On her eighteenth birthday, the car taking her to a banquet crashed.
Her parents, her brother, and she herself all ended up in intensive care.
Then a voice asked her: Would she be willing to help another world?
The Yanling Continent: beastfolk tribes, primitive farming, and half the population starving to death every winter.
She went. She taught them to grow crops and raise livestock, leading beastfolk who didn’t even know how to keep a fire burning to clear land, dig irrigation canals, and fight wars. All the beasts looked to her as their leader.
In five years, she united the wild lands as one.
On the eve of her coronation, everyone knelt outside the palace, waiting for her to put on the bloodstained crown.
She remembered how her family had looked after the accident, the machines running in intensive care, and the voice that had promised it could save them.
“Your Majesty, Yanling needs you.”
But she lowered her head and looked at her hands, still stained with earth.
“I have a family waiting for me to come home.”
In later years, a temple to the Beast World’s empress was built.
The statue enshrined there always faced east.
