Xavier woke to pain so violent he thought someone was peeling his mind apart. His eyes shot open, and instead of the apartment he knew, he saw towering trees glowing with veins of shimmering blue. Ether drifted through the air like dust made of light, and when he sucked in breath, it burned through his lungs as if he were inhaling fire. Before he could push himself upright, another wave of agony crashed into him—this one different, deeper, wrong. Memories that were not his own flooded into him like molten metal poured through the cracks of his skull. He saw a boy with deep crimson hair training alone under a waterfall of glowing petals; he felt the sting of cold blades, the rhythm of relentless drills, the burden of a talent too immense for anyone to ignore. And then he saw him—a smiling young man with sun-blond hair and eyes that carried the confidence of the blessed: Kyle Valemont, the Fate-Chosen of the South, heir to the noble Valemont House, loved by the kingdom, adored by the masses. The boy Azrael Crimson had called brother. The boy he trusted above all else.
The pain intensified as the memories forced themselves deeper. Xavier felt Azrael's admiration—how he looked at Kyle not with jealousy but with devotion. Azrael had been born with monstrous talent, the kind that shook entire academies and frightened seasoned warriors, yet he hid it. Not because he wanted to, but because he believed Kyle deserved the spotlight, the glory, the destiny written for him by fate. He dulled his brilliance so Kyle would never feel overshadowed. He trained in secret, held back in tests, pretended to struggle in areas where he excelled. He told himself it was loyalty. He told himself it was love. He told himself it was right.
Xavier felt every fragment of that belief shatter as the memories shifted to Azrael's betrayal. Kyle's face—once warm, once full of laughter shared between brothers—twisted into envy as he watched Azrael save dozens of lives during a demon ambush, an act that unintentionally revealed the unimaginable depth of power Azrael possessed. Xavier felt Azrael's confusion, then dawning horror, where Kyle father head of dukedom got to know about his talent then came the betrayal from the duke where he created a situation where Kyle leaved him in between a battle with demons to save himself
Xavier's body convulsed from the weight of the memory. He wasn't just watching Azrael die—he was living it. He felt the air leave Azrael's lungs, felt the cold numbness spreading through limbs that had carried the world's greatest potential, felt the crushing disbelief that the person he loved most had chosen himself over brotherhood. The betrayal sank so deep that it carved a wound inside Xavier's own chest. He felt nauseous, choking, trembling, his fingers clawing at the glowing moss beneath him. It didn't stop. The inheritance continued like a storm that refused to move on. Azrael's childhood, his training, his kindness, his sacrifices, his relentless attempts to protect Kyle's pride—all of it pierced Xavier until he wanted to scream for the memories to stop.
It took twelve hours for the agony to settle, twelve hours of writhing on the ground, panting through blood-chilled breaths, thoughts splintered between who he was and who he had suddenly become. When the final wave of memories ebbed, Xavier lay motionless for a long time, staring at the shimmering leaves above. His body trembled even though the pain was gone. The air felt too sharp, his senses too awake, as though Azrael's instincts had bled into him along with the memories. He pushed himself upright on shaking arms, breath uneven, throat raw, and realized with a jolt that he understood everything that had happened to Azrael. And he hated it.
He hated Azrael's loyalty.
He hated his blind trust.
He hated the way he had dimmed his own brilliance for someone else's sake.
He hated that Azrael had allowed himself to die without fighting back.
"Why?" Xavier whispered bitterly to the empty forest. "Why would you choose someone like him over yourself?" His own voice sounded foreign, like it belonged to a stranger forced to carry two different lives at once. He pressed a hand to his forehead, as if that could steady the riot of emotions tearing through him. He wanted to reject Azrael's memories, erase them, forget them—but the grief, the betrayal, the regret were carved so deeply into the inherited soul that Xavier felt them as strongly as if they had been his own.
He looked down at his clothing—rough brown fabric, the simple uniform of a forest scout. Not a noble. Not a prodigy. Not a hero. An extra. A background figure destined to die namelessly. He felt the truth settle in his bones like icy stone. This wasn't Earth. This wasn't his body. This wasn't his story. And he wasn't Xavier anymore—not fully.
"I transmigrated…" he whispered.
The forest did not answer him. The glowing trees continued to pulse with gentle etheric light, uncaring of the turmoil inside him. His heart hammered violently as he forced himself to breathe. He could feel a faint thrum under his skin, a residue of Azrael's monstrous power—unstable, incomplete, but alive. His fingers tingled with the memory of techniques he had never trained for. His muscles remembered forms he had never practiced. His senses picked up distant movements that no normal scout should detect.
Whatever he had become, it wasn't weak.
But he wasn't Azrael either. He would never repeat Azrael's choices. Never kneel to destiny. Never dim his flame for someone else. Never blindly trust the hand reaching out to him.
"You died because you chose wrong," Xavier murmured, his voice steadier now, though anger still trembled beneath it. "I won't make your mistakes."
He stood, slowly but firmly, the forest shifting around him as though acknowledging his resolve. If fate had dragged him into this world, then he would carve his own path through it—one not bound by Azrael's tragedy or Kyle's destiny. He might have inherited Azrael's memories, but he refused to inherit his ruin.
"I'll survive," he whispered, fingers closing into a fist as a faint ripple of ether shimmered at his knuckles. "And I'll change everything."
Even the forest seemed to stir at his declaration, as if the world itself sensed the birth of a rewritten fate.