Subaru woke up with the overwhelming urge to hug himself, which was weird. Not just weird—fucking bizarre. The feeling clawed at his chest, this deep, insistent warmth, like he needed to grab himself, hold himself, kiss himself—what the actual fuck? His brain recoiled so hard at that last part that he physically shuddered. If he didn't know any better, he'd say he was having some wildly questionable thoughts about himself. Gross. Nope. Next topic.
He needed water. No, something cold. Something to snap him out of whatever this was. He sat up, reaching for where a bedside table should have been—except there was nothing there. His fingers brushed air. He frowned.
The bed wasn't there either.
The room wasn't there.
It was just… open sky. No walls, no ceiling, no sign of civilization. Just vast, endless green stretching around him like he had woken up in the middle of some fantasy novel's grassy plains. Except the air felt thick, too thick, like it wasn't just air but something heavier, darker.
A slow-moving black mist curled around his legs.
Subaru's heart did this awful lurch in his chest. His first thought was that he was dreaming. Yeah, had to be, right? The alternative—he didn't even want to consider it. He blinked hard, willing reality to shift back to something he understood.
And that's when he saw them.
Hundreds. Maybe more. Rows and rows of hooded figures, all kneeling in perfect synchronization, their heads bowed, motionless like statues. The sight of them stretched far into the horizon, a sea of unmoving, robed bodies.
Okay. Alright. No need to panic. But also? This was spooky as hell.
Time to get out of here.
Subaru moved. And something on his chest moved with him.
He stopped so abruptly that his brain almost crashed. A horrible, deeply cursed thought popped into his head—Ranma 1/2. Oh no. No, no, no. He didn't want to look. He really didn't. But he glanced down anyway.
Breasts.
He had fucking breasts.
And he was wearing some kind of weird black gown, long and flowing, the material unnervingly soft against his skin. His hands twitched at his sides. No. No thinking. Just leave. He started tiptoeing backward, eyes darting to the left, then right, searching for an exit.
But the hooded figures moved with him.
Not their bodies—just their heads.
They rotated with him, their faces hidden under their hoods, like a synchronized wave of silent, eerie attention.
Okay. That was officially the creepiest thing he'd ever seen.
He swallowed hard. His throat was dry. Carefully, cautiously, he leaned forward, just a little, peering closer at the nearest figure. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman under the hood. Swallowing down the growing anxiety, he forced himself to speak.
"Uh… hello?"
His own voice startled him. It was high-pitched, melodic, almost… musical. He clenched his jaw. Don't think about it.
"What, uh, what exactly are you guys doing?"
The figure in front of him jolted upright with a sudden, jerky motion. A woman's voice shrieked:
"Our Witch has spoken to me!"
Subaru jerked back, his foot catching on his absurdly long gown. Not good. Not good at all. His gut was screaming at him to run, but where? The hooded figures were everywhere, stretching into infinity.
"My head trembles! What a joy! How insanityfully beautiful! Ah, so joy!"
That one didn't just scream—it howled, his voice shrill and delirious. The speaker, a green-skinned man (was that even a man?) with eyes wide and bulging, twisted his face into an expression so contorted it barely looked human. And then—oh god, oh god, no—he threw himself forward and pressed his mouth against Subaru's bare feet.
Subaru yelped, jerking back, but the guy clung, fingers gripping his ankles like a lifeline.
"Who—who the hell are you?!" Subaru managed, shaking his leg violently to get the guy off.
The man—creature—whatever—let out a strangled sob, as if Subaru's voice alone had blessed him. His whole body trembled like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
"I—I—I am your most devoted follower—Betelgeuse Romanée-Conti!"
The name slammed into Subaru's brain like a brick. He went stiff. It sounds like a villain's name!
Oh. Oh fuck.
This wasn't just bad—this was catastrophically, astronomically fucked.
