New Start

Emilia woke to darkness and the feeling of her surroundings closing in on her. In the distance she heard voices but couldn't make out what they were saying.

Suddenly a blinding light invaded her vision along with a distant sound of an infant crying. Vaguely realizing that the cries were her own, caused by the burn of the light to her sensitive eyes, she looked around to find that she was in what seemed to be a hospital room. She was being carried by a woman with brilliant violet hair and beautiful blue eyes that were focused on her.

Beside the woman stood a man, with hair as white as snow and mesmerizing golden eyes, cradling a small bundle of what seems to be blankets. Unused to her senses, Emilia can only see blurry figures and hear noises in the distance, unable to understand what the man and woman were saying.

A few days passed and Emilia, had finally had a chance to gather her bearings. It seems she was reborn as Emilia Reneé Von Jaeger and the man and woman she first saw were her parents; Duke Alfonse Von Jaeger and Duchess Laura Von Jaeger née Reneé. She had a twin brother, who honestly looked nothing like her, lying in a cot beside her. Nicholas Von Jaeger had white hair and bi-coloured eyes, one blue and one amber, while she had violet hair and amber eyes.

She found that she didn't have much control over her body so her movements were very slow and jerky and she couldn't speak properly either. So all that seemed to be left to do until her body developed sufficiently was ponder her situation.

Emilia found her new environment very familiar, especially the names of her brother and herself. Faced with this sense of familiarity, Emilia was forced to think about a past that she would rather forget, in order to understand the origin of the sense of familiarity. Memories started to flood her consciousness...

~

It was another monotonous day at work for Leah. The only consolation was that she would have to hold on for just a little longer, soon she would be married and will take over her family business.

What was her grandfather thinking? Setting marriage as a condition for the status of heiress...

Though the fact that she'll be marrying the man she loves was enough to make up for the unreasonable demand.

After she was done with work she spent a little more time in her office playing her favourite game of the time; Four Kingdoms: Gemini City. It's a one-of-a-kind game that allows a very in-depth customization of character and provides many interesting and engaging paths to walk including both "good" and "bad" societal statuses. In all its uniqueness it lacks creativity in the most marketed aspect of the game; the realm of love.

Leah plays for a while and completes the route that she was on, after which she packs up and heads home. She originally had a meeting scheduled in another city so she had informed her fiancé that she wouldn't be home today as she had to fly out. A last minute change in plans allowed her the chance to go home and surprise her soon-to-be-husband.

She opened the door to her house, noticing that all the lights were off. Assuming that her fiancé retired to bed early she left her coat and travel case in the lounge and walked up to their shared bedroom to change and sleep.

As she stood, about to open the door, she heard noises from the other side. Fearing the worst but expecting the most dangerous, she grabbed the gun she kept with her and opened the door with a bang, praying that it was not what she thought it was.

Upon witnessing her fiancé lying in bed naked with her equally naked sister above him she dropped the gun and took a slight step back, horrified. He was the first, and only, man she loved in her life and he was in bed with her little sister who she trusted most, only after her grandfather.

The pair looked up at the noise and then froze like a couple of deer in headlights. Her fiancé pushed her sister off of him and stood up using the sheets to cover himself.

He took a step forward with one hand reaching out as if to show he meant no harm. Well he certainly did a lot of harm for someone who didn't mean to.

"L-Leah, love, I can explain!" He stuttered out as he approached her, one step at a time.

"Don't!" She spat, finding her footing and standing firm in place. Her expression freezing over as was her heart.

"Don't call me that. It's CEO Preston to you. Don't take another step forward and lord have mercy if you do." He froze in place with one arm holding the sheets in place while the other was still facing her.

"Sister I- he-" Her sister tried to explain the situation but was cut off.

"How long?" Leah sent a frosty look to her sister then directed her frigid gaze on to her soon-to-be-ex fiancé. "How long has this been going on?"

"Love! No i-it's not what it seems! I-" He tried to deny only to be on the receiving end of the most chilling gaze he ever received from the woman standing in front of him.

Disgust welled up in Leah's heart along with hurt and anger. Maintaining her glacial gaze she redirected her question to her sister who was shivering, trying to cover herself with the little part of the sheet she held.

"T-two months..." She said, tears welling up in her eyes, her frame shaking like a leaf.

Two months... I've been oblivious to this for two months... He hasn't loved me for two months... Maybe longer, who knows how many women he's been with...

"...broken." Leah muttered and then gathered her strength to restate more assertively.

"This engagement is now broken. I have no relation whatsoever to you," She glared at her ex-fiancé with frost seeping into her heart, promising to get her grandfather to rescind his condition, and then shifted her gaze to her sister. "As for you, you are dead to me."

