A day slipped by, then another, each indistinguishable from the last, swallowed by the oppressive silence of this unfamiliar world.
No matter how desperately I clung to the hope of waking, reality remained steadfast, unbroken, and cruelly out of reach.
Each morning, I awoke to the same unrelenting weight—a reality that clung to me like damp wool, suffocating and absolute.
And without fail, as I stepped beyond the confines of my chambers, the ritual began.
"Good morning, young master."
The servants regarded me with practiced detachment—neither hostile nor welcoming, merely mechanical, as though acknowledging a duty rather than a person.
I returned a slight nod and continued on my way.
Their eyes slid past me without pause, their words confined to stiff formalities. I was an obligation, a fact of their daily routine, nothing more.
And then, there was him—Earl Frederick Ashbourne—standing before the tall, arched windows of his study, where the glass blurred the outside world into a watercolor of grey skies and wavering silhouettes. The morning mist clung to the panes like breath upon glass, and beyond them, the rain traced faint rivulets down the surface, silent and ceaseless.
A silver pocket watch lay nestled in the curve of his gloved palm, its surface dulled by age yet still catching the faint light with a ghostly gleam. The chain—slender, serpentine—glinted softly as it swayed with each subtle movement, as though time itself were trembling in anticipation.
"You sure took your time, Arthur."
The words were quiet, almost contemplative, but they struck with a precision that left no room for apology. Neither fury nor warmth touched his tone. It fell into the silence of the room like the closing of a vault—measured, absolute, and final.
He stood with his back straight and unyielding, as if he had been carved from the very bones of this ancient estate. The long coat draped over his shoulders barely moved, despite the draft that crept through the high-ceilinged room. His posture spoke of discipline long since calcified into habit, and authority that required neither crown nor declaration. Even the rain beyond the window seemed to quiet in his presence, as though unwilling to disturb him.
The watch clicked shut in his hand, the sound sharp and final—like a gavel striking down a verdict. He turned from the rain-streaked window, his gaze settling on me with glacial precision. Those eyes—cold, implacable—regarded me not with disdain, nor with interest, but with the dispassionate scrutiny one might reserve for a pawn on a vast, unforgiving chessboard. A piece yet to earn its place. A presence yet to prove its purpose.
"My apologies, Sir. It won't happen again."
The words slid from my tongue with quiet precision, practiced and empty. They were not meant to appease—he could not be appeased. Apologies, in his world, were ornamental at best. He dealt in results, not regret.
"We will be departing soon," he said, voice clipped, measured. "You may bid your farewells to your friends."
Friends? The word snagged like a barb beneath my ribs, sharp and ironic. As if he didn't already know—I had none. Nor did I desire any.
The butler entered the room with a quiet knock, his movements smooth and deliberate, like a well-wound mechanism. In silence, he extended a porcelain cup into my hands. The vessel was delicate, its white surface painted with gold filigree, but it was the liquid within that commanded my attention.
Dark—like something tainted. A hue that whispered of venom, as if steeped in something forbidden.
Maybe... It's the poison mixed together with the tea.
The words slid through my mind, slow and deliberate.
I raised the cup to my lips.
The moment it touched my tongue, a bitter fire slithered down my throat, coiling deep within my gut where it smoldered like dying embers. Too bitter to be mere tea. It tasted of discipline, of some concoction brewed not for comfort but control.
What followed was a series of lessons—relentless, exacting. Each movement, each command carved deeper into muscle and mind. There was no allowance for faltering. No place for hesitation. Weakness was not corrected—it was excised.
"The air around you seems different."
His voice sliced through the silence—low, precise, and strangely observant.
I met his eyes without flinching, though my skull still ached from the relentless rhythm of repetition, from the pursuit of perfection always just out of reach.
"Isn't this what you wanted me to become, Sir?"
He studied me for a moment, as if weighing something unseen, something unspoken.
Then came a single, deliberate nod. "Hmm."
When the final command was given and the session ended, weariness settled into my bones like iron, but I kept it buried, unseen beneath my steady steps.
"Then… may I take my leave?"
"Go ahead."
I bowed low, turned on my heel, and made for the one place in this sprawling, indifferent estate where I could exist without scrutiny—my room. My sanctuary. My silence.
The moment the door to my chambers clicked shut behind me, the weight I had been carrying all day surged to the surface, igniting the heat in my chest into something searing—sharp, unforgiving.
Cough… cough…!
A sharp tremor ran through my chest. I raised my hand to catch the wetness spilling from my lips—only to find it painted red.
A smear of blood, fresh and vivid, bloomed across my pale skin like a cruel blossom.
"Damn it..."