Betelgeuse's face twisted into a euphoric grimace, eyes rolling back as if just saying his own name had sent him into rapture. He was still on the ground, still clutching at Subaru's feet, his body trembling like he was experiencing divine enlightenment.
Subaru's stomach twisted.
"And who… exactly do you think I am?" he asked, dreading the answer.
Betelgeuse's eyes snapped open. His whole body went still. A moment of silence stretched between them. Then—
"You jest!" he wailed, his voice cracking like thunder. His fingers clenched so hard around Subaru's ankles that it hurt. "O, cruel jest! But of course, of course! Such is the incomprehensible grace of our Witch! Such is the maddening, boundless beauty of her will! Even in jest, my heart trembles!"
He lifted his hands toward the sky, his whole body arching backward like a man possessed.
"How could one such as myself be blind to your magnificence? Your beauty transcends sanity! Your existence bends all reason! Ah! To witness your radiance! Your endless, boundless, insane love! O Witch of Envy, my most beloved, my one and only, my reason for being— Satella!"
Subaru's blood ran cold.
Witch of Envy.
His brain stalled, desperately trying to piece it together, to force logic onto a situation that was rapidly spiraling past comprehension. His chest ached. His head spun. His hands—when did they start trembling?
No, no, no.
It couldn't be.
Except…
The hooded figures. The way they all turned to him, moved with him. The voice. The dress. The way Betelgeuse groveled at his feet.
Subaru swallowed.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Ē~Ē
Subaru had fallen asleep in his room after a long night grinding Honkai Star Rail, eyes burning, fingers aching, brain half-melting from staring at the screen for too long. It was supposed to be a quick session. Just one more mission, one more upgrade, one more roll—but the next thing he knew, exhaustion hit like a truck, and he crashed onto his bed without even plugging in his phone.
And then he woke up here.
Not in his room. Not in his bed. Not in any place remotely familiar. Instead, he was sitting cross-legged inside a dimly lit, makeshift tent that smelled weirdly like damp wood and something herbal. Outside, beyond the thick fabric walls, he could hear them—voices chanting, murmuring, whispering in tones too reverent for comfort. He didn't even want to look. He already knew what was out there. The cultists.
A lot of them.
The realization had come slow, in bits and pieces. First, there was the thick, clinging mist that coiled around him like a second skin, shifting unnaturally whenever he moved. Then, the feeling—this awful, unnatural, stomach-turning urge to kiss himself. It was disgusting. Wrong on so many levels. He had jolted up, hugging himself out of pure, horrified instinct, only to feel something soft press against his arms.
His chest.
That was when he looked down.
That was when he saw it.
Breasts. A woman's body. A black gown, flowing and soft, pooling around his legs. His hands were smaller, fingers delicate. He had gone perfectly still, hoping, praying, that somehow he was just seeing things, but deep down, he already knew.
This wasn't his body.
The cultists outside had made that much clear the second he had stepped out and they all collapsed to the ground, heads bowed, voices rising in an eerie, synchronised worship.
Satella. They had called him Satella. Subaru was inside the body of a witch.
And then there was Betelgeuse.
That freak was practically vibrating with happiness. He had cried, wailed, thrown himself to the dirt, rambling incoherently about his devotion, about his love, about how long he had waited for this moment. And then—oh god, Subaru had to fight the bile rising in his throat—Betelgeuse had gleefully informed him that he had slaughtered an entire village. Thirteen hundred people.
Thirteen hundred people.
To summon him.
Subaru had nearly blacked out. He had felt it, the edges of his vision tunneling, his body swaying dangerously. Every ounce of common sense in him screamed to throw up, to scream, to run—but no. No, he couldn't.
He was surrounded.
He was a witch.
Or at least, they thought he was.
If he lost it now, if he did something stupid, they'd figure out something was wrong.
So he swallowed it down. All of it. The horror, the nausea, the raw, clawing revulsion creeping up his throat.
Instead, he forced himself to do something simple. Something human.
