I let out a loud breath as I stared at the tulle mosquito net overhead. In the middle of a huge bed surrounded by fancy mosquito netting, I was under the piles of covers with a broken body, I was lost. My bed was so big that I couldn't help feeling tiny.

Every part of my body was individually hurt, and the pain I felt was indescribable. What had happened, had I had a big accident and I didn't know about it?

I tried to remember but failed.

And was there no one I could ask and find out?

The fact that I couldn't hear a sound other than my own breaths proved that I was alone. I opened my mouth, but the sound that came out was so hoarse and weak that it did not even reach my own ears. It must have been because my throat was as dry as a desert. I needed a drink of water, but I doubted I could get up and get it.

The condition of my throat was so bad that I had a coughing fit that seemed to never end. My whole body shook as I coughed. I felt pain as if all my bones were breaking again and again, but maybe they were already broken. I did not know and could not make sense of this state.

When my coughing subsided a little, I sat up and my hand went to my ribs involuntarily. I was trying to be careful, but even this little movement was enough to leave me panting and sweating.

When I opened it and took a small glance outwards, I could finally see the room behind the curtain and I stared into the room for a while with my eyebrows raised. The room and all the furniture in the room were quite alien to me as well as the bed I was in.

It was a room with a predominance of white and pink and furnished with expensive antiques. The whole place was full of colourful, colourful and various toys that small children would love to play with. Various porcelain dolls, each dressed in different clothes and with different facial expressions, were around a small carved white table with porcelain cups arranged as if a little girl had just had a tea party with them. Each of them was seated on chairs suitable for their height and arranged side by side.

Crayons in every colour I could think of were scattered in one corner of the large room. There was an oil painting on the easel waiting to be completed, a vase full of flowers painted on the canvas that looked so beautiful that it was indistinguishable from the real thing. As I looked at it, I remembered the oil paintings I had done when I was little.

There was a pink sofa set in front of a fireplace crackling with burning logs. Expensive-looking brocade curtains stretched to the high ceiling. Carved cabinets with high doors overflowing with clothes, a giant full-length mirror, a white piano with a high seat, a violin with broken strings, ornate dollhouses, bookcases with no doubt fairy tale books on the shelves, and many more.

Everything that a girl could imagine and even everything that a girl could not imagine was gathered in a room, so it would be a bit unfair to call it simply a room. But why was I here?

The more I thought, the more questions I had, but I could never find an answer. If I continued to sit on the bed, this situation would not change. I was going to get out of the bed and then out of the room. I was going to find someone and find out from them what was going on. Then... And then...

'Something's weird,' I said to myself. Warning bells were ringing in my head. It was like I had the last piece of a very easy jigsaw puzzle and I was trying to put it in, but it would never fit because it didn't really belong there.

Maybe it was because it was like waking up from a very long dream. My perceptions were just beginning to open.

I brought my hands in front of my eyes and looked at them carefully, examining myself with the curiosity of a newborn baby and wondering how I had not realised until just now.

Why were my hands so small? Not only were they small, but they looked quite different. They had the delicate skin of a small child and the thin fragile bones.

My hands, which didn't seem to belong to me, began to tremble.

They moved around my face with frightened touches and offered me clues that could be the answer to many things, but my mind was telling me that this could not be real, stubbornly refusing to believe.

I grabbed the covers and threw them over me.

The same disbelief continued when my long nightgown, stripped down to my knees, exposed my short, thin legs and small feet, covered with scratches and scars.

Was this some kind of dream?

I wasn't the heroine of a film where you die and are reborn. There was no logical explanation for me being a child again.

I got out of bed and jumped off the bed.

I jumped! I endured the pain I felt by pressing my teeth tightly.

When I tried to stand up, my muscles and bones betrayed me. I was a stranger to my body, I didn't recognise it and didn't know how to use it.

I continued to crawl on the floor, not caring how much my already hurt knees hurt. The mirror on the other side was calling me towards it and all I needed was to look at it.

'I need to see myself,' I thought to myself, but what I wanted did not materialise. When I approached the mirror, I saw not myself but a stranger. The person sitting on the floor and looking straight ahead was not me, but a small little girl. This little girl, dressed in a snow-white nightgown with lace embroidered skirts, was looking into my eyes as bewildered and shaken as I felt.

