DYBA 00

Prologue

**Simona Imperial Calendar, Year 1701, April 2nd.**

A warm, spring afternoon.

The daughter of the Duke of Eizens, Cierra Eizens, passed away from an incurable disease.

During the quiet funeral, just before the priest of the Envi Church was to seal the coffin, he recited the final eulogy.

“May Cierra Eizens, who left this world at the young age of 20, rest peacefully in the embrace of Lord Envi.”

With those words, numerous nobles rose to their feet to pay their respects to Cierra. Yet, not a single one truly wept for her.

Only the Duke and Duchess were stealing tears for Cierra’s death.

It was right at that moment.

“Meow.”

Suddenly, a single black cat intruded upon the solemn funeral.

The cat indifferently passed by the people staring at it in bewilderment and approached Cierra’s coffin.

*Boing.*

The cat, having tapped the coffin with its front paw, promptly plopped down and perched on it, resting its chin.

In this unforeseen situation, the priests, who were about to move the coffin to the pre-dug grave, all halted simultaneously.

They couldn’t just shoo this cat away.

“Uh, what should we do, Head Priest?”
“Guh… Why did it have to be a black cat with red eyes…? We have no choice but to wait for it to leave.”

Black cats with red eyes had long been considered sacred animals by all four major religions.

And so, the funeral was temporarily interrupted by the cat’s untimely intrusion.

But this went on for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour…

After a full two hours had passed, a voice filled with concern finally erupted.

“The cat is sitting there as if guarding the coffin. Could this be the will of the gods?”
“Seeing the cat so steadfast surely means something.”
“Ahem. Excuse me, young Duke. Perhaps we should postpone the funeral until tomorrow?”

*Buzz, buzz.*

The once quiet funeral swiftly became noisy.

The Duke and Duchess and the temple priests hastily discussed what to do with the funeral in this unexpected situation.

All but one. Only Lucian Eizens, Cierra’s half-brother, steadfastly kept his eyes on the coffin amidst the commotion.

‘……What was that?’

His eyebrows twitched upward in puzzlement. For some reason, he thought the coffin had shaken slightly.

‘Must be my imagination.’

If the coffin had shaken, the cat wouldn’t be sitting there so peacefully, right?

Lucian decided to dismiss it as nothing important. But no sooner had the thought finished than—

*Clunk!*

A sound came from the coffin again. This time, it was loud enough for everyone at the funeral to hear.

“Wh-what was that?”
“Did the coffin just move? For real?”

The buzzing grew louder. Among them, some nobles had turned pale, hesitating and stepping backward.

“I shall take a look.”
The Head Priest shushed them and took a step towards the coffin. At that moment, once again—

*CLUNK!!*

The coffin jolted as if lightning had struck from the sky.

“Gasp!”

As if his ever-resolute expression had been a lie, he too scrambled backward in a hurry. Amidst the confused crowd, the only one remaining composed was the cat sitting on the coffin.

As the coffin began to creak and open in earnest, the black cat finally hopped down to the ground.

The moment its red eyes fully reflected the coffin—

*Scccc—*
*Squeak—*
*Creeeeeak—!!!*

With an eerie sound, the coffin opened.

Simultaneously.

“Pffah! Hah, hah… Really, she’s really alive?!”

Cierra Eizens, who until just moments ago had clearly been a corpse, abruptly sat upright in the coffin, her face perfectly fine.

Moreover,

“Now *this* is even more like a novel plot?!”

She was even uttering strange words while staring eerily into empty space!

Faced with this bizarre and, in a way, mystical scene, the nobles, and even the priests of the Envi Church, were utterly terrified and could only flee.

***

**The day before the incident occurred, Eizens Ducal Mansion.**

I, Cierra Eizens, was diligently in the process of dying.

They say when a person stands on the threshold of death, their life flashes before their eyes.

“Cierra, my child! Snap out of it! It can’t end like this!”

