Summary

Eris never expected anything unusual to happen that morning. She only stepped outside to grab a package she assumed was another boring video game delivery that didn’t meet her standards.But the moment she picked up the sleek, weighty box sitting perfectly centered on her doorstep, a strange chill rolled down her spine. There was no return address. No shipping label. Only her name, written in elegant strokes of ink—too deliberate, too intimate.

Inside was something she should not have been able to touch, let alone own:

a pristine VR cartridge for Eclipse Hearts, the game banned across the world.

Everyone knew the stories. The game was infamous for going beyond immersive—players suffered blackouts, nerve damage, crippling migraines, hallucinations, and in some whispered corners of the internet… death. All copies had been recalled, destroyed, erased. No one sane would keep one.

So how did hersexist?

And why… why was it sent to her?

Logic told her to call the police. Instinct told her to throw it away. But curiosity—sharp, hungry, reckless and her inner collector ways—told her to see for herself what made the game so dangerous. Eris already had a VR headset collecting dust. She justified it as research. As caution. As a one-time peek.

The game opened on a breathtaking world of light and flowers. Lush fields. Gentle breezes. NPCs whose eyes sparkled with unsettling realism. It felt safer than the rumors suggested—almost comforting. Almost normal.

Until the glitch.

The sky flickered like a heartbeat failing. A spike of pain ripped through her skull. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even scream before everything went dark.

When Eris opened her eyes again, she wasn’t in her bedroom.

She was lying on silk sheets in an extravagant canopy bed—one she recognized instantly.

Marie Margaret’s bed.

The infamous villainess.

The woman whose cruelty shaped every tragedy in *Eclipse Hearts*.

The character players were meant to kill.

Eris sat up, horrified, staring at hands that were not hers, hair cascading in rich waves the wrong color, and violet eyes staring back from a gilded mirror across the room. She had seen Marie Margaret countless times on-screen… but never like this. Never with her heart pounding inside this borrowed ribcage.

When she stumbled to her feet, a maid entered and asked if she needed anything. Eris opened her mouth to say she wasn’t Marie. To explain the mix-up. To claim this was all a mistake—

But the second she tried to lie, a searing pain tore through her stomach. Blood filled her mouth, hot and metallic. She choked, collapsing to the floor as crimson splattered across the polished tiles.

This wasn’t just a game mechanic.

It was a curse.

One Marie Margaret was rumored to have… but its true cause had never been revealed.

Now trapped in the villainess’s body, unable to lie without bleeding, Eris must survive political schemes, dangerous romances, and the cold, enigmatic male lead who watches her too closely—as though he knows she doesn’t belong here.

Someone sent her this game.

Someone put her in Marie’s place.

And in a world built on deception, the villainess is the only one who suffers for telling the truth.

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