Her words were coated in a layer of faux compassion. Alongside the misleading statements, she gestured like a dainty little princess. It was a bit… painful to watch. You know… kind of like when you see people in real life trying to unironically act like they’re anime characters. The more I watched her prance around, the closer to my limit, I was pushed.

My limit of not laughing, that is. I knew laughter of this caliber would be bad for my heart, so I decided to try to calm my nerves and cool it down.

The guards began slowly dragging me out of the room, while I grit my teeth to not begin giggling at her like a lunatic.

Even as I was pulled further away, I could see the men rushing to their little canary of a woman, praising her courage and telling her she did the right thing. I finally lost it when she began sobbing in their arms about how scary it was.

“PHUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” I scream-laughed like a maniac, causing the guards to squeal in horror as they picked up the pace of gently escorting me along the apparent castle corridors.

She was such a terrible actress. It was like the entire group was a damn comedy routine. I suppose love does truly blind people.

… Or maybe I just got reincarnated into a world where the average IQ of the people matches the room temperature… In Celsius, mind you.

…

The castle prison was honestly quite creative. The cells were carved straight into the bedrock underneath the building itself.

It was miserably wet, so my feet made quiet splashing noises simply from walking around. I guess there must have been a water vein running through the ground somewhere nearby. I felt like if I listened hard enough, somewhere in the distance the faint noise of water falling could be heard.

It was freezing, so I did my best to sit on a wooden plank held by metal chains burrowed into the walls. It was my ‘bed’, I guess.

At this point, it was pretty clear I got reincarnated. This was no dream. How could I tell? I did the pinch test. The most scientific method of finding out if you’re in a dream.

I feel it might have been some kind of trashy harem novel… or a game of similar caliber. The only strange part was how I had no memory of this.

Either way! Trashy harem novel or not, I was happy.

You might be curious to why anyone would be happy in such a bad situation, but if you’d be provided the opportunity to guess three times, I’m sure you’d get it right.

Anything was better than my old life. ANYTHING. Even though my body was somewhat weak and malnourished, it was still infinitely better than my old body.

I WAS JUST DOGPILED BY A BUNCH OF MEN IN ARMOR AND I DIDN’T DIE! I even laughed! In my past, just a giggling fit could result in complications of all kinds!

Scrawny or not! This new body was way better than anything I had had in my life! AND BLACK HAIR?! I could totally pull off a witch-look with a body like this!  

Have you ever had an experience of being really troubled and stressed out over something? Getting over a major source of mental strain comes with an incredible feeling of freedom. Imagine that times ten, and I’m sure you’ll understand how I was feeling at the moment.

            “GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! I AM HEREEEEEEE!! I LIVEEEEEE!”

To the dismay of the guards, I’d sometimes spend hours doing nothing but screaming my lungs out to test if my heart would be troubled by overexerting myself.

Or maybe I just wanted to mess with them a little bit.

            “HYAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!! I CAN DO ANYTHING!!!” I screamed.

“EEEEEKK! P-PLEASE DON’T HURT MEEEEE!” One of the guards squealed in horror.

He was a massive pile of muscle wearing heavy armor. A juggernaut, to say the least! He seemed to have a heart of an elephant, to the point where he was terrified of mice like myself.

They were clearly afraid of me for whatever reason. Maybe because the golden-haired girl called me a witch?

What the hell kind of witch doesn’t even know how to cast spells. It was more than obvious enough I was being falsely accused, but these idiots clearly couldn’t care less either way. Might be I was a scapegoat for some kind of political reasons? Who knows…

“WHOOOOOO KNOWWWWWWWSSS!!!” I screamed with joy while the guard was whimpering in the furthest corner away from my cell.

“Why did I agree to this… Mom always told me it’d be honorable to be a knight… but nobody said anything about it being this scary…!” I could somewhat make out what the man was muttering to himself, causing another burst of laughter to escape my new body.

Being locked in a prison is highly underrated. It’s honestly not bad at all.

The little sparkles from before were still here, causing everything to look incredibly vibrant. To pass the time, I began observing the beforementioned lights more closely.

They seemed to be affected by the wind! When people walked past the cell, the little glimmers would drift around like tiny dust particles in the draft before disappearing.

I could somehow manipulate the direction they were shifting in by moving my hands around. It was quite exciting! Magical even! I truly felt like a witch making the sparkles move around. Admittedly, my accuracy with them wasn’t particularly good.

OH! Random note I made while stuck in the cell! Did you know mold tastes a bit like dirt? I discovered this while I was served a delightful plate of moldy bread. Why do I know what dirt tastes like? A girl has to have her secrets.

Ahem… What I’m trying to say here, is that despite the bleak circumstances I was faced with, I felt happy. It was such a departure from the repetitive and bland nature of my past. Everything was new and exciting. I could jump around and scream as much as I wanted, so I felt ironically free despite being jailed.

            “HEY GUARD!!” I shouted.

            “Hieeeekkk!!” He replied in his manly voice.

“Tell me what these sparkles are, please!” I figured I should be direct with my words, or he might just avoid me like always.

            “Nnnnnn…” The man sobbed in his corner, trying his best to ignore me.

“Come on! I promise I won’t eat you if you tell me! OTHER WISE!! I’LL INVADE YOUR NIGHTMARES AND BURN MYSELF FOREVER INTO YOUR SOUL!!”

