A Fairy’s quest, A Demons obsession

THE PROCESSION

Cold stone. That was the first thing I felt. smooth, cold stone digging into my knees, damp with a morning dew that hadn’t been there a second ago.

I opened my eyes, and the scream was already climbing up my throat before I even understood why.

Fabric. Too much fabric, pale and shimmering, pooling around me on the floor like spilled milk. I looked down at my hands, and every single drop of blood drained from my face.

No. No, no, no.

These were wrong. These were completely, terrifyingly wrong. Slim, delicate fingers, soft oval nails painted the shade of the inside of a seashell. I never painted my nails. I bit them. I bit them down to the raw quick every single exam week since seventh grade.

“That’s not-that’s not my-” The words came out in a broken gasp. I grabbed my own wrist like I could physically check if it was a illusion, but the skin was warm and solid and not mine. Something in my chest cracked wide open.

“-up. Lyra, get up, you’ll ruin the hem-”

A sharp voice cut through the fog, tugging hard at my sleeve. I flinched away so violently I nearly toppled sideways on the stone. A girl’s face swam into view, bright pink hair twisted into an elaborate braid, her dark eyes narrowing from annoyance into something sharper. I had never seen her before in my life, yet she was staring at me like she’d known me for years.

“Don’t touch me!” I screeched, my voice cracking right down the middle. “Where-what is this? Where’s my bedroom? Where’s Emma? Where am I?!”

Behind her, silver trees arched overhead, their leaves glowing a faint, electric blue, pulsing with light like they were actually breathing. It didn’t look like a movie effect. It didn’t look like anything I had a word for. My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

This isn’t real. This is a dream. Wake up. Wake up. Wake UP!

I pressed both palms flat against the cold stone and scrambled backward, putting distance between myself and the pink-haired stranger. My breath tore in and out of my lungs in short, useless gasps. Black spots danced at the edges of my vision.

“I need to go home,” I whimpered, sounding completely unhinged and totally unable to stop it. “I need to go home right now! This isn’t funny! Whoever’s doing this, I need you to stop-I need to get back-”

“Lyra.” The pink-haired girl’s annoyance vanished, replaced by genuine fright. Her hands hovered in the air like she was trying to approach a wild animal. “What is wrong with you? Did you hit your head on the fountain? You’re talking like you don’t even-”

“My name isn’t Lyra!” It ripped out of me, far too loud, echoing off the stone pillars around us. “I don’t know who Lyra is! I don’t know who you are! I don’t know what is happening to me!”

A second girl dropped to her knees right in front of me. She held a heavy crystal bowl clutched tightly against her ribs, its liquid contents glowing a soft, moving silver. Her eyes were rimmed red, and pure panic was written across her freckled face.

“Lyra, please, you’re scaring me!” she begged, her voice trembling. “What do you mean you don’t know who I am? We’ve been training for the Procession all morning!”

“Because I don’t!” I pressed my shaking hands flat against my thighs, but the tremors wouldn't stop. “I don’t know this place, I don’t know this ridiculous dress, I don’t know why my face feels wrong, I don’t know why the sky is purple!”

A sharp, stabbing pressure built behind my eyes. A pale smudge of light hovered at the edge of my vision. For one horrifying second, I thought I was having a stroke, that my brain was short-circuiting as I lay dying on my bedroom carpet back home.

The smudge sharpened into three glowing dots.

[ . . . ]

“Oh God,” I choked out, tears finally pouring out of my eye. “Oh God, I’m dying. Something’s wrong with my brain-”

“Lyra!” The pink-haired girl grabbed my shoulders hard enough to bruise through the gossamer fabric, forcing me to look at her. “Listen to me! The Procession starts in minutes, and if Lady Vespera sees you losing your mind like this-” She cut herself off, darting a nervous glance toward the garden archway. “Just... walk with us. Please. I’ll tell them you’re sick. Just don’t say anything like that where anyone else can hear you!”

She hauled me to my feet because my knees were turned to water. The world spun dangerously, but she caught my arm. I flinched at the touch again, my entire body screaming that nothing here was safe, nothing made sense, and nobody was coming to save me.

