Season 1: Survival of the Fittest

  Ch 3: Meet Mira — Sort Of

  Nysera woke with all the grace of a felled oak.

  For a moment, she y still, blinking up at the grimy ceiling. The light filtering through the paper-thin curtains was grey and listless, the kind of light that could never be called dawn, merely the absence of darkness.

  Her body ached in strange, mortal ways — a heavy, sullen weight that pinned her to the sagging sofa. The magic that had once hummed in her veins was gone, leaving behind the unpleasant sensation of mere flesh. She wrinkled her nose instinctively, as if she could dismiss the indignity by disapproving of it hard enough.

  Slowly, she sat up.

  The room was as pathetic by daylight as it had been in the misted night: small, threadbare, with walls so close she felt she could touch both sides without rising. A kitchenette sulked in one corner, as if ashamed to be seen. The sofa beneath her gave a small, compining wheeze.

  On the battered coffee table in front of her, a half-empty bottle of water stood, glistening slightly. She stared at it, trying to piece together its significance. Then memory returned in jagged, unwanted fshes: the cttering neon chaos, the shrieking women with pink tiaras, the shrill insult of the self-checkout machine, and the solemn, pitying words of the woman who had steered her here.

  "Drink some water, babe. Don’t die."

  Nysera regarded the bottle suspiciously. It was a mortal remedy, no doubt — crude, inelegant, possibly ineffective. But she was nothing if not pragmatic.

  She plucked it up, sniffed it, and took a cautious sip.

  The water was ft, tepid, and tasted faintly of regret, but it revived her a little nonetheless.

  She set it back down, bancing it carefully on the edge of the coffee table. The table wobbled armingly, as if it too might colpse under the sheer weight of her disdain.

  Nysera exhaled through her nose, surveying her kingdom of peeling wallpaper, battered furniture, and chipped mugs.

  So. This was her new domain.

  She had conquered empires. She had survived assassination plots, betrayals, the burning of cities.

  Surely, she could survive this.

  Nysera rose slowly, legs stiff and protesting, and turned her attention to the clutter gathered near the door. A battered canvas bag slumped against the wall, like a peasant at the end of a particurly grueling market day. She approached it warily.

  Inside, she found a small leather purse, a scattering of unfamiliar pstic cards, a nyard bearing an unfttering photograph of her new face, and—

  Something buzzed violently against her fingers.

  Nysera yelped — an undignified sound she would ter deny making — and recoiled. The object, a ft rectangle of gss and metal, buzzed again, vibrating like an angry beetle.

  Cautiously, she nudged it with one finger. It lit up at once, blinding her with harsh, blue light. She staggered back a step, heart hammering. Some kind of cursed artefact, clearly — designed to entrap or perhaps ensve its holder.

  The screen dispyed a flurry of notifications:

  2 New Voicemails 5 Unread WhatsApp Messages Urgent: Your Lloyds Bank Account Requires Attention Complete Your Mandatory Cybersecurity Training by Friday

  She squinted at it. So far, no spells had been flung at her. No traps had been sprung.

  Mouth tight with determination, she picked it up properly, holding it between thumb and forefinger as one might a dead rat.

  A small symbol fshed in the top corner — a red droplet draining slowly.

  "The creature is dying," she muttered under her breath. "Good. Let it perish in peace."

  Still, necessity gnawed at her pride. If this was a tool of mortal power — and it clearly held sway over their lives, judging by the number of urgent missives — then she had best learn to wield it.

  Tapping the gss at random produced only more chaos. Screens appeared and disappeared with dizzying speed. At one point she somehow conjured up a smiling cartoon fox and could not, for several long minutes, banish it.

  By the time she managed to reach something resembling a home screen, she was sweating slightly.

  The device's background was a photograph of Mira — her new self — grinning awkwardly with a paper crown on her head, one eye half-closed, clutching a gss of something orange and violent-looking.

  Nysera stared at the image, feeling both affronted and faintly impressed. Mortal life, it seemed, had not dulled this body's capacity for humiliating itself.

  Pushing past that indignity, she inspected the nyard properly.

  Crown & Hart Communications. Junior Brand Strategist.

  There was even a building pass attached — a pstic card with a bar code, as if she were no better than a crate of turnips being tracked and scanned.

  Nysera let out a long, slow breath.

  So this was her new identity: Mira Kensington, Junior Brand Strategist. No courtly title. No duchy. No power but that which she seized for herself. Her fingers tightened around the phone.

  Nysera wandered deeper into the ft, still barefoot, her every step sinking slightly into the tired carpet.

  The wardrobe stood half-open, revealing a pitiful arrangement of mortal garments. She leafed through them, lips pursed. Practical jackets, cheap knitwear, trousers with suspiciously peeling seams. A single dress cowered at the back — slinky, sequinned, and clearly worn once with great hope and even greater regret.