I denied the concrete reality as much as I could. I watched the reflection in the mirror repeat my movements, and when I ran my hands through my hair, the reflection imitated me with the same robotic movements.

When I brought my hair forward over my shoulder, I saw that I had silvery hair between my fingers, the same colour as the girl in the reflection. They were the kind of fanciful colour that could have been in a fairy tale.

I moved closer to the mirror, touching its cold surface. I kept looking at the little girl without taking my eyes off her. The surprised expression in her innocent eyes was my direct reflection. I examined her more carefully, from her hair to her eyebrows a few shades darker, her blue-grey jewelled eyes, her beauty... She was like an angel fallen from heaven. Her heart-shaped face, her tiny nose, her lips, though discoloured and dry, were still beautiful and full. Her skin looked as white and delicate as sunlight. Looking at her filled one with the urge to protect her.

She was a cute and beautiful girl.

It was unbelievable, but she was me.

The body was not mine, but the soul inside her belonged to me.

As I wondered how such a thing could happen, a terrible pain shot through my head and I began to feel dizzy. Images flashed before my eyes, each one more blood-curdling and unbearable than the last. First I saw that I had been drugged, and the moments when I lost control of my whole body were as clear as if they had just happened. The sensation in my hands was gone, my muscles were unable to function, I collapsed on the floor. I looked around in fear and panic, and men I had never seen before appeared in my room. I was picked up like a rag doll and carried to the bathroom in my room. I was left in the bathtub full of water in. Some of the water in the bathtub overflowed and spilled on the floor, but the water flowing from the open fountain continued to fill the bathtub. I could not breathe, and every time I opened my mouth to breathe, I swallowed water.

A fine pain appeared in my wrists.

The colour of the water covering my vision turned slightly pink and then red. Because the men had made cuts on my wrists.

I looked as if I was trying to take my own life.

After the red, darkness fell. There was nothing left for me but eternal darkness.

I had been killed.

It was devastating to regain my last forgotten memories.

Everything I didn't want to remember kept flooding my mind. Even when I raised my head and looked in the mirror, I saw these moments over and over again. It was like a torment and I couldn't stop.I hit the mirror hard with a hard object and shattered it.

The mirror shards landed on the floor with a thud.

All my torment stopped at that moment.

All sounds were silenced and the images stopped.

The door of the room opened.

Three young women in maid's clothes came in. Feeling too exhausted to give them any reaction, I watched their astonished looks without reacting.

"Our Lady is awake!" one of them was saying. The language she spoke had sound combinations I had never heard before in my life, a different language that should have been incomprehensible to me, but strangely I had no trouble understanding what her words meant.

"Call the doctor to come immediately. Go!"

The youngest of the women ran out of the room as if obeying this order and disappeared in the corridor behind the door.

"Are you all right, My Lady?" the young woman with the short blunt haircut asked as she approached me. "How are you feeling?"

I was the focus of her worried eyes, but I found it difficult to take her question personally.

The maid continued to approach. I tried to back away, uncomfortable with the intrusion into my space, but in the meantime I heard a cracking sound and felt a sting in my hand. When I looked up, I saw the new cuts I had sustained, as if the wounds I had sustained were not enough. Large and small pieces of the mirror were lodged in the back of my hand. My hands were covered in blood. My blood was dripping on the floor and on me, my fingertips were tingling. Strangely, this situation still haunts me.

I was someone who had tasted the cold, numb touch of death.

"Oh my... My lady, please stop. Your hands are bleeding!"

I didn't let her touch my hand. I didn't even know who she was yet. I had opened my eyes in the body of a small and injured girl, although I didn't know how. But how had this child become like this? How could I know whether this woman had done it or not?

I grabbed a piece of mirror in my hand and pointed it at her. Ignoring the blood flowing from my hand, I started shouting, "Get away from me! Who the hell are you? I'm telling you not to come closer!"

Ignoring my words, the woman continued to approach, but the other woman came and stopped her, perhaps she realised how serious I was in my warning, I was ready to make anyone who tried to touch me pay for it. The women moved away from me without taking their worried eyes off me. "Our Lady must not be feeling well," one of them was saying to the other in a whisper I could hear. "Let's wait until the doctor comes."

Tears began to well up in the eyes of the woman with the bobbed hair. "But the hand... is it right to leave it like that? Can't you see it's bleeding badly?"

"... I left her alone for five minutes because she had been asleep for a long time. It's all because of me. How can I explain it now? Look how Our Lady looks. It's all my fault."