She started to walk away when she heard a shrill scream, she turned around just in time to see her sister pick up the gun she dropped and shoot it into her chest. Leah let out a scream from the pain shooting through her body.

~

It felt like an eternity passed before the sensation stopped and she blacked out, only to wake up here...

Seven months passed and Emilia could now move about more freely. Her neck was more developed, allowing her more mobility. Over the last few months she noticed that her father rarely interacted with her. She was used to this, however. Because in her past life her parents had never cared for her, the only people that did were her grandfather and little sister. At least that was before her sister betrayed her. She broke her heart more than her fiancé ever could.

Blinking away the memories that flashed past her eyes, Emilia looked around the room she was in. For most of the day she was left with her brother and she was to spend her time playing with him. This, however, was not how Emilia wanted to spend her time so as soon as she could move about freely she found her way to the library, which was quite magnificent if she may say, of the Jaeger house. Luckily it wasn't very far from her room.

She spent most of her time studying about magic, the world and its history, and when she wasn't reading she was playing with her brother who was the cutest thing in the world to her. But cute or not, the memory of her sister's betrayal caused her to be unable to trust him or anyone else. So, despite being nice to Nicholas, she was distant and felt almost unreachable to him.

The first book she read was, coincidentally, titled "The Four Kingdoms" and this triggered her memory of the game she used to play in her previous life. Testing her theory, she tried to match up everything she knew of the game with what she knew of this world along with things that were mentioned in the book. The book turned out to be a brief history of The Four Kingdoms, which was provided to players before letting them play, to give them a better idea of what they could and couldn't do in her previous life. The world she was in was called "Vaile", similar to how her previously world was called "Earth".

Upon learning this, she matched up her name along with her brother's to characters in the game to find that she was reborn as the main villainess in the game. Most of the routes lead to her downfall at the hands of either the capture targets, her family or the heroine.

The relationship between Emilia (in the game) and her family was quite a strained one; her father seemed to favor her brothers over her, her older brother hated her for causing him to lose his mother's love, her twin barely had contact with her due to the strict schedule his father set for him and her mother was the only one who constantly checked up on her. The indifference of her father, however, caused her to grow cold and distant and her older brother's disdain caused her to develop an inferiority complex.

The worst part was, the villainess in the game (we'll call her game-Emilia) was very much like her. She was cold and distant but polite and ladylike, the perfect noble lady, thanks to the only good influence in her life at the time, her mother. Some of her negative points were that she could become very possessive and she had little to no interest in magic though her aptitude was high. She would much rather be a scholar than a magician or fighter. The reason she became a villainess and harassed the heroine was because the heroine went after people she loved and she didn't think she deserved them. Game-Emilia thought that her loved ones would leave her for the heroine, which turned out to be true.

Emilia could understand why harassing the heroine would be wrong in the case of her choosing her brothers or friends but she could not agree that the heroine was right on one route: her fiancé. Emilia could not understand how people could hate game-Emilia for trying to stop an unknown woman (the heroine) from seducing her fiancé. Wouldn't anyone hate to have their fiancé stolen by a stranger?

Recovering from the shock of learning she was in a game world, Emilia quickly worked on creating a plan of action. She noted down everything she remembers about the game from her past life on a simple black book with gold borders that she got from one of the maids. First things first, she decided to address her immediate surroundings so she wrote down everything she knew about game-Emilia's family.

Her mother was the 2nd princess of The Kingdom of Clubs and her father was the only son of a great General of The Kingdom of Hearts, he followed and became an even greater General by suppressing a massive attack that the game didn't elaborate on. These two titles, along with the dukedom that her father inherited brought the status of the Jaeger family to be second only to the Royal family. Game-Emilia had two brothers; Nicholas, her twin, and Raymond, older than her and her brother by 5 years, both were capture targets...

After noting down everything she remembers, Emilia formulated a plan of action to avoid her death and those of her loved ones:

She wouldn't actively do anything she didn't want to just to try and ensure some plausible future doesn't come to be. The flow of the events have already changed just by her being aware of a past life. She doesn't need to be rash with what she does just to change things.

Emilia would live life as she wants and if she comes across a potentially dangerous situation, she would deal with it before it could threaten her. Being a curious soul, she would play with magic and learn about the fantastical world and possibly see quite a bit of it in the process. The fact that she knew one of her potential futures had already changed the flow of events and so she'll just let them play out and react accordingly.

Deciding that that was enough for the day, she placed the book behind a row of other books on one of the lower shelves on the bookcases in the library so no one would find it.