The duel had been declared my final act as king.
Ten years of ruling, Ten years of blood spilled in my name, ten years of wearing a crown I never wanted—except to settle a score. I'd taken the throne for vengeance, not glory, and that fire had long since burned to ash. One last fight. One last clash beneath the eyes of gods and men. Then—freedom.
That was the plan.
The battle was brutal yet strangely liberating. My opponent was a king in his own right—proud, desperate, a mirror of myself in younger years. Our blades sang, sparks scattering like fleeting stars, and when the dust settled, it was my sword that stood victorious.
But even as I struck the final blow, something felt… wrong.
A strange tug.
Deep within me, beneath bone and flesh, something unseen hooked itself into my very soul and pulled. Not toward death, not toward victory, but somewhere else entirely. Every swing of my blade had been haunted by that invisible hand, and though I masked it well, the sensation gnawed at me, distracting, relentless.
Still—I won. I walked away.
When the crowd dispersed and the battlefield grew quiet, I returned to my chambers alone. The royal bedchamber—lined with silks, drowning in gold, revered as a place fit for legends. To me, it was nothing more than the last cage I would ever have to sleep in as king.
I laid down, body heavy, mind restless. At last, I thought, I could rest. At last, I could live as simply a man, not a king.
But the tug returned. Stronger this time. Fiercer. It felt as though invisible threads were unravelling me, pulling me apart, dragging me somewhere far beyond my kingdom, my world, my life.
And then—darkness claimed me.
A tunnel.
No, not a tunnel—something more primal, more infinite. I was moving, dragged through a void that throbbed with both silence and violence.
Then came the light. A blaze so fierce it burned through my eyelids, branding my vision white-hot.
The last memory I carried? My own bed. Silk sheets. A sigh of relief after war. A far cry from this blazing abyss.
Had I died?
The question gnawed at me, thick and suffocating, like smoke curling through my skull. If so, then how? Assassination? Poison slipped into wine? A coward's dagger thrust between my ribs? My mind clawed for answers, replaying every betrayal I might have earned, every shadow I had ignored.
And yet… the duel. That sensation—my soul being tugged, unravelled, like threads plucked loose from a tapestry. Could that have been the beginning?
The current pulled harder. This was no dream. Dreams fade, bend, blur. This was sharp, visceral, relentless. My body resisted out of instinct, but the more I fought, the more agony lanced through my skull, splitting thought from thought. With no other choice, I surrendered—let myself be carried deeper into the light.
Time shattered. Seconds, minutes, hours gone, dissolved like salt in the tide.
I braced for what came next the promised choir, sweet voices calling me home. That's how the tales always went, did they not? A gentle ascent, a golden welcome.
Instead, the world detonated.
Light fractured into shards across my vision. Colours bled and smeared, molten and merciless. Sound tore through me, shrill and distorted, scraping at the edges of sanity. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to contain it, but the storm did not stop.
I tried to speak, to demand answers, but the sound that escaped my lips was not speech. It was a cry thin, helpless, a newborn's wail.
The storm began to soften, reality lowering its voice to a hushed whisper. And through the dim haze, a sound broke through.
A voice.
Muffled, yet cutting clear.
"Congratulations, Mrs. Veyren, Mr. Veyren your boy is looking healthy."
The first face that swam into focus belonged to a man with a waterfall of greying hair and a beard to match. His spectacles caught the candlelight, twin moons flashing every time he shifted. He had the look of a doctor—but not the kind I was used to. No crisp coat, no antiseptic sting of sterilized halls. No gleaming floors polished by servants. Instead, straw littered the ground, and three candles sputtered valiantly against the dark.
Honestly, it looked less like a birthing room and more like the prep station for a particularly underfunded cult ritual.
And then it crossed my mind.
…Wait.
The obvious answer struck like a thrown blade, but it took a moment to sink in. Born? I'd been… reborn?
Did someone pull my soul into this world deliberately, or had I simply been dragged here by chance? Impossible. Ridiculous. And yet the evidence pressed in from all sides: the rough hands cradling me, the hushed voices murmuring over me. I should have been dead—or trapped in some elaborate illusion woven by an enemy far cleverer than I imagined.
But I was a king. A king does not panic until the battlefield is clear. Observation first. Reaction later.
