Li Na had read enough stories to recognize the signs.
Truck-kun, cardiac arrest, tripping down the stairs, fiction loved its ridiculous methods of killing off protagonists only to have them wake up in a different world, either reincarnated or transmigrated.
At first, she used to laugh at how absurd those setups were.
Who dies by choking on a rice cracker and becomes a legendary mage?
Yet here she was.
Standing in the middle of a desert-like terrain that looked nothing like Earth, let alone her quiet little library.
And for the first time, those fictional tropes didn't feel so funny.
Because now… it was the only explanation that made any kind of sense.
Li Na's heart pounded in her chest as she began to check herself.
Hands trembling, she looked down, and froze.
"This… isn't what I was wearing."
Gone was her plain white T-shirt and the fitted black jeans she had picked that morning.
In their place, she wore black, black jeans again, but tighter, sturdier.
Her shirt was also black, tucked in neatly, and layered over it was a white lab coat.
'A lab coat?'
She tilted her head slightly, confused.
'Why am i wearing this?'
Although she worked in a lab.
She was a nurse, but what didn't make sense to her, was why she is wearing a lab coat, she didn't remember wearing one, and it didn't look like the one she use to wear.
This was different...
She blinked and stared down at her sleeves, brushing them with a thumb as if trying to confirm whether this coat was actually real.
It felt real.
Heavy.
Durable.
Like something designed to withstand heat, or maybe something else.
Still reeling, her hand absently moved up to her hair, a nervous habit she always did when she was overwhelmed.
She tugged at a strand and brought it down in front of her face.
The breath caught in her throat.
The strand wasn't black.
It was green.
"Shit…" she muttered under her breath, eyes wide.
It wasn't dyed.
It wasn't a trick of the light.
The color was vibrant and natural-looking, as if her hair had always been this shade.
Her fingers tugged again, harder this time, hoping it might snap her back to reality.
But no.
It stayed green.
Her heartbeat surged louder in her ears.
"It's real..."
The strange landscape, the unfamiliar clothes, the sudden hair color change, it all added up to one undeniable truth.
"I've transmigrated," she whispered, her voice hollow, like saying the words would make it more real.
Because it was real.
As real as the sand beneath her feet and the heat pressing against her skin.
This wasn't a dream or a hallucination.
Something had happened, something impossible, and now she was living the kind of story she'd only ever read about.
Before she could process the next thought, the ground trembled beneath her.
A low rumble echoed across the vast, barren plain like a beast growling from beneath the earth.
Li Na stumbled a step back as a gust of wind blasted past her, whipping her coat behind her and forcing her to raise her arm to shield her eyes from the swirling dust.
The force of it was terrifying, and sudden.
And just like that… it stopped.
The air stilled.
The wind died.
Everything became eerily quiet again.
Li Na slowly lowered her arm and looked out across the horizon.
The air was still thick with dust, but she noticed something strange now, something specific.
Far off in the distance, a column of sand was spiraling into the air, wider than any dust devil or storm she'd ever seen.
It stretched upward in a violent twist, and even from here, she could see the debris spreading outward in a wave, like something had detonated.
She didn't even think before saying it aloud.
"An explosion."
But the moment the words left her lips, something else struck her, an even bigger, scarier realization.
"Wait… where did I transmigrate to?"
It wasn't just about being in a new world.
That much was already terrifying.
But if there were explosions happening already, and if she was dressed in lab coat with unnatural green hair, then what kind of story had she been dropped into?
A fantasy world?
A dystopia?
A war zone?
A world filled with monsters?
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the rising sand, her fingers instinctively tightening into fists.
A strange sensation welled in her chest, part fear, part excitement.
This was no longer a story she could close at the end of a chapter.
There was no author to write her next move.
Whatever world this was, it was hers now.
And she needed to figure out which story it is, before it was too late.