Life's mysteries do not arrive with courtesy. They announce themselves in fragments.
Porcelain hands, for one, too small, too fine-boned for the burden they bore. Viridian hair spilled down her back to her knees, heavy as a curtain drawn too far. A noble's gown clung to her frame, its gold stitching ornate to the point of desperation. No one dressed like this for ordinary errands.
Cosplay, perhaps, if the she still gathered for conventions. Fun fact, she had not indulged in such things for years.
Then came the tacky warmth.
Blood streaked her fingers, bright against the pale delicacy of her skin. The headache she had believed conquered, buried for nearly a year returned with a ferocity that suggested patience, as though it had been waiting for precisely this moment. She entertained, briefly, the notion of throwing herself into the river simply to bargain for relief.
Pain hollowed her skull. Each cough drew more blood from her lungs, and her complexion drained until it rivaled carved stone.
"Th-these coughing fits should be sufficient," she managed.
They were not.
Her body rebelled next, violently and without decorum, vomit and a nosebleed in graceless harmony. She accepted this with a numb sort of resignation.
She collapsed at the river's edge and stared at her reflection: blood-darkened lips, eyes the wrong color entirely.
"Dear," she murmured, "oh dear."
This body was not hers. Not truly. It trembled beneath her as she dragged herself toward the cover of the trees.
"If I'm not merely weak," she muttered, "then I'm dying." After a pause, quieter still: "Someone should have restrained the author."
Beneath the Hian Tree, she struggled for breath, the sound thin and reedy, like a damaged instrument.
Breathe. Slow down. You have read stories like this before right?
Yet the body offered nothing in return, no memories, no instinctive knowledge, no guiding thread. Nothing.
Pathetic.
"A novel," she rasped.
The river answered her with a face she recognized, if only in ink and imagination.
Etterellia Vonworgh Carala Beirre Lei Adiand.
Ett.
Empress Dowager. Mother of the Emperor. Architect of wars and treaties alike. A woman fated to die young and unceremoniously.
An extravagant name, wasted on a fragile vessel.
She laughed, once.
The Ett she remembered had dismantled kingdoms while confined to her sickbed. And now she inhabited that same figure, porcelain and failing, bearing familiar eyes and hair, her own former face refined into something unnervingly flawless.
"No return," she said to no one. "Naturally."
She lay back against the earth. A weak body, an unyielding will, and no patience to spare.
Ett waited. Yes, Ett now. Hah.
"When will you arrive?" she asked the air. After all, she hadn't fallen to the river, and she's waiting...
As if summoned, footsteps followed.
A butler emerged from the path, posture immaculate.
"Greetings to Her Grace," he intoned, "the Matron, the Empire's Majestic Eclipse."
Xiwen. Once a commander, now a servant. Loyal, competent, indispensable, exactly as written.
"The Emperor desires his mother's continued health," he said gently.
Health. Ett nearly laughed.
She closed her eyes. "Give me a moment."
Her heart is still palpitating hard.
"May I assist you, Your Grace?"
Ett lifted a hand in dismissal.
"Lead."
Xiwen adjusted his pace to accommodate her. Considerate, hm.
In the original telling, she would have fainted by now, rescued, borne away in the river's flow to somewhere. Instead, she forced herself onward toward the looming walls of the Empire, resplendent and hollow.
As they walked and entered the walls of the palace, to the inner walls she move glance to somehwere not far away.
And then—
Viridian hair once more.
Guren.
Eleven years old, his expression already schooled into distance. She met his gaze and found it unreadable, flat as still water.
"A promising youth," she muttered.
"…Shall we proceed to your chambers, Your Grace?" Xiwen asked.
"Yes."
So this was the antagonist.
Her son.
How fitting.
Ett exhaled slowly. Becoming young again might have been tolerable, others had managed it well enough. But the disparity was unforgivable: he already approaching adolescence while she was trapped in the body of a child.
Still, if there was another transmigrator in this situation, what would they do? What would they always do? Try to rewrite their fate. Change the story. Be the good mother of the villain, isn't that right? It should be.
Could she? Really? Could she do that?
Rewrite fate? Ha. Too convenient. Redemption? Absurd. Quite an effort, and with this sickly body and her social level is down to zero.
Death..death at least had honesty. No pretending, no rules to bend, no audience to impress.
Ett's temples throbbed, a warning drum she couldn't ignore.
She clicked her tongue in irritation.
Well, whatever.