Chapter Two focusing on Anne (Rosie) waking up

The first thing she felt was the stillness.

No hum of city traffic. No keyboard clatter or fluorescent light buzz. No phone notifications chiming like persistent little ghosts.

Only… silence. Deep, pressing, ancient silence.

Then came the scent—earthy and strange. Like damp wood, wildflowers left too long in the dark, and something bitter she couldn’t name.

Rosie Evans opened her eyes, and the world she saw was not her own.

Above her, the ceiling was woven of wooden beams strung with dried herbs, bones, and bits of glass that caught the dim light like stars. She was lying on a bed of furs, rough and warm beneath her skin, and when she lifted her hand—

Her heart lurched.

It wasn’t her hand.

Slim, pale fingers. Blackened nails. A strange birthmark curling across the wrist like a vine. She sat up, sudden and dizzy, her breath catching in her throat.

“This is a dream,” she whispered, but even her voice sounded different—softer, slightly raspier, like a woman who’d spent lifetimes whispering to the wind.

But Rosie Evans was twenty-seven. She was a marketing intern at a miserable tech company in downtown Chicago. She had no time for dreams. No patience for fantasy.

And yet, this wasn’t the first time she had seen this place.

The wooden shelves stuffed with ancient tomes. The glass bottles with glowing potions. The enchanted mirror in the corner, its surface rippling like disturbed water.

She knew this room.

*She had read about it.*

Her body moved slowly to the mirror, guided by trembling instinct. When she looked into it, the face that stared back was not her own.

Dark hair that fell to her waist like ink. Violet eyes that didn’t belong to any human she’d ever known. Her face was older than hers—but ethereal, almost inhuman in its symmetry.

A memory sparked. Not a memory, really. A scene.

*A Kingdom’s Heart.*

A fantasy novel she once devoured in her sleepless nights, back when she could still feel wonder. It had been escapism. Just another cliché tale of a noble king and a holy saintess destined to save the world. But now…

“No,” she breathed. “No, this can’t be…”

Her knees gave out, and she collapsed against the wooden floor. The cold bit into her legs, but she didn’t feel it. Her chest was heaving, panic rising like floodwaters.

“I died,” she whispered. “Didn’t I? The office… the deadline… I fell asleep at my desk…”

And didn’t wake up.

Until now.

Until *this*.

Suddenly, a new fear clawed its way through the shock. Because if this was *that* world… then she was not the saintess from the book. The gentle, beloved heroine who healed the land with holy light and became the king’s bride.

She was someone else entirely.

She was *the witch*. The villain of the story. The one the Church hunted. The one burned in the square in the original ending.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispered.

But the forest outside began to stir with life. Ravens gathered on the roof. The wind whispered her name—not *Rosie*, but *Anne*.

And somewhere, far from the woods, a young king had opened a forgotten book, and begun searching for her.

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