of a quiet, insulated life—told me to curl into a ball and wait for someone to fix this. I waited for campus security to intervene. I waited for a neighbor to call the police. I waited for my mom to knock on my dorm room door.
But there was no one.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The room was pitch black. I crawled blindly forward until my back hit a solid, splintering wall. I pulled my knees tight to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs to stop my violent shivering.
Voices bled through the thin planks of the wall right behind my head.
"You dragged her out into the mud!" a woman hissed. Her tone was sharp and frantic.
"I should kill her," the man snarled back. It was the same drunken, slurring voice from the barn. "She tried to run, Martha. Ungrateful wretch. After everything we've done to keep her fed."
"Keep your voice down," the woman snapped. "If the neighbors hear you screaming, they'll report us to the overseers."
"Let them!" Something heavy shattered against a wall. Glass. "The overseers don't care about us! Astrelle City rejected our plea for aid yesterday. The scholars up there sit in their radiant towers, worshiping the stars, while we freeze in the dirt. They won't take our debt. They told us to handle it ourselves."
"Then we pay the Siphoners," Martha said. Her voice trembled now. "When the tax collectors from Gravenne arrive tomorrow, we give them the girl. They'll take her life force. It's enough to cover what we owe."
"Gravenne?" The man let out a harsh, bitter laugh that devolved into a wet cough. "You think Gravenne is our biggest problem right now? You haven't been to the tavern. You haven't heard the news from the border."
"What news?"
"The treaties are breaking, Martha. The Capital sent out the decree. The Obsidian Citadel is mobilizing."
Total silence fell over the next room.
"No," the woman finally whispered. "He wouldn't."
"He is," the man replied, his voice dropping into a pit of sheer panic. "General Grant Castiglione. He's already in the air. His dragon incinerated a garrison near the Damaris border this morning. They say the Storm Chasers tried to hold him back with their airships, but he tore them straight out of the sky. He's heading this way."
"Why here?" she sobbed. "We have nothing! We are nothing!"
"He doesn't need a reason. He's the General of The Capital. He's coming to purge the borderlands, and I am not waiting around to be turned to ash. We aren't waiting for the Siphoners tomorrow. I'm taking the girl to the underground fighting pits tonight. We take the coin, and we run to the North City. We beg the Hunters for asylum."
"The North City Hunters kill outsiders on sight."
"I'll take my chances with their steel over Grant's fire. Get the ropes. I'm binding her hands before we move."
I stopped breathing.
My mind raced, struggling to process the sheer velocity of my nightmare. Astrelle City.
Gravenne City. Damaris. North City.
This was not a mistake. This was not a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation. I was trapped inside book number one hundred.
But the most horrifying realization wasn't the transmigration itself. It was my placement in the story. I wasn't a lost princess. I wasn't the secret heir to a powerful magical lineage. I was a nameless, disposable background character. I was the unnamed daughter of a drunkard, a cheap plot device meant to be sold to a fighting pit just to establish how grim and terrible the Empyrean Cities were in the early chapters.
The novel had never mentioned my name. It only mentioned the brutality of the border towns before General Grant arrived to burn them to the ground.
I was going to die tonight. Either bleeding out in a fighting pit, or burning alive in a blaze of dragon fire.
I forced myself to stand. My legs shook violently. I couldn't wait for a hero. I knew the plot. The hero from the North City, Zion Blackwood, was miles away, dealing with his own rebellion. Elara Voss of Damaris was currently picking up the pieces of her broken fleet. No one was coming to this border town. I had to save myself.
I felt along the dark walls. My fingers snagged on a loose wooden board at the back of the room. It gave slightly under my pressure. I pushed harder. The rusted nails squeaked in protest.
I ignored the pain in my fingertips. I shoved my shoulder against the wood. It cracked.
Cold air immediately rushed in through the gap. I shoved again, putting all my meager weight into it. The board snapped outward. The gap was barely wide enough, but I didn't care.
I squeezed my head and shoulders through the opening. The jagged wood tore at my thin tunic, scratching my ribs. I scrambled forward, tumbling out of the room and hitting the frozen mud outside.
The night hit me hard. The wind was relentless.
I scrambled to my feet. I didn't know which direction was safe. In college, I always had a map on my phone. I had street signs. I had well-lit paths. Here, there was only darkness, howling wind, and jagged rocks.
I ran.
My bare feet slammed against the frozen ground. Searing pain shot up my calves with every step, but I forced myself to keep moving. My sheltered instincts screamed at me to find a police station, to find a brightly lit store and ask to use a phone. But my logical mind—the mind that had read one hundred dark fantasy novels—knew the truth.
The Empyrean Cities offered no mercy.
I stumbled blindly through a cluster of decaying shacks. I kept looking over my shoulder, terrified of the man, but also terrified of the sky. I expected to see a massive shadow blotting out the clouds. I expected to see the villain. General Grant.
I hated him in the book's ending, but right now, the reality of his existence was paralyzing. He wasn't a misunderstood anti-hero. He was a weapon of mass destruction, and he was flying straight toward this border, toward me.
My foot caught on an exposed tree root.
I pitched forward, slamming hard into the frozen dirt. I scraped my palms raw. I tried to push myself up, but my lungs burned. The air was too thin, too cold. My muscles simply refused to cooperate. I wasn't an athlete. I was a girl who spent Friday nights reading in bed.
A heavy set of footsteps crunched on the frost directly behind me.
I froze.
"Did you really think you could outrun me in the dark?"
I rolled onto my back, scrambling away like a cornered animal. The drunkard stood over me. He carried a thick, coiled rope in his hands. He didn't even look out of breath. He just looked severely annoyed.
I opened my mouth. I ordered my vocal cords to scream. I needed to make a sound. I needed someone, anyone, to wake up and look outside. I pushed all the air out of my lungs, begging for a voice.
Nothing. Not even a whisper. Just empty, useless silence.
He dropped to his knees and grabbed my ankles. I kicked him in the chest. I thrashed wildly, but it was like fighting a brick wall. He yanked me toward him, flipping me roughly onto my stomach. He pinned my back with his heavy knee, crushing the breath out of me.
I clawed at the dirt. I fought with a desperation I didn't know I possessed. I wasn't just fighting him; I was fighting the narrative. I was fighting the author who wrote this miserable world.
He grabbed my wrists, twisting them painfully behind my back. The rough hemp rope bit into my skin, tying my hands together in tight, unforgiving knots. I writhed, but he pulled the knot tighter until my fingers went numb.
"Stupid girl," he spat, hauling me up by the rope. My shoulders screamed in absolute agony. "You just cost us time. And time is the one thing we don't have."
He shoved me forward. I stumbled, unable to catch my balance with my hands bound.
"Look up," he commanded, his voice shaking violently as he pointed toward the horizon.
I raised my head.
Far off in the distance, cutting through the heavy, rolling storm clouds, was a faint, unnatural glow. It wasn't the sun. It was an angry, pulsing orange light.
Fire.
The sky was burning.
"He's almost here," the man whispered, tightening his iron grip on my rope. "The General."
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack them. The true weight of my situation finally crushed what little hope I had left. I couldn't speak. I couldn't fight. I couldn't run.
I was tied up, entirely helpless, and the most ruthless man in the Empyrean realm was descending from the sky to turn my world to ash.