First observation: I understood the language. That was a promising start.
I pried my eyes open again, wincing as newborn senses were assaulted by colour and shape, and braced myself for whatever awaited on this side of the light.
My gaze shifted to the woman who had brought me into this new life. I decided she would be Mother. A sensible designation, though it felt absurd assigning it while my neck still lolled like a broken spear.
She was beautiful—but not in the jewelled, court-polished way I was accustomed to. Hers was a softer, quieter beauty warmer kind of grace. Long, flowing black hair framed a face of gentle curves a face lit by a joyful smile. Her amber eyes burned softly in the candlelight—warm, deep, alive. Eyes that pulled at me, as though they carried the promise of safety… or something far older. She wore a deep-blue dress, refined but simple, the fabric whispering elegance without ostentation. For reasons beyond reason, I wanted to cling to her.
Then came the man at her side. Father.
His smile was so wide it could have split his face. Tears clung to lashes above eyes of vivid green, glowing like emerald glass in firelight. He leaned closer, voice trembling with barely contained joy.
"He's beautiful," Mother whispered.
"He has your hair," Father said, puffing his chest with pride.
"And your eyes," she replied softly.
Then Father ruined the moment. "Hi, my little Luce. I'm going to be your daddy. Can you say daddy yet?"
Mother barked a disbelieving laugh. "You know he was just born, right, honey?"
I studied him more carefully. If these two were going to claim me, I needed to assess. To his credit, Father wasn't unremarkable— Tousled black hair, jawline clean enough to carve marble, brows tapering like sword edges. His presence had strength in it, a looseness that suggested he wasn't merely a scholar or noble—but a man who'd faced danger and laughed at it. But his eyes… those were the real weapons.
Vivid green, shifting with the light—steady one moment, restless the next. Like a forest at dawn: serene yet hiding the whisper of storms. No wonder Mother had fallen for him.
Aside from, of course, the few screws rattling loose in his skull, considering he expected a newborn to spit out two syllables like some prodigy in swaddling cloth. Still, I granted him mercy. Let's call it fatherly delirium. Firstborn joy makes fools of us all.
"Hey, doc… why hasn't he started to cry yet?" Mother's voice snapped me from my internal assessment. "Aren't babies supposed to cry after they're born?"
The bespectacled man waved her concern away like an errant fly. "There have been some cases where infants are quiet. Nothing to worry about at the moment. Just give it a couple of days, Mrs. Veyren. Mr. Veyren, you know where I'll be if you need me."
And just like that, my second life began.
The weeks that followed were… humbling. No—humiliating.
My motor control was pathetic. Raising an arm felt like hefting a warhammer with one hand. My so-called grip reflex? Less a sign of affection, more like the twitch you get when someone elbows your funny bone. And my bladder? A tyrant. A despotic ruler with no law, no schedule, no mercy.
As for the "ritual chamber," it turned out to be my parents' study. Shelves of books lined the walls, though most were worn, ink-smudged, and smelled faintly of mildew. Between the straw on the floor and the sputtering candles, I had assumed cultists. Instead, I was simply stuck in a household with atrocious interior design.
At first, I thought this world was simply an earlier age—no electricity, no plumbing, no conveniences. Perhaps I had been thrown backward in time, into some pre-industrial era.
That theory held… until Father, bless his butterfingers, decided to parade me around one evening. He swung me too close to a drawer, and my tiny leg smacked against the corner. A sharp scratch bloomed across my skin.
I braced myself for the usual remedies—bandages, soothing words, maybe even a lullaby.
Instead, Mother pressed her hand over the wound.
Light. Actual, literal light pooled from her palm, soft and golden, humming like the low string of a violin. The scratch sealed, skin knitting smooth before my eyes.
Not metaphorical healing. Not "her love mended me." Real, undeniable magic.
And when that glow touched me, something stirred. A faint pulse deep within, not quite my heartbeat—more like a second rhythm echoing through my chest.
"Your mother's amazing," Father said proudly, puffing his chest. "She's a powerful healer. Light magic runs strong in her. Her mana core's already at dark yellow."
Mana. Cores. Light magic.
The words burned themselves into my skull.
That was when the reality hit harder than the slap of cold air at birth.
Where the hell am I?