"No, it's not your fault. She must have been a little shocked and frightened by the accident. Her father, His Highness the Duke, even though he sacrificed his own life to protect our lady..." His eyes flickered, and he put her hand over her mouth.

"Still... What are we going to do now? The head housekeeper and our lady's nanny have been sacked. Even the knights have been arrested. What will be the future of the castle if something happens to our lady? You know the behaviour of the baron and baroness, what happens to us if we refuse to obey their rules? They have already expelled many of our friends and replaced them with others. We don't have a ..." they kept talking, but their dialogue made no sense to me.

What accident?

The duke?

The castle?

Baron, Baroness?

It's stuck in their tongues. The Lady. The Lady. Lady... Lines, attitudes, clothes, as if from some kind of medieval drama...

But it all felt too real to be a dream.

I tried to be calm and rational and I couldn't take it anymore. "Who are you and what is this place?" I asked.

The women looked at each other. They looked at each other and started talking among themselves. Even if their tongues stopped, their eyes did not stop. The longer this went on, the more annoyed I became, so I raised my voice and asked once more, "WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE AM I?"

"M-my dear," squeaked the maid, her curly bangs sticking out of the bonnet on her head, "W-we are your servants. I'm Mandy and she's Ruby. This-this is Castle Averia in the north, your home, my lady. Don't you remember?"

Averia? It sounded familiar, but I wasn't willing to admit where. How could such a thing be?

Even if I was afraid of the answer I would hear, I couldn't run away. "So... who am I?"

"My lady..." Both women's eyes were filled with tears. They both answered my question in unison.

"You are Elisa Averia."

"Elisa?"

"Yes." "Yes."

"Averia?"

"Yes?" "Yes?"

I swore with a mouthful of swear words and stunned the servants. At the same time, I was laughing. I pressed my lips together and tried to stop the laughter rising inside me, but I failed and continued laughing like crazy. So much so that tears flowed from the corner of my eyes.

"Don't make fun of me," I said while wiping the tears from my eyes.

"How dare we..."

I turned my back to them, ignoring their speeches rising in unison. I took a large piece of mirror on the floor and held it to my face. My new face. Maybe they weren't making fun of me, but someone was definitely messing with me. Why else... Why was I going through this? Why should I be in her shoes? How was that even possible?

I shouldn't have been surprised that the name Averia sounded familiar because, like everything else, it was one of the details I made up and wrote down for my novel. In my novel 'The Fire of Prophecy', the dynasty that ruled the north was called Averia. They were blessed with silver hair and blue-grey eyes, just like the eyes looking into the mirror fragment I was holding in my hand. Marcus, the illegitimate born male protagonist, the future owner of the duchy, had a half-sister who died before reaching the age of eighteen, and whose name was Elisa Averia. I didn't write more than a few lines about the character, she wasn't very important in the development of the story. She was an expendable side character.

She was condemned to a slow death by her uncle, who wanted to seize the duchy and all the wealth it possessed...

Leaving aside how unrealistic it is to open your eyes to a new life and replace one of the characters of a novel, I wondered why I was a side character who existed only to support the story and not Rheana, the main female character, or one of the evil female characters. I hadn't told much about Elisa Averia, I hadn't even written a single sentence of dialogue for us to get to know her. I hadn't felt uncomfortable when I was writing about her death, I hadn't thought much about it, but now... I, Ela Demirhan, had entered the fantasy novel I had written, and I had become Elisa Averia herself, who was destined to be killed at a young age.

I had no intention of letting anyone come near me. However, so much blood had flowed from the cuts on my hands that I collapsed from loss of blood. At that moment, an old man who came out of the servants approached me and told me that he was a doctor and asked me to trust him. I was in no mood to trust anyone, but I had to let him treat me.

The doctor was a tall man in his late fifties with grey hair. He smelled of mint and a few spices I didn't recognise. With his large, warm hands, he carefully cleaned the cuts on my small hands, making sure that no mirror fragments were left in them.

I made an involuntary hoarse sound when it hurt. "Ah..."

"Huh!"

There was a simultaneous gasp from the servants at the other end of the room.

The doctor's hands on my hand froze. One of the beads of sweat accumulated on his forehead ran down his cheek. His blue eyes behind his glasses met mine.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, forgive me, my lady," he said timidly. He pressed his thin lips together and looked at me expectantly.

