The world had fallen silent.
Cian Archdemon's bloodied, broken body lay lifeless on the marble floor of Blackthorn Academy. His chest no longer rose. His heartbeat had ceased. And yet… within the unseen folds of existence, his consciousness — obsessed, genius, fragmented — refused to fade completely.
Not yet.
Not when there were still unanswered questions.
Not when his overthinking, scientific mind clung to the very concept of thought itself.
And so, in the unseen plane beyond life, a faint, fractured fragment of his soul drifted — aimless, thought-consuming, whispering its final theories into the void.
---
Far away. Another world. Another kingdom.
The Beastmaster Kingdom, a vast land where tamers, summoners, and beastlords ruled by forging contracts with creatures beyond human comprehension. Tonight, deep within the ceremonial hall of their ancient palace, hundreds of high-ranking summoners and sages stood in a perfect circle, chanting in unison.
In the center, glowing sigils illuminated the marble floor, carved in blood and crystal dust. At the heart of the circle, a silver soul vessel floated, shimmering with faint blue light — prepared to house the soul of their beloved, yet critically ill, Prince Kael.
But fate… was never so simple.
The ritual had gone wrong from the beginning.
Prince Kael's body lay preserved. But his soul? Already dissipating. Already slipping into the void.
The summoners, desperate, chanted louder.
"Bind the fragment! Anchor the soul! The heir must return!"
But the vessel remained dim, the threads of Kael's soul unraveling — scattering like ashes on the wind.
And then… something happened.
The summoning circle pulsed. The hall shook.
An unseen force — cold, calculating, terrifyingly sharp — drifted toward them. Not the soul they intended.
A foreign fragment, small, broken, yet… unnervingly stubborn.
A soul that should have died, yet still whispered fragmented thoughts.
Cian Archdemon's soul.
Even now, as it drifted through the void, faint echoes of his obsessive mind remained.
"Neural override…conscious processing…
…unknown plane detected… energy signature anomalous…hypothesis forming…"
The fractured remains of his consciousness latched onto the summoning ritual like a moth to flame.
The sages, blind to the exact details, sensed only a compatible soul fragment and, in their desperation, pulled it in — binding it to the vessel, forcing the transfer.
The ritual exploded with light.
The sigils flared.
The palace shook.
And in the center of the summoning circle… a small, frail body materialized.
A boy — unconscious, bloody, pale-skinned — with sharp features, faint grey eyes fluttering beneath closed lids.
Not Prince Kael.
But Cian Archdemon, his fragmented, overthinking soul dragged into a foreign world, his death interrupted, his existence forced into a new vessel.
The sages gasped.
"What…? This isn't…"
But the soul bond was sealed. The ritual, complete.
Cian's chest heaved with sudden breath.
His fingers twitched.
And deep within his mind, his consciousness — hazy, shattered, yet unrelenting — awoke to terrifying realization.
"…Alternate plane… soul displacement confirmed… body… foreign… environment unfamiliar…"
His scientific obsession hadn't died.
His genius hadn't died.
Only his world had.
And now, trapped in a kingdom of beast tamers and summoners, a new, terrifying chapter began for the boy whose mind refused to stop — even in death.