Chapter Text
Chapter 1
When she was about fifteen, her mother sent her to a therapist because she simply couldn’t express herself. They had reached a point where mother and daughter no longer understood one another—not because they argued, but because they hardly spoke at all.
The teenager had wrapped herself in a stubborn, impenetrable silence.
She only answered questions, and even then with the bare minimum of words. Holding a conversation with her back then was an obstacle course. The truth was that she simply had nothing to say. She liked to sit somewhere and observe her surroundings—landscapes, people, anything really. She needed solitude. She had always been a quiet child, but adolescence had been a turbulent period in which she withdrew deeper and deeper into herself. She became asocial, a loner. As an adult, she was still one, though not to such an extreme.
The therapist had been her family’s last hope to coax her out of her shell, to understand her needs. She went to those sessions like a convict marching to a sentence. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want him to “analyze” her, to understand her, to imagine he could know who she was.
The funny thing, looking back now, is that he had probably seen straight through all her lies and unspoken truths. He had simply adapted to her. And whether she liked it or not, he managed to make her talk—about herself, her feelings, her life.
She had walked into his office seeing him as an enemy. She had walked out of their final session heavy with sadness, as though saying goodbye to a member of her own family. The memory of those afternoons now always brings her a small, soft smile and a spark of warmth.
The memory of a simpler time.
One day, her therapist handed her a small, empty blue notebook. She remembered flipping through it in confusion, half expecting to find notes about her inside. He only smiled and explained it was for her alone, to use however she wished: writing, drawing, even tearing out the pages if that helped. Writing things down, he said, could help her focus, escape, grow. She no longer remembers his exact words—probably because, as usual, she only half listened.
Ah, teenagers.
They never listen.
For a long time after that, she didn’t touch the notebook. She shoved it into the chaos of a desk drawer, buried among pens, school supplies, and forgotten things. And then, one evening during homework, she pulled it out. She couldn’t explain why she ended up with a pen in hand and the notebook opened to the first page. She just… started writing, almost automatically:
Dear Diary,
My name is Anaïs and I am 15 years old.
She stopped right after that, feeling ridiculous and childish. Who writes a diary at fifteen? She never had before, and she wasn’t about to start now. Her life wasn’t interesting—let’s be honest, the life of a regular French high schooler rarely is. Feeling duped, she tossed the notebook aside, determined to forget it existed.
She had overlooked one key aspect of herself: her ability to overthink everything.
She brought the notebook to her therapist and, for the first time since seeing him, she actually talked to him.
Well… complained, at first.
She told him his diary idea sucked and she was way past that kind of thing. He listened with that annoyingly knowing smirk and a chuckle that cut her rant short. She had the impression he was laughing at her. It made her furious, and he had to quickly defuse the situation before she exploded into a full teenage meltdown.
“I never said it had to be a diary,” he reminded her gently. “You can write whatever you want—your dreams, ideas, a Christmas list, a story. Anything that brings you joy or crosses your mind.”
Strangely, that felt like a revelation.
Back then, reading novels, comics, and manga filled her daily life. Stories were her escape hatch from reality—her cocoon of tranquility, where her imagination could roam free and she could become someone extraordinary: magical, powerful, or simply popular. The truth was that she struggled to accept herself, to live in the present, to imagine a future. She was little Anaïs, shy, overweight, with glasses and acne. The memory still makes her cringe.
The idea of writing a story where she could be the hero thrilled her. And she had just discovered the world of fanfiction online. She hated finishing a book with no sequel, or watching a main character fall for someone she despised… so inserting herself into the story? That was exciting. And liberating.
Manipulating a fandom felt like access to an entire universe of possibility. Or maybe it fed her narcissistic side. Or her megalomaniac one.
Long story short… she was terrible at it.
She never finished her stories. The plots were non‑existent or so clumsy she could cry from embarrassment. It wasn’t a lack of ideas—her head overflowed with them, each more eccentric than the last. She simply couldn’t put them on paper. And as the years passed, priorities changed. Degrees had to be earned, a future built.
So she settled for being an avid reader rather than a pathetic writer. It was easier for everyone. And she was sure not to disappoint that way.
Yet among all the fiction she devoured, there was one type of story that always made her daydream as a teen—and makes her laugh now with its absurdity: reincarnation stories, or tales where someone from our world falls into their favorite fandom.
She had always found reincarnation fascinating. Not being a religious person, she saw death as final—terrifyingly final. No afterlife, just nothingness.
So the idea of being reborn with all her memories in a fantasy world captivated her. So did the idea of being dragged into another world entirely. It was thrilling and oddly comforting. Thrilling because living somewhere other than boring, predictable Earth sounded exciting. Comforting because it meant she wasn’t the only one who wanted to escape reality. But as she grew older, she realized these stories were often silly or overdone—not the concept itself, but the way they played out.
In most of them, the reader becomes the center of everything. They outshine the protagonist, land right where the action is, become the star, and, of course, look stunning. They usually end up in a perfect relationship with a gorgeous character—and the sex is always phenomenal, with monstrous cocks and oceans of cum.
Real life does not work like that.
Or maybe she’d just had terrible luck with her lovers.
Of course things go well for the reader—they’re the hero of their story. That’s the whole point of fiction: to make us forget the world outside.
Because secretly, we want all of it—the action, the romance. And if we were sucked into another world, it probably wouldn’t happen the way fiction promises.
But who cares?
In reality, she was just like anyone else: curled on her sofa with a warm drink, laughing, crying, or dying inside waiting for the next chapter to drop. Like everyone.