We stumbled down the corridor. Every single detail felt like a physical attack, flowers opening and closing like lungs along the stone path, fountains flowing with liquid light, two fat crescent moons hanging in the violet sky where there should have been a sun. I held my breath to keep from screaming at every impossible thing.

“You said Emma earlier,” the girl with the bowl murmured, keeping pace beside me. “Who is Emma?”

“My best friend,” I whispered, my voice completely hollow. “She’s... she’s waiting for me to text her back. She’s going to think I disappeared.”

The two girls exchanged a heavy, worried glance over my head. I saw the exact moment they gave up trying to understand, the moment they decided I had completely lost my mind, and that their only choice was to drag me along and hope no one in authority noticed.

I froze mid-step. My hand flew to my mouth.

“The book,” I breathed.

“What book?” the pink-haired girl snapped, tugging hard on my arm. “Lyra, we don’t have time-”

I wasn’t listening to her. I was staring at the glowing liquid in the crystal bowl. The violet twilight. The silver trees.

A memory slammed into the back of my brain with violent clarity. A garden like this. A ceremony with glowing dew. I read this. I read this exact scene.

“No,” I choked out, taking a frantic step backward. “No, no, no, that’s impossible. That’s insane! People don’t get sucked into fantasy novels!”

“Lyra, stop it!” the pink-haired girl hissed, reaching for me again. “You are officially terrifying me-”

The glowing smudge in the air suddenly snapped into razor-sharp, floating letters right in front of my face. I gasped, stumbling backward and crashing into the girl with the bowl.

[ SYSTEM INITIATED. ]

The entire garden went dead silent. The wind stopped. The girls froze like statues mid-motion, caught halfway through their breaths.

[ User “Janeila” has registered severe dissatisfaction with the conclusion of “The Legend of the Celestial Realm.” ]

Seeing my actual name, my real, human name written in the cold blue light hit me like a physical blow. My legs gave out, and I hit the floor.

“This is real,” I sobbed into my hands, my body shaking violently. “This is actually happening to me. I’m stuck inside a book.”

[ World Rewind Protocol activated. You have transmigrated as a supporting character within the novel. ]

Transmigrated. A stupid, novel word. It sounded so clinical, but it meant I had been ripped away from my life, my mom, my room, my entire future, and shoved into some extra’s body.

[ Objective: Locate and preserve the Fairy Queen’s fate. Penalty for failure: Permanent entrapment in the story world. ]

“Permanent?” I screamed at the empty air, my voice breaking completely. “Permanent?! No! I have final year exams starts on Monday! My mom is going to call the police! I can’t just disappear!”

Panic clawed at my chest, suffocating and hot. If the world unfreezes, these girls are going to hear me screaming about police and exams, words that don’t even exist here. They’ll think I’m possessed. They’ll execute me.

[ Time Remaining: 03:41 ]

The red numbers started ticking down with cold, mechanical precision.

03:40... 03:39...

That was what finally snapped the paralysis. A clock. A timer meant a deadline, and missing a deadline in a book like this meant dying.

“Okay,” I whispered, wiping the tears from my face with the back of my hand, smearing the soft makeup on this stranger’s cheeks. “Okay. Freaking out won’t get me back to my room. I just... I have to survive the next three minutes.”

The world lurched back into motion with a sickening snap. The pink-haired girl’s fingers tightened on my wrist, her sentence resuming without a single missed beat.

“-listening to me?! The Procession starts in five minutes and Lady Vespera does not forgive lateness! Whatever is wrong with your head, you need to shove it down right now!”

“Right.” I forced my voice steady, though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Right. The Procession. Let’s go.”

I didn’t know this body. I didn’t know this world. Every single instinct inside me was screaming to run, to search every corner for a hidden door or a portal back to my real life. But there was no door. There was only a glowing countdown in the corner of my eye, two terrified girls watching me, and a name Lyra that I was going to have to pretend was mine if I wanted to live to see tomorrow