CHAPTER 1
Snap—!
Sunlight spilled across the bed as the maid drew back the curtains.
I was still sitting there, slumped against the headboard, staring into nothing.
“Did you have trouble sleeping again today, my lady?”
A maid whose face I didn’t recognize asked cautiously, watching my mood.
I didn’t even have the energy to answer. I waved her away with a flick of my hand.
She hesitated, then said she would bring breakfast and left.
With hollow eyes, I slowly looked around.
Once again, I had woken up in an antique, old-fashioned bedroom—
so spacious it almost felt cold.
“Haa…”
Overwhelmed by despair, I pressed my burning eyes tightly with both hands.
I’d lived a fairly decent life.
I couldn’t promise I was going to heaven, but at the very least, I’d never lived with blood on my hands—hands my parents had raised clean and white.
So why…
why, of all things, did I have to transmigrate into this body?
Why do I have to have this nightmare every single night without fail?!
A surge of anger burst out of me, and I raked my fingers roughly through my hair.
Transmigration.
For some people, it’s a sweet dream.
For me, it’s more like walking down the street and suddenly getting hit by bird droppings.
Because the novel I transmigrated into was The Saintess’s Salvation, a book I’d only read begrudgingly after Kim Deoksu kept nagging me.
The story begins when viral mist spreads through the Sacred Zone cemetery, awakening skeletons.
From that moment on, the Sacred Zone is cut off from the Empire and becomes a zombie-infested area.
Four male leads are trapped inside, fighting zombies, teetering between life and death, and forging bonds of camaraderie.
When they’re mentally worn down to their limits, the Saintess appears, purifies the zombies, and the story ends in a everyone-survives-happily ending.
‘Up to that point, none of it had anything to do with me.’
The problem is that I am the noble lady who gets trapped in the zombie zone with the male leads, steals the survival supplies, and runs—
and on top of that, the younger sister of Hayton Arios, the man responsible for the zombie outbreak.
I’m nothing more than a narrative device meant to die at the end of the male leads’ pursuit—a neat, satisfying execution.
‘Me? Redria? Of all people, Redria?!’
On my first day here, I was so shocked that I tried to jump out a window.
I’d heard somewhere that if you die after transmigrating, you return to your original body.
“My lady! You only just fell into the pond because you didn’t want to attend the prayer ceremony—please come to your senses!”
“If you’re going to die, kill me first and go!”
I failed, stopped by the Count and Countess and everyone around me.
…Honestly, it was only the second floor. I’d probably just break my arms and legs, so that wasn’t going to work anyway.
Next, I tried to run away.
But escaping as a noble lady doesn’t work as conveniently as it does in novels.
The maids managed all my jewelry—my escape funds—and no matter how I disguised myself, they recognized me instantly.
“Where do you think you’re going, my lady?”
After the suicide attempt fiasco, the servants watched me like hawks.
I was caught trying to escape through a window.
Caught again trying to flee through the basement.
In the end, with no attachment to my past life and no way to escape, I gave up and shut myself away.
But then there was this problem—
how am I supposed to survive when I can’t even sleep because of these nightly nightmares?
The future rushing toward me was terrifying enough, but the lack of sleep alone was driving me insane.
I buried my face in my hands.
‘Please… someone just knock me out.’
After transmigrating, I learned how precious sleep really is.
As the days passed, everything blurred together—what I ate, what I wore, what I did.
In hindsight, both my suicide attempt and escape plans failed because I carried them out half-delirious from exhaustion.
“Haa…”
Still sleepless today, I lifted my head—and suddenly my eyes landed on the calendar on the bedside table.
Today marked one full week since I transmigrated.
‘Is my aunt doing okay…?’
At sixteen, after growing up in a single-parent household, I lost my mother too and ended up relying on my aunt.
She treated me like her own daughter, but… well, you know how it is.
A stone that rolls in can never replace one that’s already rooted there.
So when I turned twenty, I borrowed the security deposit and moved out on my own.
After drifting through a series of events starting in high school, I lived as a part-time worker well into my mid-twenties, with no real dreams.
‘The day I transmigrated was the day she was supposed to bring me side dishes…’
I let out a shallow sigh and blinked my dry, burning eyes as I picked up the calendar.
“Come to think of it… how long until the prayer ceremony?”
Counting the days, I realized exactly thirty days remained.
‘Thirty days…’
Half-asleep, I retraced the original story in my mind.
‘How did Redria die again?’
Now that I thought about it, this was the first time I’d ever reflected on the nightmare.
I’d spent all this time avoiding the ending, refusing to think about it.
In the dream, I trembled in terror as light burst from a magic circle, flooding my vision.
In the blink of an eye, blood sprayed like a fountain—
my limbs severed before I could even scream.
The memory sent a chill down my spine, sharp enough to wake me fully.
‘Right. That wasn’t just a nightmare.’
It was Redria’s end in the original story.
Redria is me.
And the nightmare is my future.
At this rate, I’ll either die exactly as written, be trapped in the zombie zone and turn into one myself, or barely survive only to be executed because of Hayton.
‘…Wait. Can I really afford to waste time like this?’
The realization made panic surge through me.
I slapped my cheeks twice—smack, smack—hard.
Rubbing my stinging face, I forced my eyes open.
‘Get it together. Even if I can’t go back to my original body, I can’t die.’
My life is too precious for that.
‘So… how do I survive?’
I pushed my exhausted, stiff brain into motion and began thinking as hard as I could
