Chapter Text
The Train, the Terror, and the Terrible New World
Camila always liked to imagine she’d react gracefully to danger.
A dramatic cape swirl.
A witty one-liner.
Maybe even a backflip if she’d slept well.
Reality: she shrieked like a dying seagull and almost fell on her face.
“HEY—WATCH IT!” she yelled as a truck screeched to a halt inches from her knees, horn blaring loud enough to rattle her bones. The driver leaned out the window, screamed something about “looking both ways,” and sped off like she’d personally insulted his mother.
Camila stood there for a moment, pink hair blowing in the morning breeze, heart trying to perform a tap dance routine inside her chest.
“Okay,” she breathed out, patting her cheeks. “That’s fine. Totally fine. I’m alive. New season of my favorite anime drops tomorrow. Today cannot possibly get worse.”
Naturally, that was the exact moment the universe said, bet.
She continued walking, earbuds in, humming happily. Her pace had that specific bounce that only appears when someone’s entire personality is powered by fandom energy and caffeine. Camila didn’t even bother watching her surroundings anymore; she’d narrowly avoided death once that morning, so surely fate would give her a break.
That was when she heard it.
A sound too loud, too sudden, too close.
A deep booming roar, metal grinding against metal, rattling the street beneath her.
She turned.
A train.
A train.
It was barreling down the tracks she hadn’t even noticed—because who pays attention to train tracks on their way to work?
She had time for exactly three thoughts:
-
Oh wow that train is moving fast.
-
Man, I should not have skipped breakfast.
-
Wait—why is the train HERE? There isn’t even a crossing—
Impact.
A flash of pain. A deafening clang. The world exploding into white noise and weightlessness.
Then nothing.
Camila woke up lying on her back on rough stone, staring at a sky that looked like somebody applied a “dystopian filter” but forgot to turn the opacity down.
Her whole body felt like she’d been used as a dodgeball. Her back, especially, was protesting the indignity of meeting a train at high velocity and then apparently being yeeted across realities.
She groaned, sat up slowly, and rubbed her head.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ve had worse mornings.”
She hadn’t. But she said it anyway.
The first thing she noticed was that the air smelled… wrong. A heavy mixture of smoke, rot, old blood, and something vaguely spicy. The kind of smell you’d expect if a medieval alley and a wet dog had a baby.
The second thing she noticed was the rat.
It skittered right across her foot, paused, turned to look at her—
And blinked its three eyes.
Three.
Camila stared at the rat.
The rat stared back, whiskers twitching, third eye dilating like it was judging her life choices.
“…Okay,” she whispered, voice cracking. “That’s new.”
The rat made a horrible wet hissing noise and scurried into a crack in the wall.
She was sitting in a narrow stone alleyway, the buildings around her made of cracked slate bricks and crooked beams of wood so rotten she could see mushrooms sprouting out of them. The sky above flickered with strange streaks of purple and red, like natural auroras but angrier.
“I’m… definitely not home,” Camila muttered, standing up shakily.
She brushed dust off her skirt and tried patting her dyed pink hair back into place, because if she was dead, she at least wanted to look presentable for whatever afterlife she got.
Then, curiosity battling with the remnants of train-induced trauma, she crept toward the mouth of the alley and peeked out.
Her brain blue-screened.
Down the cracked stone street, three large humanoid figures were brutally kicking the life out of a guy curled up on the ground. They had horns, glowing eyes, jagged teeth, and skin tones in various shades of red and gray. They laughed as they stomped on him, their boots splattering blood across the street.
No one around cared.
Not even a little.
Merchants continued haggling.
Children darted past without looking.
A woman carrying a basket stepped right over the bleeding man as if he were an inconvenient puddle.
Everything screamed hell realm but without OSHA regulations.
Camila inhaled sharply and jerked back into the alley.
Her heart thudded painfully. Not because of the violence—well, partly—but because everything felt so real. Too real. The textures of the walls, the grit on her palms, the sharp smell in the air. Not a dream. Not a delusion. Which left exactly one possibility.
She clasped her hands together, trembling with excitement.
“No way,” she whispered. “No way no way no way- did I just get- isekai’d?!”
She almost squealed.
Her eyes sparkled.
Her soul ascended.
She’d watched enough anime to know how this worked. She’d die, wake up in a magical world, get powers, get a cool outfit, maybe a pet monster, maybe a cute elf girlfriend—
Then her stomach dropped.
Because she remembered something.
The guy getting stomped on.
The terrifying demons.
The derelict buildings.
The smell of blood.
The three-eyed rat.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, dread flooding in. “I got isekai’d… into the demon world.”
She pressed her back to the wall and slid down until she was sitting.
“This isn’t the fun one with the cute elves! This is the horror one with— with—”
A distant scream echoed.
“—with THAT.”
Her breath quickened. She shook her hands like she was trying to fling anxiety off her fingers. “Okay, okay, okay, don’t panic—”
beside her, a voice growled:
“Well, well… what do we have here?”