He asked for water.
Just water. A small, normal request. Something basic. Something that would make him feel like a person again instead of whatever the hell this was.
Betelgeuse had looked ecstatic.
And then he had disappeared, only to return dragging an entire fucking drum of water behind him.
Subaru stared.
Then kept staring.
It was massive. The thing was easily bigger than him, an industrial-sized container of water that looked like it had been stolen straight from a supply depot. It sloshed with every movement, dangerously close to spilling all over the ground, but Betelgeuse held it steady, his hands gripping the sides with unnatural strength.
Subaru swallowed hard. "...What the hell is that?"
"Water, my most beloved! The purest of waters, gathered with the utmost care for your most divine being!"
"A... cup. I wanted a cup of water."
Betelgeuse blinked, as if the thought had never even occurred to him.
"A cup?" He frowned. "Such a minuscule offering is unworthy of your greatness! Why, your presence alone graces this wretched land with sanctity, and for one as lowly as myself to present you with anything less than the finest abundance—!"
Subaru cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. You're devoted, very devoted, super devoted. Look, I appreciate the enthusiasm—" He didn't. Not even a little. "—but I just want to drink some damn water. And I'd rather not drown myself trying to do it."
Betelgeuse gasped, slamming a hand over his mouth. His eyes welled up, full of trembling, teary awe. "A jest! A jest most exquisite! Ah, what a joy! To think that even in all your boundless, ineffable wisdom, you would choose to grace us with humor! Such insanity! Such unfathomable, ungraspable, unthinkable love!"
Subaru resisted the urge to slap himself.
Of course. Of course, everything he said was going to be twisted into some kind of religious experience.
He took a deep breath.
Patience.
If he was going to get through this, he needed to keep his cool.
"Right. Whatever. Just… find me something smaller, alright?"
Betelgeuse straightened up immediately, hands still clasped over his mouth.
"As you will it, so it shall be!"
And with that, he turned and dashed out of the tent, moving with a speed that was honestly kind of terrifying. Subaru let out a long, slow exhale and dropped his face into his hands.
This was bad.
So, so bad.
He was trapped in the body of Satella, worshipped by a cult of absolute lunatics, and responsible—indirectly, but still—for the deaths of thirteen hundred innocent people.
And all he wanted was a damn glass of water.
The drum sat there, still half-full, water sloshing gently from when Betelgeuse had dragged it in. Subaru hadn't thought about it at first, too busy trying to process the sheer absurdity of the situation, but now, sitting alone in the tent with only the distant murmuring of cultists outside, his eyes drifted toward it. The surface was smooth, dark, reflecting the dim light of the tent like a poor man's mirror.
A thought crawled up his spine, slow and uneasy.
What did he look like?
Subaru swallowed.
His hands moved before his brain could stop them, pushing himself up on wobbly legs. The gown he wore shifted, the fabric brushing against his skin in a way that still didn't feel right, but he ignored it. Instead, he stepped forward, peering over the edge of the water, staring at the reflection staring back at him.
A woman.
She was beautiful. Painfully so.
Long, flowing silver hair cascaded down her shoulders, strands curling at the ends like silk caught in a gentle breeze. Her eyes—Subaru's eyes—were an unnatural, glowing violet, framed by dark lashes so long they almost seemed unreal. Her face was delicate, ethereal, the kind of beauty that felt out of place in reality, too symmetrical, too flawless. Her skin was pale, nearly translucent under the dim light.
And then, there were the ears.
Long, pointed, unmistakably elven.
Subaru exhaled slowly.
So this was Satella.
The Witch of Envy. The being feared across the world, blamed for the Great Calamity, spoken about in hushed, terrified whispers. The same person every last one of those hooded lunatics outside worshipped with blind, fervent devotion.
And that person was him.
His stomach twisted into something complicated.
She was definitely his type.
