My body is too light.
Too thin.
Every movement feels like it could snap a bone.
I swing my legs off the bed and nearly fall. My muscles ache like they haven't been used in weeks.
Because they haven't.
Caius Val'Rendall spent most of his life caged by shame.
I grip the bedpost. Smooth marble. Cold.
In the mirror across from me, a stranger stares back:
Jet-black hair.
Sunken cheeks.
Eyes too hollow to hold anger, and too tired to feel fear.
But behind them...
I see me.
The me from before.
And that's enough.
The door creaks open.
"Awake, little bird?"
That voice. Sharp. Smug.
Arelian.
He enters like the room belongs to him.
It probably does.
Golden armor gleaming even indoors. A perfectly tailored coat.
A smile like a dagger dipped in honey.
"Mother said to check if you were still breathing. Personally, I'd rather you weren't."
Behind him are two servants. Both pretend I don't exist.
That part hasn't changed.
Arelian walks up to me and taps my forehead with a single gloved finger.
"Still no Shard?"
My Codex — the soul-mark of power — is blank.
Always has been.
In this world, magic comes from Veins.
And only Shardborn can survive touching them.
Caius wasn't one.
Just a noble in name. Useless in reality.
"If I were you," Arelian says, "I'd throw myself off the balcony. Save the House the embarrassment."
I smile.
It's small.
Soft.
He stops talking.
"Why are you smiling?" he asks, voice tightening.
"Because you're standing so close…
And I remember exactly how you die."
He grabs me by the throat before I finish the sentence.
His grip is tight — too tight for this body. My vision blurs.
But I keep smiling.
Because in the book, he doesn't die yet.
Which means I'm still in control.
Footsteps.
A third presence enters.
Velvet shoes.
Fur-trimmed robes.
Cold perfume.
Mother.
She doesn't speak.
She doesn't look at me.
"Enough, Arelian," she says. "He's still our blood. For now."
He lets go. I crumple.
"You will attend the academy's entrance trials tomorrow," she says.
"You will not speak our name."
"You will not disgrace us publicly."
She finally looks at me.
Eyes like polished stone.
"And if you fail again…
I will burn your name from our books myself."
They leave.
Silence returns.
I cough blood into my sleeve.
My lungs feel like paper.
My heart races — not from pain…
…but excitement.
"Academy trials…"
"That's where everything begins."
Where Caius was supposed to break.
Where he tried to fake power.
Where he humiliated himself in front of nobles, commoners, and his fiancées.
Where he snapped — and turned into a monster.
But this Caius?
Me?
I've read the book.
I know every twist. Every humiliation. Every death.
And if fate wants me broken?
Then I'll break the story first.