Chapter 1: The Girl Who Didn't Belong

Nyra Caelith Veilborne was not supposed to be alive.

The moment her eyes fluttered open, bathed in pale morning light that filtered through gauzy lilac curtains, she knew something was wrong. The bed beneath her was too soft, the sheets too luxurious, and the scent in the air—sweet florals and fresh parchment—was not her own. She sat upright slowly, heart thudding in her chest as she took in her surroundings.

She wasn’t in her apartment. This room was far too large, adorned with velvet drapes, polished furniture, and a chandelier strung with crystal droplets that shimmered like starlight. There was no hum of traffic. No sirens. No distant neighbors stomping overhead.

She was somewhere else.

Somewhere impossible.

Nyra rose from the bed on shaking legs, approaching the full-length mirror framed in silver and carved ivy. Her reflection blinked back at her—same eyes, same face, but… softer. Brighter. Her long dark hair was brushed into glossy waves, and the silken nightgown she wore clung to a figure that seemed too elegant to belong to a college dropout who once survived on instant noodles and secondhand paperbacks.

The realization hit her slowly. Not like thunder. Like snow. Cold and creeping.

She had seen this room before.

Not in life, but in fiction.

This was the exact chamber described in A Crown of Silver and Flame, a novel she’d read—no, devoured—a hundred times over. And if this room was real, then so was the name the servant had murmured earlier when she brought in tea:

Lady Nyra Caelith Veilborne.

A minor noble. A background character. A girl whose only role was to get swept into the hero’s path, say three lines, and die by poison in chapter three.

Except… she wasn’t dead.

She was standing here.

Breathing.

Remembering everything.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispered, her fingers brushing the vanity’s cracked mirror. “This isn’t my story.”

But something had changed.

Somehow, she’d been placed into the world of the book—not as the heroine, not as the villain, not even as someone meant to survive. A forgotten name. A discarded footnote.

Why?

She dressed slowly in the violet gown left out for her, fingers trembling as she did up the clasps. Her heart pounded louder with every breath. If she remembered the story right, the royal academy awaited. The golden heroine, Elira Solvenne Althear, would soon make her entrance. The crown prince—Cian Rathmore Elwynn—would rise to his role. And the villain, Lucien Vale Drayven, would enter the shadows, plotting a downfall that was never truly his.

But something was already different.

She should not exist.

And if she wasn’t careful, the story might come for her again—to erase her, like it tried to do the first time.

Exploring the room, Nyra finds a small leather-bound journal. It's blank—except for torn edges, as if someone ripped out entries. But a faint imprint of erased ink remains, and on the back page, a symbol is scrawled in blood or ink.

This could tie into her forgotten identity and hint at an erased history.

A sudden wave of vertigo hits. For a second, she’s not in the room—she sees flashes of a great library burning, a woman screaming her name, and a voice whispering:

> “You were meant to guide the story—not be erased from it.”

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