That thought came unbidden, slipping past the walls of his brain before he could stop it. And for a moment—a horrible, fleeting moment—he felt himself lean in, just slightly, just enough that his reflection drew closer, enough that the mirror image of himself—the silver-haired, violet-eyed beauty staring back at him—looked so close, so—
His lips pressed against the water.
A soft splash.
The surface rippled, distorting her—his—face.
Subaru jerked back like he had been electrocuted.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, what the fuck.
His hands shot up to his face, wiping furiously at his mouth, heart hammering in his chest. He had kissed himself. He had fucking kissed himself. Technically, he had kissed Satella, but it was still him, and that made it so much worse. He groaned, barely stopping himself from physically cringing out of his own body. No, absolutely not. This was officially the worst thing he had ever done, and nobody would ever, ever know.
No more looking at reflections.
Ever.
Subaru backed away from the drum like it had personally offended him, gripping the edges of his gown with trembling fingers. Okay. No more self-gazing until he figured out how to have some goddamn self-control. This wasn't some weird selfcest anime trope. This was his life. A very real, very horrifying situation that could go south fast if he wasn't careful.
First things first.
He was a girl. A woman. Satella. That much was unavoidable. He had elf-like features, an aura of thick black mist that followed his every movement, and an entire cult ready to throw themselves off a cliff if he so much as sneezed in their direction. The facts were stacking up, and none of them were good.
And then, the biggest, most glaring issue of all:
These people? They were almost certainly not the good guys.
Even before Betelgeuse's gleeful murder confession, Subaru had already gotten bad vibes. The synchronized bowing, the way their heads turned in eerie unison, the insane devotion—none of this screamed "morally upstanding citizens." And now that he actually knew what they had done? Yeah. If there had been even a sliver of doubt before, it was completely incinerated.
Which left him with one option:
Act like he totally understood everything.
Nod. Be quiet. Act stiff. Don't say too much. Act like a wise, ominous game NPC who only speaks in cryptic one-liners. The last thing he needed was to give them a reason to start doubting their almighty Witch. If they got even the smallest inkling that something was off, he had no doubt that things would turn ugly fast.
Subaru took a deep breath.
Okay. He could do this.
Probably.
Ē~Ē
Subaru needed information.
She could sit around in this musty tent, drowning in confusion, or she could do something. And doing something meant gathering intel. Figuring out where she was, who she was supposed to be, and what these freaks actually wanted.
The problem was that she couldn't just ask.
If she started questioning things like some clueless idiot, they'd catch on real fast that something was wrong. Witches—at least the terrifying, world-ending kind—weren't supposed to have amnesia. And the way these people worshipped her? If they thought for even a second that she was some kind of imposter, she didn't know what they'd do.
No, she needed to be smart.
Which meant acting like she knew exactly what was going on.
So she called for a gathering.
The cultists assembled quickly, a sea of kneeling figures, their heads bowed in complete, unnatural synchrony. The air felt heavy with their devotion, thick and suffocating, like their mere presence was enough to drain the oxygen from the tent. Subaru took slow, measured steps in front of them, her black gown trailing behind her, the mist that clung to her body shifting with every movement.
She had to sell this.
Had to act like an all-knowing, all-powerful figure. Like a villain in a game, cold and untouchable, the kind that spoke in cryptic riddles and smiled like they knew the ending before the story even began.
"Before I move forward," she said, her voice steady, smooth—thank god this body had a naturally eerie, melodic tone—"I wish to test you."
The cultists twitched, an excited murmur rippling through them.
Betelgeuse, closest to her, practically vibrated in place. "A test! A trial! O most beloved! How your wisdom shines upon us even in the darkest of nights!"
Subaru barely resisted the urge to cringe. "Yes," she said, waving a delicate hand in the air. "A trial. A quiz, if you will. To see how well you have committed yourselves to my teachings."
She needed to do this carefully. Get the information she needed without giving away the fact that she had no damn clue about anything.
