"Ah!!"
I woke up with a start, gasping for breath. I had dreamed I was falling endlessly into a deep, dark abyss, with no exit in sight.
I let myself sink back onto the extremely soft pillows and then… Wait! What the hell!?
As I looked around the bed and the surroundings, I realized this room wasn't mine.Silken sheets, heavy velvet curtains, and a sweet yet metallic scent in the air.
"Where am I…? Is this me?"
I didn't even recognize my own voice. It sounded soft, velvety, almost hypnotic. Though I had never been a famous singer in my previous life, I was certain that here, I could have been one.
< The host has awakened. >< Loading memory files. >< You may experience slight discomfort. >
"Eh? —ARGHHH!"
After the robotic voice, a surge of memories struck me. Images, sensations, names… everything piled into my mind as if I were watching an entire lifetime on fast-forward.
The body I now inhabited was that of Nyx Veyra Draven, seventeen years old.Her mother, Lirae Veyra, was a princess of the dark elves. Her father, a wandering vampire she had never met.
From birth, Nyx had been expected to be a prodigious heir: dense, dark mana, a feared hybrid bloodline. But her body had always been far too fragile to contain such energy. By the age of four, her magic began to corrode her from within, leaving her weak, sickly, and vulnerable.
To her clan, Nyx was nothing but a disappointment. That someone with such powerful blood could not control her own strength was unforgivable.
She had no friends, only the silent affection of her mother, who protected her in secret. The rest of her family ignored her, and even the two fiancés forced upon her for convenience treated her with cold indifference, as if living with her were punishment.
"…Shit…" I muttered, wiping away two crystalline tears that slid down my cheeks.I hadn't just received her memories—I had lived them. Every. Single. Second.
I was no longer sure if I was Clara or Nyx, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that I finally had the chance to change everything.
I rose slowly from the silken sheets, walking toward a full-length mirror in the room.
What I saw left me breathless.
A frail-looking girl, with jet-black hair cascading in waves to her shoulders, pale skin with a grayish undertone, and faint dark veins tracing her wrists. Upon her head rose two hybrid horns: slender, black with crimson gleams at their tips, more elegant and accursed than demonic.
Her eyes…
The left, her elven heritage, was a deep violet streaked with silvery sparks—feline and cold, like a beacon in the dark.
The right, her vampiric inheritance, burned with a crimson intensity, pulsing, dimming or glowing with a hunger for blood she didn't understand but felt gnawing deep in her stomach.
"Gods…" I whispered, touching my cheek with trembling fingers. "What am I now…?"
< Urgent reminder: The host has not yet installed "Profane Midnight Body." >
"Is that one of my wishes?"
< Affirmative. >
"Then let's do it."
< It is recommended the host bite down on something; extreme discomfort will follow. >
I hurried back to the bed and bit into the silken sheets. If the system said it would hurt, I believed it.
< Begin body enhancement? >
"Mmm! (Yes!)"
< Installation of 'Profane Midnight Body' initiated. >
The pain that followed was so brutal, so soul-rending, that it surpassed anything I had ever endured in both of my lives combined.