Camila didn’t turn.
She didn’t look.
She didn’t think.
She did what any member of the Joestar family would do in their darkest hour.
She ran.
“NOPE!” she shouted, bolting out of the alley like a caffeinated squirrel.
She ran past demons.
She ran past monsters.
She ran past a man selling organs out of a wooden cart.
She tripped over a skull (real).
She accidentally kicked a demon child’s toy (also a skull, probably real).
She nearly got slashed by a passing mercenary.
She was chased by something that looked like a wolf made of fire and trauma.
She didn’t stop until her lungs burned and her legs wobbled like overcooked noodles.
Finally, she collapsed behind a toppled cart in a much quieter part of the city, breathing hard and tasting iron.
Her panic faded enough for a new thought to slam into her:
She felt… different.
Like something humming under her skin. A strange tingling sensation behind her eyes. Her horns—her cheap plastic Halloween horns—felt… heavier? Harder? She knocked on one with her knuckle.
Clink.
“Okay,” she whispered. “That… was not plastic.”
She gulped. Looked around. Then closed her eyes and tried to focus.
In every anime, the protagonist got some kind of status screen or power window. So she sat cross-legged, put both hands on her knees, and whispered the most sacred of words:
“Menu.”
Nothing.
“Status.”
Nothing.
“Open sesame?”
Still nothing.
“Ugh, come on— I got hit by a train for this!”
She concentrated harder. Focused on that weird tingling. Imagined a game screen. Tried to will the universe to open something. Anything.
And then the world shifted.
Her vision blurred. Her fingertips tingled. A soft glow shimmered around her.
Something in her brain clicked like a switch being flipped.
And suddenly it was there.
A sensation. Not a screen, not words. More like… knowledge? Like someone had quietly slipped a book into her head labeled “Congratulations, You Have Magic Now.”
One word rose above all the others:
Illusion.
Camila stared into nothing. Then she threw her hands up.
“That’s it?! I got isekai’d into demon hell and all I get is illusion magic? Not super strength? Not fireballs? Not even, like, telekinesis?!”
Her voice cracked halfway through, and she slapped both hands over her face.
“I’m screwed. I’m cooked. I’m simmered and fried and served with rice.”
She groaned loudly. “Why couldn’t I have ended up somewhere NICE? With cute elves! Or at least in a village that doesn’t smell like wet despair!”
A crow with two heads screamed above her for no reason.
Camila whimpered.
After a minute of existential sulking, she forced herself to focus. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t negotiate. But she could hide.
Illusions.
She could work with that.
She held her breath and tried to imagine herself disappearing. Tried to imagine the air bending around her, people’s eyes sliding off her, shadows wrapping her like a blanket.
The magic responded, weak but willing.
A shimmering veil fell over her body.
Light bent slightly.
Her outline blurred.
Camila looked down and gasped.
“Holy crap— I did it! I’m kind of invisible! Like 50% invisible! That’s better than zero!”
Hope surged in her chest, warm and desperately needed.
She curled up behind the cart, wrapped in her new illusion cloak, and let exhaustion take over. She needed sleep. She needed a plan. She needed to not die within her first twenty-four hours.
“This is fine,” she whispered, lying on cold stone. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll just… lay low. Think of a strategy. Maybe find someone who doesn’t want to murder me.”
A distant explosion shook the street.
Camila sighed into the dirt.
“I changed my mind. I want to go home. I want my anime. I want my bed. I want my mom. I want my—”
She froze.
Then groaned.
“God. I forgot the new season drops tomorrow.”
And with that devastating realization, Camila silently wished for the sweet release of death.
MEANWHILE, FAR ACROSS THE CONTINENT…
In a land far removed from corrupted demon alleys and violent street beatdowns, the sun shone peacefully over rolling hills and pristine white-stone towers.
Inside a grand courtyard filled with magical diagrams etched into the marble, a young man in black robes stood over a barrel of water.
His expression was flat.
His hair slightly messy.
His aura calm, controlled, and deeply unimpressed with life.
Vedal, heir of a noble house and one of the most powerful mages born in generations, continued chanting quietly as he moved his hands in precise sigils.
Runes shimmered.
The water glowed a deep blue.
Magic hummed through the air.
Then—fwump—the entire barrel turned into a rich amber liquid.
Vedal tapped the side with a knuckle.
Perfect.
He reached for a glass, poured himself a drink, took a sip, and nodded at his work with quiet satisfaction.
Then he waved his hand, and a circular portal swirled open beside him.
With a casual flick of magic, he teleported the entire barrel to a room deep within his estate labeled:
V E D A L ’ S P R I V A T E A L C O H O L C O L L E C T I O N
(NO TWINS ALLOWED)
He then sat down in a nearby chair, pulled out a thick tome of spells, and resumed reading.
Completely unaware that somewhere across the continent, a terrified gremlin girl with pink hair had just crash–landed into his world and would soon become the single biggest headache of his life.