Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!

BOOK 1

THE QUEEN’S CRASH LANDING

Queen vs. The Twist

Every tale needed its shadow — the twist, the thorn that made heroes bleed, the reason they had to power up at all. Because honestly, without a little suffering, what was left?

A comedy? How very pedestrian.

Eydis had skimmed through enough epics to see the patterns: the underdog rose, destiny got quoted like it was legally required, a forced love story between a doorknob and a doormat, and somehow, the power of friendship saved the world.

She would have yawned if her eardrums had not been assaulted by an explosion somewhere outside. She reclined on what remained of her throne, legs crossed, head cupped in one hand while the other tapped the armrest impatiently, as if she were waiting on painfully late guests.

More rubble, more smoke. But all she could think was:

“Where was I?”

Right. Right. The heroes’ shadows.

Villains.

Villains were spoiled for choice: incineration, drowning, parboiling, dismemberment, or a tidy heart attack for the unimaginative.

Some stories really had no sense of payoff.

She admired the black gloss on her nails, a colour perfectly matched to her night-silk gown. Cliché would have called her the—

Oh.

“Maybe,” she decided aloud, “I’m the twist.”

A fresh blast shook her castle, a dramatic applause she had neither asked for nor appreciated. She rolled her eyes. Of course the “Virtuous” Saintess and her Prince-Charming-Lite sidekick were early. Conquering the realm would have to wait.

Father had schooled her in alliances, invasions, and the dark arts of kingdom budgeting (shudder). None of it, apparently, prepared her for the ultimate weapon: the power of... loooooooooove?

Plaster collapsed. Eydis flicked her wrist, suspending the fragments before they ruined the gown, then whisked them out a broken window. Dress saved. 

Castle…

She scowled. "Another budgetary nightmare.”

The double doors buckled, then burst. In stepped the Saintess’s sidekick, who looked like he had tumbled straight off the cover of a third-rate romance novella: hair, eyes, plate, and probably his ego, all gleaming silver.

"Surrender!” Damien commanded. “Your reign—”

“—of evil has met its end, light wins, something-something ‘the people’?” Eydis finished for him. “Give me a percentage. How close?”

“That’s—I—” He caught himself and scowled.

“You could work on your subtlety. Still, I suspect demolishing the place saves on remodeling costs.” Eydis spoke in a calm, detached tone, even as her face risked revealing the anger slowly gathering.

Thinking about why she was angry hurt her head, so she simply quit thinking. Stick to the script.

What script?

The idea iced her nerves, a quiet signal that something nearby wasn’t right. She began to glance over her shoulder when a crashing clang redirected her attention. 

The knight hefted his broadsword, his holy emblem blazing with golden light, probably meant to blind her with self-righteousness.

“A necessary evil!” He really said it. With feeling. His eyes were suspiciously damp.

She hadn’t even done anything yet.

“Return her to me,” he pleaded. 

Her?

Rising smoothly, Eydis advanced, her studded-leather heels scarcely brushing the floor. 

“The Saintess? Send a portrait next time. I prefer to know whom I’m accused of kidnapping.”

"Liar! You’ve unleashed darkness upon this world and stolen its purest light!” He lunged and struck, swift and heavy-handed, exactly as she had expected.

Hello predictability, my old friend.

Eydis slid aside, shadows uncoiling from her fingers into twin serpents that snapped at his throat.

He deflected with raw light, muscles straining. Veins stood out along his bare arms.

“Darkness isn’t just an absence of light. Silence isn’t the absence of sound,” she said, easing another ribbon of shadow toward his face. “Both were here long before you were.”

He jerked left but not far enough, a smoky slash marked his cheek. “Nonsense!" he snarled. “Darkness is a choice!”

“Choice?” she said, then chuckled, because the word sounded preposterous coming out of her mouth.

Blade and serpent crashed again, shuddering the ruined hall. Light against dark. The same battle, over and over and over.

But then, predictability gave way the moment the floor split apart, not from his holy sword and not from her shadows.

Something else. Ancient, hungry, sentient.

It swallowed the last fragile light of Mythshollow, and darkness closed around her.

Then came small, flickering glows, like fireflies scattered through the night. But these were no fireflies. She moved her hand through the lights, frowning. Glyphs, though none she recognised.

Dusty gold threads laced the glyphs together, then flared and coiled like vines, searing her skin. Pain lanced through her mind. She clenched her jaw and tasted blood.

But her final thought was…

So this is the twist.

Time lost its shape. It stretched, collapsed, looped, curled into knots, and, at last, seemed to forget it was meant to exist at all. Eydis was falling, and even her stomach and her head had given up protesting.

Of all deaths, this was certainly more insulting than a heart attack.

Was this her sentence to descend without end?

The silence expanded until a voice pierced it.

At first it was a faint, distant whisper beneath her ringing ears. Then it grew sharper, clearer, urgent.