Why is this body so fragile…? It can't even endure something this minor. A whisper of poison, and already I'm breaking.
The metallic tang of it spread across my tongue, thick and cloying, like rust and copper ground into the roof of my mouth.
I turned away from the mirror, from the light, from the world that demanded too much from a body that was never meant to bear it.
I swallowed, the motion painful, forcing down the tremors that threatened to unravel me. My limbs felt hollow. My lungs constricted with a familiar ache, deep and heavy, a cavity carved into my chest where strength was supposed to reside.
This was my burden to bear. Because weakness had no place here.
Not in this house. Not with that name.
I curled my bloodstained fingers into a trembling fist, nails digging into my palm, as if the pressure alone could anchor me—could remind me that I was still here.
And yet, amidst all that—the blood, the fire, the quiet agony—I realized the answer had always been there, waiting. A truth lurking just beneath the surface of my consciousness, patient as a shadow beneath the water.
I was no longer Kim Sungwon.
That name belonged to another life. A man who had walked the neon streets of Seoul with a badge in his pocket and pain behind his eyes. A man who chased monsters, never knowing one day he would become part of a world far more terrifying than any crime scene he'd once stood upon.
The newspapers confirmed what my mind refused to accept. Delicate parchment, crisp beneath my fingertips, bore ink pressed with meticulous care. The date stared back at me, unyielding.
October 7, 1864
The words were in English, yet their rhythm felt unfamiliar—the structure just slightly off, as though shaped by a hand that had never known the world I came from. The air, the architecture, the customs—each bore the elegant grandeur of Victorian Britain, but not quite. It was a world built in imitation, as if the author had drawn inspiration from the Victorian era and spun it into something new. A shadow of history, warped and reimagined.
This was not the past. This was a fractured world—familiar in shape, yet twisted at its core.
And my name—Arthur Ashbourne.
The syllables landed with the weight of something half-remembered, a thread of familiarity pulling at the edges of my thoughts. I knew that name. I had seen it before.
A breath. A pause. A memory.
And then, everything fell into place.
Ashes of Vengeance.
A novel steeped in intrigue and blood—its every word soaked in the scent of conspiracy and the grim certainty of tragedy. It was not merely fiction, but a tale woven with the threads of fate, where no soul emerged unscathed, and every triumph came at a cost.
I still remember when that book came to me. My elder sister had placed it into my hands during the bleakest season of my life—my childhood, if one could even call it that. While others of my age knew warmth and laughter, mine was marked by silence and survival.
I used to curl up in a dim corner of my room, the kind of place where light hesitated to linger. I buried myself beneath worn-out blankets and brittle dreams, shutting out the world. And in that isolation, the pages of this novel became my sole sanctuary. Its ink, my solace. Its sorrow, my own.
I had clung to that book like a lifeline.
And now—unthinkably, impossibly—I had awakened within it.
But I wasn't the protagonist.
That role belonged to the heir of the powerful yet neutral Granville family—Theodore Granville—the central figure around whom the story revolved.
I was not him. Not the chosen hero.
I was Arthur Ashbourne—a mere footnote in the grand narrative. The heir to Earl Frederick Ashbourne, yet little more than a shadow cast beneath his towering presence. A side character fated to disappear before the real story even began.
A boy who never made it to adulthood. A frail body that would succumb to the weight of its own lineage before he could leave a mark on the world.
A forgotten name in a history written by others. However, the Ashbourne name was not one so easily erased.
Their crest bore the ash tree, an emblem of both resilience and ruin, of something that could be reduced to cinders yet rise anew. A lineage so formidable that even the Royal Family tread cautiously around them.
But power of such magnitude never came without its cost.
Their methods of shaping an heir—of forging strength—were nothing short of merciless. Discipline was carved into flesh, lessons seared into bone.
Their heirs were not raised. They were tempered.
And now, I was one of them.
The rain had not ceased its relentless assault against the world outside, but now, the steady rhythm was joined by something else.
The sound of wheels against metal. The distant chime of a bell.
The man sitting across from me, poised and unreadable, was destined to become this world's villain.
He was poised, his posture unmarred by the slight tremors of the train. The dim light cast sharp angles across his features—an aristocratic jawline and eyes sharp as emeralds. He regarded me with a gaze devoid of warmth, cool and unreadable.
There was nothing paternal in his stare—only the weight of expectation, the silent demand for something I wasn't sure I could give.
A chill crept down my spine, far colder than the storm raging beyond the windows.
I had died once before. I would not do so again.
For now, I was Arthur Ashbourne, and this man was my father. This was the world I had no choice but to accept.
However, how long could I pretend to be a boy who no longer existed?