She turned slightly, her gaze sweeping over the hooded figures. "Let us begin. First… who am I?"
Silence fell for a moment. Then, a collective intake of breath.
"The Great Witch of Envy!" they chanted, voices rising in unison. "The Devourer of Witches! The Mother of Madness! The Eternal One!"
Subaru kept her face still. No twitching. No flinching. Even as those words sent a horrible, crawling sensation down her spine. Devourer of Witches? That didn't sound good.
"Very well," she said, nodding slowly. "And where am I?"
"A land unworthy of your presence! A land that will know your glory!"
That was useless. "Be more… specific "
Betelgeuse spoke first this time, stepping forward slightly, his body trembling as if standing too close to her was an overwhelming experience. "We are on the outskirts of Lugunica, most beloved! Your devoted followers have made a home in the shadows of this world, awaiting your return!"
Lugunica.
The name meant nothing to her, but she stored it away, nodding again, pretending like it made perfect sense.
"And why," she continued, "do you worship me?"
The cultists reacted instantly, heads bowing lower, bodies nearly trembling with the force of their devotion.
"You are salvation! You are chaos! You are the end and the beginning!" one of them wailed. "You who devoured the false ones! You who swallowed half the world in your embrace!"
Subaru's fingers twitched at her sides.
Half the world?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
She took in a slow breath, keeping her expression neutral. "Expand on that," she ordered. "The… eating of other witches. And half the world."
There was a pause, like they were stunned that she was even asking. Then Betelgeuse, eyes wide and gleaming, took a step forward. "Ah, your divine wrath! How it reshaped the world! The other Witches, pretenders, frauds, fools who dared stand against you—they were nothing before your love! Your embrace consumed them, as it did half the land! Such a beautiful, insanityful display of devotion!"
Subaru nodded.
Internally, she was screaming.
She ate people.
She ate witches. She ate half the world.
What the fuck?
What the actual fuck?
She resisted the urge to clutch her stomach like she was about to throw up. Instead, she lifted her chin, looking down at them like this was exactly what she expected to hear. "Good," she said slowly. "And what is your goal?"
Betelgeuse's entire body spasmed. "Your return!" he cried. "Your complete and glorious return to this world! To spread your love to every corner of existence! To bring your embrace to those who deny you! To erase the falsehood of this world and remake it in your name!"
Subaru nodded again.
She wanted to run.
Erase the falsehood of the world? What the hell did that even mean? Did these people want her to start a war? Wipe out entire nations? Restart civilization?
There was no good way to interpret this.
She had been dumped into the role of some world-ending horror, worshipped by a fanatical death cult, and these lunatics wanted her to finish what they thought she had started.
She took another breath, her fingers curling into the fabric of her gown. "I see," she said. "And what of this world? The leaders of it. Is there a king?"
The question felt important. If she was supposed to be some legendary terror, she needed to know what kind of power structures were in place. Who was ruling, who she was supposed to be against, who she needed to avoid.
One of the cultists shook their head. "There is no king," they said reverently. "The Sage Council has ruled in his absence."
"The throne remains empty," another murmured. "But a selection has begun. Five candidates, chosen to claim the title."
Subaru filed that information away quickly. So the throne was up for grabs. That meant instability. That meant a power struggle. And that meant she needed to be very, very careful about where she went and what she said.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting it all sink in.
She was a feared Witch, a supposed devourer of magic beings, worshipped by a cult that had no problem slaughtering entire villages in her name. This was a world with no current king, where five people were vying for the throne. And these lunatics wanted her to return in full force and "embrace" the world in her supposed love, which probably translated to "destroy everything."
She nodded again, slowly, deliberately, her expression unreadable.
Then, just for good measure, she let out a quiet, knowing chuckle.
A villainous chuckle.
The cultists shivered with delight.
Internally, Subaru wanted to die.
But externally? She was the Witch of Envy. And she was going to survive this.
Ē~Ē