Admittedly, I might have gotten a bit too excited about the whole… witch accusation thing. Don’t judge me, okay? I could never really go to anime conventions and stuff to act out all of my shameful role-playing dreams, so I wanted to indulge in such a bit.

“PLEASE DON’T!! PLEASE!!” The man was a mess of tears as he rushed to me. “I’LL ANSWER! I’LL ANSWER TO ALL OF YOUR QUESTIONS! PLEASE HAVE MERCY!!”

I honestly felt almost bad for him. Almost. “Well! Explain to me what these glowing little sparkles are then!” I nodded at him sternly, waving my hand around, leaving a trail of the tiny fleeting glimmers behind.

            “T-tiny… sparkles…?” The man sobbed quietly.

“Yeah. They’re a bit hard to see, but they’re all over the place. These.” I repeated the gesture.

The man slowly grew more and more troubled. He seemed confused and tried shaking his own hand before his face. “I… I don’t quite… understand what you mean…” He quivered fearfully.

“You mean… You can’t see them? They’re all over the place. The little shinies!” I began insisting a bit, which in turn obviously got the guy scared again.

“I’M SORRRYYYYHHH!! PLEASE DON’T KILL MEEEEE!” The man began ugly-crying like his entire life was over…

After managing to calm him down and send him away, I came to the conclusion the man couldn’t probably see the sparkles. It was a bit odd. They were so incredibly present everywhere. Maybe I was just going crazy? Or perhaps my eyes got damaged in the reincarnation process somehow.

Sadly, my moment of pondering over it came to a swift halt as I was dragged out. The dress I had worn previously was filthy and torn to the point it caused the guards to grimace as they saw me.

I soon found myself standing before a judge in a hall decorated in a royal red and gold. People were standing to the both of my sides on high balconies of sorts. In front, there was the judge behind a podium.

He was an old man wearing glasses and had noticeable dark circles under his eyes, which emphasized the rather ugly, smug smirk to his face. It was more than obvious enough, that this wasn’t going to be a trial.

This was going to be a witch-trial.

For anyone not in the know of what this means. Witch trials are a thing we had in my past life too. I remember reading a bunch of stories in books about them. Basically, the trials were only trials in the name. They were merciless accusation festivals by religious zealots who just really didn’t like someone in town. They were a way to get rid of unwanted people in the “NAME OF GOD!”. These trials were famous for how one-sided and unfair they were. There were even records of children as young as five-years-old being accused of being witches.

These real-life villainess accusation events generally ended with the “witches” being burned to death or thrown into rivers.

In modern day, I guess the more comparable thing to a witch trial is when people make baseless accusations on social media, and idiots online start supporting those baseless accusations, simply because they disliked the person being accused to begin with and wanted to see them suffer. Evidence is not necessary in these witch trials. In fact! It’s highly COUNTERPRODUCTIVE! So, even if I were to ask for evidence, I’m sure they would come up with an excuse to why they don’t need any. I grit my teeth and waited anxiously for what was to come.  

A quiet uproar slowly cascaded over the hall. The blonde princess had entered from a balcony to the right into the same area the judge was sitting in. She spoke something to the man, who seemed almost shocked by her words.

“You should pray to whatever demons you believe in. You truly are fortunate to have been tried in our kingdom.” The judge began speaking, but I didn’t quite understand what he meant by all this.

The door to the room opened behind me, and two armed men pushed a trolley with something covered by a white cloth.

“You’ve been given a choice by our merciful princess.” The wrinkled judge’s voice was full of contempt. He had a croaking… frog-like presence to his vocal output.

Seemed like calling this a witch trial was an overstatement too! There was no trial. I was being dealt punishment without even being heard out straight off the bat.  

Upon having the cloth pulled off, a strange rock was revealed. I think it was a rock anyways. It was quite smooth, almost like it had been smoothed out by water. Back in the hospital, my parents sometimes brought me a few from the beach… That was… when they were still happy and hopeful.

“Place your hand upon this stone and swear you’ll graciously move out of our kingdom. You’ll be pardoned for your wrongdoings if you do… Or be exiled into the poisonous swamps of Ravica for all eternity!” His voice boomed through the hall quite dramatically.

Now, this was obviously suspicious. I was basically told to just nicely go away with no repercussions whatsoever, or be exiled to the swamps of… whateverica? Why would anybody ever go to the swamps?

Or…so I would have said…if not for that stone in front of me. Now, I called it a stone just a moment ago, but I genuinely don’t know if that was truly the case.

It was oval in shape, kind of flat and extremely dark. In the center of it was a notably eerie drawing or painting of some kind. It might have also been carved into the stone itself, to be totally honest.

 The strange dark piece was about the size of a grown man’s chest. The pattern on it looked a bit like a hand, but it had too many fingers. I counted almost ten. Every finger had a little crudely drawn eye at the tip, all the eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling.

Suddenly, this felt a lot less like a harem novel, and a lot more like a horror one. The air surrounding the rock was completely gray, as if it was absorbing away the saturation from everything around it.

There were two guards standing next to it, and one of them looked noticeably pale. Upon looking at him more closely, I noticed the sparkles coming out of his body were being drained into the rock. Their vibrancy disappeared as soon as they got close enough to the strange object, slowly disappearing and turning to colorless nothingness as they made contact with the dark piece.