Falling into another world had always been just a daydream for Anaïs—something she wished for, in a way, but still an absurd fantasy that would never happen.
What a monumental mistake.
It happened.
None of it went like the fictions. Not at all. She was slapped across the face by another reality—and it hurt, guys. A world far worse than the one she’d left behind. And she had never wanted to go home so desperately in her life.
Dear Diary,
My name is Anaïs and I am 28 years old.
I have fallen into the Star Wars universe and I want to go home…
How did she get there?
That story begins with a devastating global pandemic and a shiny pebble.
No one foresaw the chaos. And yet…
At that time, Anaïs was twenty‑eight. A young single woman with a business degree, a cozy apartment, and a good job in one of France’s largest real estate companies. Her life was stable: a small circle of friends, hobbies to keep her busy, a comfortable existence.
She never realized how lucky she was—no one ever does until everything disappears.
Living far from her family, repeated lockdowns slowly isolated her from everyone she cared about. Like so many others, she found herself working from home, seeing no colleagues, no friends, no family, certainly no lovers.
She was alone.
To be honest, the loneliness didn’t bother her at first. She had always been a loner. But she began questioning her life, her goals, what she wanted. And she realized she didn’t like her life. She wanted more. More what? She had no idea.
At the first opportunity, she booked a solo trip to Nepal. She needed to refocus, to meditate on her life, to find purpose. She wanted to prove she could travel alone, escape her comfort zone.
And that’s how she found herself perched on a Himalayan rock above an old abandoned temple. The view of the valley and mountains was breathtaking.
She took advantage of the moment, snapping photos while her group and guide rested below near the ruins. They were preparing a light brunch before heading to a monastery. Laughter drifted up from below. It was peaceful. She was in her own little bubble of happiness.
Then hell broke loose.
Without warning.
She was sitting on a rock, adjusting her brand‑new camera, when a crackling boom tore through the mountains, followed by a thunderous rumble. A sound she had never heard before—but instinctively recognized as danger. Some primal part of her reacted, raising goosebumps. She didn’t know what was happening, only that something was terribly wrong.
She froze, scanning for danger. The rumble continued, rolling down the mountainsides, direction impossible to pinpoint. She checked the sky—no storm, perfect weather.
She vaguely remembered the guide screaming at them to take cover but… it was too late. Everyone stood frozen in disbelief.
Anaïs watched in helpless horror as the mountainside beside her gave way. She had seen videos of mudslides—but nothing could prepare her for the reality: a roaring torrent of mud rushing downhill at the speed of a train.
She held her breath, convinced she was about to be swept away. She clung to her rock, desperate. She would always remember the terrified screams drowned beneath the roar—before everything suddenly fell silent.
A suffocating, deafening silence, broken only by her heartbeat and ragged breathing. To this day she wonders what miracle kept her rock from collapsing with the rest.
If she asked a Jedi, he would probably say it was the will of the Force, or that the Force works in mysterious ways. Bullshit.
She didn’t know how long she stayed frozen there, fear curling deep in her stomach. Her phone had no signal, and only the guide had emergency equipment—he was almost certainly dead by now. Or dying.
She was paralyzed. Should she stay and hope for rescue, or descend the mountain alone? Neither was safe. But she had to choose.
The choice was simple.
The hiking path was long, with the monastery only reachable at nightfall. She didn’t know the way and had no map—getting lost would be fatal. If she tried reaching the monastery and the monks called for help, it would already be night. She had no gear for the cold. The terrain was unstable. No option was good, but descending felt safer.
She walked as carefully as she ever had in her life.
She remembered spotting something shiny on her way down. Feeling the ground was steady enough, she approached. She hoped it might be a piece of someone’s belongings… or someone alive. But it was just a small, translucent pebble, elongated like a natural crystal.
Even through fear and exhaustion, she was captivated by its beauty. She could have ignored it. But she knelt, picked it up, and examined it.
So pure it looked polished like a gemstone, reflecting sunlight perfectly. She turned it in her fingers, enthralled. She had never seen anything like it.
When she stood up with the crystal in hand, she noticed something she had missed earlier: the entrance to a cave.
Clearly carved by human hands, triangular like a perfect archway. The stone was smooth, slightly damp. She traced the side with her fingertips in awe. The mudslide had stripped away the dirt concealing it. Fine engravings covered the entrance—writing? decoration? She couldn’t tell.
She didn’t know what possessed her to step inside. Logic screamed at her not to. Not after witnessing a natural disaster. But when she peeked in and her eyes adjusted…
She forgot everything.
The walls glittered, covered in multicolored crystals identical to the one she held.
It was breathtaking.
She entered, eyes wide, phone raised to capture the moment—a reflex of her generation, needing to record everything. She also figured that if there was another landslide, she’d at least have proof she wasn’t hallucinating.
She never imagined that, upon entering that cave, she would never leave it.
Nor did she notice the ringing in her ears growing louder as she walked deeper. She blamed it on stress, or being underground.
She remembered descending a corridor of shimmering crystal and discovering a perfectly circular chamber with a square altar of bare stone at its center. It felt like a temple—sacred, ancient.
Crystals on the walls formed strange wave‑like symbols. She circled the central stone structure without touching it, marveling at what looked like ancient script.
That was when the ringing intensified. She massaged her temples—and dropped her little crystal. Grimacing, she bent to retrieve it, only to cut her finger on a sharp facet.
A sudden wave of weakness washed over her, and she collapsed against the stone.
Everything went black.
She didn’t know it then… but those were her last moments on Earth.