Along with my mother’s desperate voice, the pain that had once driven me mad had long since become hazy.

Now, what unfolded before my eyes was the life story of me, ‘Cierra Eizens’.

Me, who had always been sick from an incurable disease since birth.
Me, who was ultimately abandoned by the fiancé I loved with all my heart.
Me, who acted viciously towards his beloved, my only friend.
The joy of receiving an offer to adapt a super-hit novel into a visual medium was short-lived, as I was hit by a truck and met my end…?

‘……Huh?’

Wait a minute? Something seems wrong. Since when was there a novel? And what’s this about a ‘visual adaptation offer’?

Besides, I’m dying from an incurable disease, not from being hit by a truck or whatever.

Now that I think about it, the appearance of the woman in the flashback was also strange somehow.

‘Black hair and black eyes?’

I’m a person with silver hair and purple eyes.

‘Is it allowed to show someone else’s life in your final flashback?’

What kind of situation is this?

Forgetting that I had been trembling in fear of death just moments before, I made a baffled face.

“Sob, merciful God Envi! Please save Cierra, I beg you!”
‘Mother. Far from saving me, you’re showing me something strange…’

I tried everything to escape this bizarre flashback, but it all ended in failure.

In the end, I ended up watching the life of some strange woman, not the life of Cierra Eizens.

The woman’s life was somewhat pitiful. Having lost her parents young and shuffled between relatives’ homes, she was thrust into society the moment she became an adult.

She got into the university she wanted but ultimately gave up attending and chose to work instead.

She couldn’t ask her relatives for more help and was busy finding a rental house to move into immediately.

‘It seems she was being harassed at work.’

Yet, she didn’t quit. She needed to save money diligently now for the dream she had nurtured since childhood.

And that was…

‘To become a writer.’

She wrote in her spare time while working at the company, but her work never quite made it to a contract.

She was often rejected for cliché plots or a writing style unsuited to the genre.

But in the year she turned 26.

As if by divine revelation, she wrote a novel based on a dream she had.

The result was an absolute smash hit! The novel’s success went without saying, and offers for webtoon adaptations poured in from everywhere.

“You did it, me! Who raised you so well~? That’s right, me! Hehe!”
‘Huh? What…?’

Seeing the woman’s happily laughing face, my heart swelled with emotion without me even realizing it. Even though I was dying, the corners of my mouth crept upward.

But that too—

*Screech—*
*CRASH!*

On a bright, sunny afternoon, right after handing in her resignation and on her way home, the moment she clicked on the visual adaptation offer email, a truck that had ignored the traffic signal slammed into her. It was the end.

Seeing the woman’s body floating up amidst the vivid red liquid, I found myself thinking this:

‘I was finally about to be happy!’

A life buried in hundreds of millions was right before my eyes, and the injustice made me feel like I could die.

‘…What the.’

In that instant, I was able to realize a few things in a flash.

‘This woman was me before my rebirth?’

And.

‘This is the world inside <Ezel: The Saintess’s Men>, isn’t it?!’

The fact was, I had been reborn as a character in the novel I wrote.

And not just any character, but an early-game villainess who, obsessed with one of the sub-male leads, acts viciously towards the heroine and gets eliminated!

‘But what’s the use of realizing this now? I’m dying right now!’

I’ve committed every possible atrocity against the heroine, and all that’s left for me is death?

If only I had lived well and died of old age, I might not have regrets.

‘Who dies at a mere 20 from an incurable disease?’

I never even set up a terminal illness setting, so why is this hardship happening?

No matter how much of a villainess she is, this is truly too much.

‘I can’t end like this! Is anyone there? Please, someone save me!’

No voice came out, but I pleaded more desperately than ever before in my heart.

Fortunately or unfortunately, gods actually existed in this world. Four of them, no less.

I didn’t care which one, I just hoped one of them would give me a chance.

‘My dream was just to live a long, healthy life as a humble writer!’

Did my desperate cry somehow reach the gods?