I was surprised by this state and was late in reacting.

While I was waiting for my reaction, the man's face turned white as if all the blood had drained from it and his hands trembled more than the previous moment every second I kept him waiting. That's when I realised something.

The doctor was afraid of me.

The servants were afraid of me.

Everyone in the room expected me to freak out, shout at the doctor, hit him, throw something at his head, or at least fire him. Otherwise, there was no other way to explain their fear of me.

"Go ahead doctor, it's okay," I said in my childish voice that I was still not used to.

The doctor continued to do his job with a cautious relaxation. What kind of monster did these people think Elisa was?

As the doctor continued to administer the treatment, he took superhuman care and effort to ensure that I was not hurt. It was not difficult to read the surprise and satisfaction on his wrinkled face that I had not cried, screamed or hit him with everything I could get my hands on.

I didn't write much detail about Elisa's character in my book. There were a few moments when she was sometimes rude to her older brother Marcus, the protagonist, but that was it. All the information about Elisa was written according to what Marcus thought about her.

Even though Marcus was one of the protagonists, he had an undeniable jealousy towards his brother. This was one of his characteristics that brought him closer to a real person...

Elisa was born with many privileges that Marcus would never have. Even though Marcus would one day become the lord of the north, these gaps could never be filled.

Elisa did not give Marcus a chance and did not accept him as her brother. That's why brother and sister preferred to keep the distance between them.

It wasn't until his sister died that Marcus realised how unnecessary this distance was. To him, his sister Elisa was the one who alone had all the love and attention of his father. She was a spoilt noblewoman who had everything she wanted or didn't want. She was... Or was she not? Marcus had only asked this question when he learnt that she was dead. Even then, he wondered if it mattered.

In fact, Elisa, like Marcus, had grown up without a mother. Yes, only her sister had all her father's love, but how much did she see him? Fathers, Duke Orion, working in the service of the empire, couldnt be in the castle much and had no time for his daughter. So Elisa always grew up under the care of servants. Because she was born with a weak constitution, she could not leave the castle much and was often ill. If she grew into a spoilt and ill-tempered child, this could have been the reason. His reactions were perhaps cries for help.

Marcus had always felt guilty for never listening to his sister and making no effort to spend time with her.

Marcus, he had left the north suddenly one night without even attending his father's funeral and had travelled to the capital to make a way for himself.

The regret he felt towards Elisa would always tear at his heart...

Yes, my duty as Elisa was to make the protagonist experience this guilt... Was poor Elisa's suffering justified because the protagonist had to suffer two dramas? Even if I wrote this ending for Elisa myself, I couldn't accept to live.

While I was lost in thought, I heard the doctor's voice.

"I hope I didn't hurt you too much, my lady," he said, and I snapped out of my thoughts. Obviously the treatment of my hand was over.

"Thank you for your concern, Doctor," I said with a polite smile.

The doctor, whose name I learnt was Paleo, told me that he had served the Averia castle for more than twenty years.

He untied the bandages on my head. He cleaned the wound on my temple, working slowly and meticulously. He seemed more relieved than I was when he applied ointment to the wound and rewrapped it with a clean cloth.

"Did you have any complaints?"

I nodded. "Yes, I have a nagging pain in my head."

"I was expecting this... Wait a minute..."

When he reached for the leather handbag and opened it, the clinking of glass was heard. The bag was filled with hundreds of small jars. The jars with medicines that I didn't know what they were for were like a model of orderly organisation and each one had name labels stuck on them. Although the letters looked very different from the alphabets I knew, I realised that I could read them. It was a beautiful alphabet formed by a set of curves, lines and dots, with care in every pen stroke. I could find the same harmony in writing that I felt when I was speaking, and to be able to understand an alphabet and spoken language that I had not been trained in in such a miraculous way caused a strange feeling to tickle your brain. Well, if I was trying to digest the fact that I died and found myself in a different body and as a side character in a novel world, this much should have been acceptable.

I tried to act calm.

The doctor took a small jar labelled with painkillers and shook it, squinting as he looked inside. The pills inside made a sound by hitting each other.