‘There is more to you than this, Eydis! Remember your purpose!’ 

She didn’t bother wondering if it was male or female. The voice was both and neither. It felt like a location, as if she were standing beside a sea she’d only read about, waves brushing against a shoreline that didn’t exist in her kingdom.

Somehow comforting. Somehow annoying. Because the voice sounded so certain, even when she couldn’t quite place why or how it sounded so familiar.

Remember? That nearly made her laugh. Her memory was a library: meticulously sorted, stored, never erased. 

Purpose, though, had never been her engine; curiosity had. The refusal to rot in Mythshollow’s endless grey. She had chased whispers of golden fields, of azurean skies. She had fought and conquered, each victory another step toward the Kingdom of Light, the Celestial Empire.

But then there was her. The Saintess. That name again.

To Eydis, she had always been nothing more than a title. A name spoken in prophecy. A concept, not a person, nor someone she should actually know.

So why did Damien speak as if she should?

Had she forgotten something? No, that wasn’t possible. Right?

Something yanked her upward, or perhaps outward. Gold seared behind her eyelids. She braced for fire, pain, divine judgment.

Instead, her first sensation was… a smell.

Not brimstone.

Cleaning fluid… 

…sliding down her face?!

The second thing she noticed was the voice. Whiny, high-pitched, and deeply perplexing. No one had spoken to her like that in… well, ever.

“Bet you’ll think twice before hogging your homework, you four-eyed freak!”

Eydis, for once, didn’t disagree. Four eyes really were pushing it. But wait… was she the target?

Blurry vision smeared the world into a watercolour mess. Eydis’s hand flew to her neck. Still attached. Good start. Floating around bodiless while listening to this nonsense for eternity would have been a new low.

The whining continued.

“You know,” she said, or tried to. Her voice sounded higher than usual. “Stress does terrible things to your mind. And skin, apparently.”

The vague shapes around her shifted. She squinted. “Although in your case, it might just be too late.”

A brief silence.

Then a laugh, cut off mid-breath, replaced by an outraged gasp.

“Are you calling me old? You. Are. DEAD. DEAD!” The flood of curses and threats barely registered before a boot slammed into her side.

Ah. Not dead. Just painfully, inconveniently alive.

“Wonderful,” she muttered. “Ow.”

The kicker shifted above her. “Shut up, freak.”

Another girl whined, “Tiffany, seriously, why are you even wasting your time?”

Eydis didn’t bother reacting. Her fingers brushed against something cool: spectacles.

Four-eyed… oh. 

Well, that was new.

She slipped them on, and the world clicked into focus. A group of not just girls, but teenagers who, judging by their smug posture and identical green blazers, were the kind that thought themselves important by default.

Students.

The real horror hit when she looked down.

Her fingers traced over the stiff, scratchy fabric of a blazer identical to theirs, a plaid skirt skimming her knees. She lifted a hand to her hair. Pulled back into a lopsided ponytail. Messy.

Offensive.

Working through the knots, she found something tangled there. She pulled it free, and… 

… an orange leaf fluttered between her fingers.

Maybe she had died.

Eydis tried to get up, her limbs complaining as if they were strangers to movement. Nothing about this felt right.

Not this world.  

Not this body.  

And where was Damien?

Tiffany sneered. “Where do you think you’re going, freak?”

“Does this freak have a name, or do you just lack creativity?” Eydis asked.

Tiffany’s expression soured. “Cut the crap, Eydis.”

"Eydis, you say?” She smiled, letting a hint of her canines show. “Interesting.”

A scream sliced the air before Tiffany could fire back.

Students froze, face paled, necks craned. Eydis tracked their gaze upward…

And the sky peeled apart.

Here we go again. First the ground, now the sky?

It was still up for debate whether this was hell, but the jagged, uneven tear above wasn’t promising. It looked more like deep claw marks, as if something massive had been trying to rip its way through reality itself. And it did.

The eye appeared. Slowly.

A mountain-sized sphere of veined flesh, forcing its way through the gap. Its pink pupil glowed, bleeding unnatural light across the sky.

Eydis raised a hand, willing the shadows to rise. But... nothing answered. No tendrils of darkness. No power.

Only absence.

Her breath hitched. She stared down at her hand. It was rough, dirt-streaked, blood crusted beneath her nails.

For the first time, she felt it. That cursed, useless thing.

Fear.

Drawing a breath, she clenched her jaw, and looked back. The eye was still there, but the tear was gone. And now, she finally noticed something else.

Beyond the eye.  

Higher. 

The sky.

Vast. Unbroken. A deep, endless blue. Wisps of cloud drifted lazily across it, just as they had in the stories she read.

A laugh escaped her, perhaps bitter, perhaps wondering.

So this is my silver lining.

She had no power now. Did that mean she’d fall like every villain before her? Maybe. Maybe not.

But she had never been one for easy endings.

And the Queen of Shadows didn’t believe in inevitabilities.