You don’t even remember the impact—only fragments. The blinding glare of headlights cutting through the night. The shriek of brakes. The sickening crunch of bone against steel. And then—nothing. Silence so deep it swallows you whole.

When you open your eyes again, you are not on asphalt. There is no twisted wreckage, no shattered glass, no flashing red and blue.

Instead—there is a canopy above you, its silken fabric embroidered with golden dragons. Once resplendent, now faded and moth-eaten, their coils unraveling into threads. The air is thick with incense, acrid and cloying, mingled with something coppery and raw.

You smell blood.

It takes you a moment to realize—it’s your blood.

Your hands, slender and pale, are slick and trembling, crimson staining the wrists where veins had been opened. The sheets beneath you are soaked through. The body you inhabit had only just died.

You stagger upright, knees weak, breath shallow. The room seems to tilt, shadows lurching across lacquered walls. And then, like water breaking through a dam, memories pour into you—memories not your own.

Concubine Soo-hwa.

The unfavored one. Mocked by the other women of the inner court, left to rot in the coldest quarters of the harem, ignored by the King whose glance she once longed for. No family name of weight to shield her. No dazzling beauty to ensnare him. No power, no allies, no protection. She had lived nameless. She had died forgotten.

A girl erased from history.

And yet—you remember something else. Something impossible.

This story is not unfamiliar.

Because once, in the world you came from, you had read it. Scrolling through glowing words on a cracked phone screen, curled beneath your blankets while the city outside roared. You had seen her name there, a footnote in the bloody rise of a monarch. Concubine Soo-hwa—“the concubine who died quietly in her quarters.”

No voice. No chapter. Barely a sentence.

But now—she is you.

You stumble toward the polished bronze mirror and stare. A face stares back—beautiful, yes, but drained of its spark. Eyes ringed with exhaustion. Lips pale, nearly bloodless. Hollowed cheeks. It is the face of someone already surrendered to death.

You should scream. You should crumble to your knees, beg to wake up, plead to return.

But instead—something stirs inside you. A spark.

Because you know this world.

And you know the King.

King Jiwoon of Hanjin.

They called him The Wolf on the Throne.

He carved his way to power with steel and flame. In one night, he slaughtered three brothers, their blood spilling across the palace stones. Ministers who dared defy him were plunged screaming into iron cauldrons, their remains displayed before the city gates. Entire clans were outlawed for the faintest whispers of treason, families driven to butcher their own kin to prove loyalty.

He is merciless. He is unyielding. He is fear itself, wrapped in human form.

And yet—every page of the novel had described him as unbearably, ruinously beautiful. Skin pale as porcelain, flawless as jade. Eyes gray as storm clouds roiling over a sea, unreadable, endless. A voice low and lethal, cold enough to silence the boldest general.

Men bent the knee before him. Women both feared and burned for him. His empire trembled beneath his hand.

And now—you are his concubine.

Unfavored. Unwanted. Already dead once.

But not this time.

This time, you will not die nameless. This time, you will not be forgotten.

This time—you will make the cruel King look at you.