Cassian walked through the stone corridor with the same casual stride he used back home to sneak into late-night ramen shops. The academy hall was old—centuries old—but it was alive with quiet magic. Arcane lanterns glowed with no visible flame. The walls breathed faint heat. Somewhere overhead, cathedral bells rang without clappers.
"Cozy," he muttered to himself. "Creepy. Hogwarts meets Dark Souls."
His reflection winked at him in a polished shield hanging on the wall.
He'd gotten a good look at himself already in the mirror back in the dorm: tall, lean, athletic in a wiry way. His new hair was jet-black with a silver streak running through one side like a comet's tail. Sharp eyes—icy blue, unsettling in just the right way—and a smirk that came naturally.
Not bad, he had thought. Not model-tier, but I'd flirt with me.
But looks weren't the issue. Identity was.
Cassian Elor.
That was the name of the boy whose life he'd now inherited. In the novel, the name showed up once—in a student casualty report. One of the first to die during the monster incursion arc. No page time. No backstory. A faceless extra.
Until now.
From what Cassian could gather from dusty journals in the dorm, Cassian Elor had been born to a fallen bloodline—a house with divine ancestry so diluted it barely registered anymore. His family had once served the God of Boundaries, a minor deity of secrets, oaths, and doorways. But the bloodline thinned, the magic faded, and the nobility that once bowed to House Elor forgot they existed.
Cassian Elor had no friends, no fame, and no future.
And now... he had Cassian from Earth in his body instead.
Cassian stopped in a quiet corridor and summoned his status window again with a flick of thought.
[Status Window – Cassian Elor]
Race: Human+
Codex Sync: 2%
Bloodline: [Fragment of the Forgotten Gate]
Fate Alignment: Null Path
Talent Limit: ???
Class: Undesignated
Primary Attributes:
Strength: F
Agility: E
Arcane Sensitivity: D
Perception: D
Codex Compatibility: ???
Soul Weight: Unknown
Traits:
Displaced Consciousness – Your soul is not native to this realm.
Unwritten Fate – Immune to divine prophecy and destiny threads.
Residual Echo – You inherit emotional imprints from the original soul.
Null Path – Neither blessed nor cursed by the gods. Walks outside all chosen fates.
"Null path," Cassian muttered. "Sounds lonely. And like a great name for a band."
He dismissed the window. It was too early to panic over numbers. That never helped in games either. Stats were only half the story—knowledge was power. And that was one area he had an unfair advantage in.
This world—this academy, these people—weren't strangers.
They were fiction.
Or… they were supposed to be.
Cassian had read Divine Ascent: Rise of the Forgotten Son obsessively. All 683 chapters. He knew who the main character was: Ren Arkwright, the quiet orphan prodigy with a divine-tier bloodline who would go from bullied outsider to god-slayer.
He knew the big events. The betrayals. The world-ending monsters sealed beneath the school.
And more than that—he knew where the cracks would form.
If I play this smart, Cassian thought, I can stay ahead of all of it. I'm not here to fight fate—I'm here to survive it. And maybe loot a few things along the way.
The World Itself: A God-Built Stage
The world was called Aetherion, a shattered realm held together by the bones of ancient gods. Ages ago, it had been a unified empire under the rule of twelve divine thrones—gods who forged the Codex, the supreme magical law that governed power, magic, and fate.
But when the gods fell in a war against the Outer Pantheon, their thrones were left empty.
Their bloodlines—mortal descendants born from divine sparks—became the rulers of the new world. Nobles with magic in their veins. Monsters with blood that burned brighter than fire.
But over time, some of those bloodlines faded. Some were hunted. Forgotten. Buried beneath centuries of politics, war, and betrayal.
Now, divine academies trained the remaining elite. And Virelios, the most prestigious, stood atop what was once the capital of the gods.
And under it, something stirred.
Cassian didn't need to guess. He remembered the plot twist. A sealed fragment of the God of Ruin lay beneath this school—and its release would ignite the first true divine war in a thousand years.
And he, somehow, had ended up two feet from ground zero.
As he stepped into the orientation hall, the sounds of a hundred voices bounced between the pillars. New students, nobles and commoners alike, waited in nervous clusters under the watchful eyes of floating sigils and staff mages.
Cassian took his place in the back row, leaned against a column, and let himself fade into the shadows.
That's where extras belonged.
But his eyes scanned the crowd, sharp and calculating. He was already mapping out who to avoid, who to follow, and—if it came to it—who to steal from.
He spotted Ren Arkwright near the center, looking exactly like the novel described him: scruffy uniform, silver eyes, tired posture. Alone.
Cassian smirked. And so it begins.