"I am going to prepare a special medicine for your pain, but for now it will not be a problem for you to take this. It will ease your pain and give you relief. If you get enough rest, you won't have a problem. " He placed another pale coloured pill in my palm. "This will help you regain some of your lost strength." In my previous life, being drugged in my drink and easily killed because of it was the basis of my distrust, but Dr Enderson was one of the duke's men, Elisa's personal physician. He didn't seem to be the kind of person who would dare to take any steps to harm Elisa, to harm me. So I accepted the medicines promised to help me without much thought.

One by one he pushed the pills out of their jars between my lips and then helped me drink a mouthful of water. The pills were not in the pill form I was used to. One was like a small green ball. It had a bitterness parallel to the odour of a mixture of herbs and spices. The other was a blue marble with a mentholated freshness. It washed away the unpleasant taste that the other left in my mouth. I smiled as I felt the effect of his medication miraculously fast.

If I had sold such medicines in my past life, I thought, I could have made a lot of money. The medicines in this world were the product of alchemy, and it was different and exciting to feel the effects of alchemy first hand.

The doctor cleared his throat, and when he had my attention, he began to speak.

"The cuts on your hands are not very deep, but I would like you to refrain from using your hands for a few days, My Lady. Do not have much contact with water for now. As for the wound on your temple, it will disappear as if it never existed thanks to the ointment I have prepared. Rest assured, I'll be back every day to attend to your dressings. Your amnesia... Personally, I believe that your condition is not serious and I believe that you will find your lost memories again in time. I will talk to the cooks about your diet. Since you have not eaten solid food for a week, you should not strain your stomach too much.

so I'll ask the cooks to prepare soup for you. I imagine you're very hungry. Please try to rest after you've eaten."

"Yes, Doctor," I said with a smile.

"You are welcome, my lady. It is an honour to be of service to you." He bowed repeatedly and retreated towards the door. "... I will leave now, I will convey the information about your condition to the Lord."

As my confusion reflected on my face, I heard myself asking, "I beg your pardon... Lord?" I heard myself asking.

According to what I learnt from the servants and what I know from the novel, although the Lord, Elisa's father, managed to protect his daughter, he himself was not lucky enough to survive. He was killed in the accident, as a result of the severe injuries he sustained.

Doctor, he couldn't have been talking about him.

On the other hand Marcus, Elisa's half-brother, did not have any title because he was not legitimate, he was not called Lord. There was only one name I could think of. Why was I surprised? I already knew that Kairos, Elisa's uncle, would already be a nightmare for the duchy.

The doctor smiled and fixed his warm, understanding eyes on me. He expressed what I had already guessed.

"I-I was referring to your uncle, Baron Kairos, my lady. He was very attentive to you during the week you were unconscious. They were very concerned... They'll be expecting an update from me now."

"My uncle... Baron Kairos... now that you mention it, I think I recognise him. You are quite right, doctor, they must have been very worried. It would be appropriate for you to inform them, but as I recall, don't you think it would be a heavy burden on a baron who is a guest in the castle to address my honourable uncle as a lord? For we all know that my father was the Lord of this land, don't we? I don't think the order of succession changed during my unconsciousness."

The slight smile on my face faded as soon as I finished my speech. Then I raised my eyes and looked at the man's face.

I watched the moment when the Doctor stopped breathing and realised what I had said. It was exactly one second later when he folded his hands in front of him and bowed his head in greeting. "Please forgive me, my lady. I have made a mistake big enough to deserve death."

Death... This is a world where a word mistake can cost you your life.

"Look at me, Mr Enderson." When he sat up and looked at me, I continued. "I have no problem forgiving you for a mistake. I can understand that the fact that my dear uncle has established the authority in the castle for me has led you to this mistake. It is natural to have a misconception. Now that we've righted that wrong, I'm going to trust you that the same thing won't happen in the future. Now you can go and inform my uncle."

...

It was incredible that Kairos had the castle in his grasp before time had even passed. When he learnt that Elisa had opened her eyes, I am sure he would have been so overjoyed...

When the doctor left the room, I called the servants to me.

"I want you to tell me what happened in the castle during the days I was unconscious."

"My lady... first of all, you should eat the soup we have prepared for you and then listen to the doctor and rest. After you have regained your health-"

I interrupted her by raising my hand.

"I thought I was the only one with amnesia, but I see I am not. Now must I remind you that I don't like repeating my orders?"

I realised I was being a bit harsh, but just because I was in the body of a small child didn't mean I was going to tolerate being treated like one. Besides, I had no time to lose. I had to act before what I feared happened.

"Come on, start telling me now."