  At the bottom of the wardrobe y an umbrel with a broken spoke, colpsed like a dead crow.

  Nysera shut the wardrobe with a soft snort. So this Mira had not fallen from grace; she had simply never ascended.

  In the kitchenette, the cupboards yielded equally depressing treasures: chipped mugs, mismatched ptes, an unopened box of instant oats that had begun to expire. The fridge hummed anxiously to itself, its contents sparse and tragic — two sad pre-packaged sandwiches curling at the edges, a jar of off-brand instant coffee, and a half-empty bottle of wine so cheap it practically apologised for its own existence.

  Nysera closed the fridge door carefully, as if afraid it might crumble in protest.

  The side table, at least, offered something of interest: a thin work ptop, still open and blinking. The screen dispyed a spreadsheet so painfully dull Nysera almost wept on sight. Some kind of quarterly ledger — numbers, acronyms, notes punctuated by frantic excmation marks.

  Q2 Brand Campaign: Notes (DRAFT!!!)

  She tilted her head.

  Branding. Strategy. Campaigns. These were the new courtly arts, it seemed — but instead of lineage and alliances, the battlefield was attention and perception.

  A different war. But still a war.

  Nysera allowed herself a small, razor-sharp smile. Mortal life was vulgar, yes, but it had not abandoned its thirst for power.

  She straightened, surveying the ft again, seeing it not for what it was — a cramped, struggling existence — but for what it offered: a pce to unch her campaign. The woman called Mira Kensington had been a junior in some obscure mortal firm. Lower court, if it could be called a court at all. But every queen began somewhere.

  Nysera reached for the battered paperback on the bed, brushing dust from the cover with the same careful reverence she might have shown a relic.

  If this world would not offer her a throne, she would simply build one. From scratch, if she must.

  Nysera settled stiffly onto the edge of the narrow bed, the mattress sagging under her with a pitiful wheeze. The battered paperback — To Ruin You Tenderly — y at her side, its corners worn soft from much handling.

  She picked it up carefully, thumbing through the first few pages. The prose was florid, breathless, riddled with italics. Names began to unfurl — grand, sweeping names she recognised with a jolt: Vaelen, Crown Prince Darian, the White Veil.

  Her heart kicked against her ribs.

  There. Early on, almost casually mentioned: Nysera Altherys.

  Viscountess. High Mistress of the White Veil. Leader of a movement that had once terrified the gilded halls of court and rattled the gilded cage of the Church.

  Nysera's fingers tightened slightly around the book's spine.

  The Church had thrived on indulgence — carnal pleasure sanctified into holy rite, the devotion of flesh and wine. She had built the White Veil in proud, cold opposition: a doctrine of purity, of restraint, of control. Love, lust, touch — all rejected, not because she despised them, but because she believed they weakened the will.

  To deny the Church their most potent tools had been the ultimate act of rebellion.

  And for her conviction, for her discipline, this world had reduced her to—

  She flipped further, hands growing unsteady.

  Chapter Five.

  There it was. Her death.

  Sin not in glorious battle, not at the apex of a righteous cause, but by the hands of her pet. A man she had plucked from nothing, polished into a living weapon, and ultimately discarded when he dared to seek more than servitude.

  Nysera stared at the words, feeling their quiet violence like cold water down her spine.

  In the margins, Mira had scrawled a note in purple gel pen: ? “God, Nysera is SO iconic but sooooo stupid. You can’t control people forever, girl. They bite back.” Underneath it, a little heart doodle and the words “Still obsessed tho ??.”

  Nysera exhaled slowly through her nose.

  It was not enough that she had been sin by a creature of her own making; no, he had gone on to greater heights. Murdered his own brother. Waged a terror campaign that reshaped the realms. Died only in the final, climactic confrontation with the Saintess — the bright, smiling heroine who weaponised touch and charm with more mastery than any bde.

  Nysera’s death was nothing but prologue. A prelude to someone else's grand story.

  The book rested heavily in her p.

  If there was any consotion, it was that she had been defeated by a force worthy of the war — not by the Saintess directly, but by the monster Nysera herself had created. Like losing a tournament to the eventual champion. Small comfort. Bitter comfort.

  She looked again at Mira’s scribbled comment, feeling a strange, reluctant amusement tug at her mouth.

  Stupid. Obsessed.

  Perhaps those were not the worst epitaphs one could leave behind.

  Still, she thought grimly, if fate had deigned to resurrect her in a new world, she would not waste the second chance. She would not be a footnote this time. She would not be forgotten.

  Nysera closed the book with a soft snap.

  This world had no Saintess. No Goddesses. No Church of holy lust and divine sin.

  It had only her.

  And that would be enough to make the world burn.