The room reeked of instant noodles, stale sweat, and the kind of rage only a ruined ending could summon. I lay sprawled across a mattress that had long forgotten the concept of support, surrounded by empty energy-drink cans and a monitor glowing like a dying star. The final chapter of Seven Star Heroes had just auto-played to the end for the ninth time.
"Trash," I muttered, voice raw from hours of shouting at the screen. "Absolute, fucking garbage."
The seven golden-eyed protagonists stood triumphantly over the Demon King's corpse on the display, smiling like drunk gods. In the comments, fans were weeping praise and heart emojis, calling it the greatest novel ever written.
I wanted to vomit.
They had spent nine hundred chapters posing as saints pure, selfless, perfect. And then the epilogue revealed their real faces: carving up the continent like a birthday cake, burning kingdoms to ash, silencing every critic, and taxing cities into starvation while the saintess smiled sweetly. The sword hero even executed his own teacher for "disrespect." They became worse than every villain they ever killed.
Worst of all was what they did to Lucien Veyron the purple-star prodigy who could have soloed the Demon King at sixteen. They stabbed him in the back because he was "too dangerous to let live."
My fist cracked against the keyboard. Plastic splintered.
"I hope every single one of you gets isekai'd and truck-kunned for real," I snarled. "Especially you, Seraphine… you fake saintess bitch "
My chest seized.
Not the familiar ache from living off caffeine. A white-hot clamp crushed my heart. I'd felt it twice this year.
A heart attack.
I tried reaching for my phone. My arm wouldn't move. The room blurred around me.
"Even… dying… because of your dogshit novel…" I gasped, tasting iron. "Trash… all of you… trash…"
The monitor flickered, like it was laughing.
Then everything vanished into darkness.
Warmth greeted me. Not the sticky heat of summer or the fading warmth of a too-short shower. This was gentle like floating inside sunlight. I didn't care where I was. Heaven, hell, limbo… anywhere was better than that room.
But the warmth thinned, pulling at my eyelids.
No. Let me sleep.
Light stabbed through.
I opened my eyes.
Above me stretched a vaulted ceiling of black marble and amethyst crystal. Chandeliers made of floating starlight drifted overhead. Silk sheets embraced me actual silk, cool and perfect. I bolted upright.
"Where the hell…?"
My voice wasn't my own. It was smoother, younger.
Panic shot through me.
I swung off the bed, bare feet landing on cold obsidian flooring, and rushed to the full-length mirror beside the canopy.
My reflection froze me where I stood.
Black hair brushed my collar. Skin pale as moonlight. Violet eyes gleamed like carved gems. And within each pupil, five tiny amethyst stars rotated slowly, pulsing with cold fire.
Lucien Veyron stared back at me.
"No. Fucking. Way."
I grabbed my cheeks, pulled, pinched. The mirror perfectly mirrored me. Then memories crashed over me like a tidal wave.
Dawn training sessions. Bleeding palms from sword forms. Mana circuits carved into my bones before the age of ten. The day five stars ignited in my eyes and the elders knelt. My father's proud, terrifying smile.
Every moment of Lucien's life up to this morning.
I staggered back, sitting heavily on the bed.
"I got reincarnated… into the mid-boss who gets betrayed and murdered by the trash protagonists."
A laugh escaped me half hysteria, half exhilaration.
The novel's beginning was today: the Royal Star Academy entrance examination. Age sixteen. The day Lucien Veyron walked into the capital with five stars and made the empire tremble.
The day the story marked him as "too strong," "too proud," and started the four-hundred-chapter path to his execution.
Not this time.
My hands curled into fists. Violet motes shimmered around them, angry little fireflies.
"If those seven golden-eyed hypocrites want a villain," I whispered to the mirror, the stars in my eyes flaring bright enough to cast shadows, "then I'll give them the final one."
I punched the mattress in a burst of emotion forgetting that a five-star body wasn't built for gentleness.
The obsidian bedframe imploded. Marble cracked in a spiderweb. The entire second floor trembled like a giant had kicked the mansion.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
"…Shit."
The double doors slammed open, embedding themselves in the wall.
"Young Master!"
A girl with black hair tied in a high tail and vivid red eyes sprinted in, sword half-drawn. She wore the Veyron family crest on her chest. My personal maid Aru. The one who, in the original story, tried to stop the heroes' betrayal and was executed for "treason" three days later.
She halted, eyes widening.
"Young Master Lucien! Are you hurt? What was that explosion?!"
Armoured guards flooded the doorway, four star auras bristling.
I raised my hands, calm and composed. Lucien's natural poker face was truly a gift.
"I'm fine. I was testing a new mana circulation method. Overdid it a little."
Aru sheathed her sword, though her suspicion remained. "You destroyed a ten thousand star-crystal bed because you 'overdid it a little'?"
I gave a small shrug. "Beds are replaceable."
She exhaled sharply, shifting into her strict-maid expression. "Tomorrow is the Academy departure ceremony. If you keep breaking the estate, the Duke will make you run laps around the northern wall again."
Tomorrow.
My heartbeat quickened, though my expression remained cool.
The airship to the capital. The ceremony. The first encounter with the seven future betrayers.
The official beginning of the tragedy.
I looked at the ruined crater that used to be my bed, the stars in my eyes spinning faster.
"Aru," I said quietly.
"Yes, Young Master?"
"Prepare the formal uniform. The one with the full dragon crest."
She blinked. "The ceremonial one? You always said it was too flashy."
I smiled not Lucien's smile. Mine.
"Tomorrow, I want the entire empire to remember the name Lucien Veyron."
Aru hesitated only a second before bowing. "As you command."
The guards retreated. The doors closed.
Silence washed over the room once more.
I approached the floor-to-ceiling windows, gazing out at the endless northern snowfields glittering beneath the dawn moon. Somewhere beyond those mountains, seven naive, golden-eyed "heroes" were waking up to the best day of their lives.
They didn't know that the boy they murdered in the original timeline had already returned.
And this time, he wasn't here to die.
I pressed a palm to the cold glass. The five purple stars stared back like hungry wolves.
"Let the story begin."
Far away, as if answering my whisper, the Academy bell silent for a century rang a single, trembling note.