"Mo-Xian, help me. Avenge me. They did me wrong. They killed me."
The voice didn't come from the air around me, it vibrated from within my own ribcage. I was trapped in a void so absolute it felt as though I had been swallowed by the very earth I had spent my life excavating. I was blind, suspended in a cold, suffocating silence.
"They killed me. They killed us. Our entire family..." The voice—my own voice, yet layered with a grief I had never known—rippled through the dark.
"Avenge us."
I tried to scream, to ask who she is, but my jaw was frozen. I couldn't make a sound, no matter how hard I fought to open my mouth. Instead of words, a series of muffled sobs and a chorus of ghostly whispers filled my head.
A sudden, sharp sensation like a jagged blade dragged across my throat. My heart felt as though it were being squeezed by iron claws.
The pain was too real to be a dream. It was a searing, white-hot agony that burned through my veins. Then came the flashes—a spasm of memories that weren't mine, yet felt as vivid as my own childhood.
I felt the sting of a cold palm across my cheek, the mocking laughter of a sister, and the cold, indifferent gaze of a man I was suppose to love. Every embarrassment, every betrayal, and every ounce of terror she had felt in her final moments flooded into me.
"First miss! please, First miss, wake up! It is this servant's fault...I should have watched you more closely!"
The sound of frantic weeping shattered the darkness. My eyes snapped open, but the world didn't return to the dust excavation site. I was staring up at the underside of a heavy, silk-draped canopy. The searing pain in my throat had faded into a dull, raw ache, leaving me with a thirst so intene it felt like I had been swallowing sand.
"W—water..." I croaked, the sound barely a whisper.
A girl, perhaps thirteen years old with her hair tied in twin buns, bolted upright from the side of the bed. Her face was a mask of relief and tear-streaked exhaustion.
"Miss! You're awake! Heavens be praised, you're finally awake!" She scrambled toward a small, glazed ceramic bottle.
"This servant will get your water, Miss! Just a moment."
As she poured the water with trembling hands, I noticed a man standing in the shadows of the room. He wore a long, dark robe of heavy hemp and clutched a lacquered wooden box. A name surfaced in my mind like a bubble rising through the river.
"Physician Liu" I knew him. Or rather, she knew him
The truth crashed down on me with the weight of a mountain. I had transmigrated.
Based on the architecture and the style of the Physician's robes, this was the Great Yan—The dynasty that preceded the rise of the Taixuan Emperor.
As an archeologist, this was my area of expertise, but seeing it in the flesh was terrifying. This was a world I had only known through broken ceramic pot and dusty scrolls. A place where human life was a currency spent by the powerful, and where a woman's survival depended entirely on the whims of men.
"Miss, Physician Liu is here to check on your progress," the girl said softly. This was Qin-er, my maidservant.
The physician stepped forward and bowed low. The movement was stiff and riualistic.
"Allow me to check your pulse, Eldest Miss."
I nodded slowly, extending a wrist that looked far too thin and delicate to be my own.
He pressed three fingers against my skin, his eyes closed in concentration. After a long silence, he offered a small, weary smile.
"The fever has finally subsided. The Eldest Miss of the Tang Mansion is truly fortunate, few survive a high fever that burns as hot as yours did." He stood a began scribbling a list of medicinal herbs onto a slip of paper. He handed it to Qin-er, giving her instructions on how to decoct before bowing once more and making his exit.
I watched Qin-er lead him out, my mind spinning. I was left alone in the silence of the room, lying on a hard wooden bed cushioned in silk.
Everything was clear now. The skeleton I had touched in that tomb...the one wrapped in coarse cloth while the others wore gold...that was Tang Mo-Xian. We shared a name, and that accidental contact at the excavation site must have been the bridge that pulled my soul into her dying body.
But this wasn't the body of a skeleton. Not yet.
The memories continued to settle, heavy and bitter. In her original life, the life I had just 'inherited' — she became the concubine of the Third prince, Zhao Zhen Qi. She had been a pawn, betrayed by her own flesh and blood—her sister—and the husband she had tried to serve.
They had poisoned her, then silenced her forever with a sword to ensure she couldn't speak of their crimes.
That explained the phantom pain in my throat. I was feeling the echo of her execution.
I looked up at the intricate carvings of the bed's rafters. Based on the date in my head, I was currently Thirteen years old. seventeen years away from the day of my death.
Seventeen years to change the ending.
In the future, I was an archeologist who uncovered the life of the dead. In this life, I would have to be a strategist to stay among the living. I had to avoid the disasters written in history books.
I had to stay away from the Tang Family's schemes, and most importantly, I had to ensure that the Third Prince, never even learned my name.