The first thing I felt wasn't power, or triumph, or even relief.
It was dirt.
Gritty, dry sand filled my mouth. The roar of a crowd assaulted my ears—not the screams of dying soldiers I had listened to for five centuries, but the sharp, cruel laughter of children.
My head spun. The last image burned into my retina was the Angel of Purity dissolving my arm. Now, I was staring at a pair of worn leather boots.
Where... am I?
I pushed myself up, my arms trembling. These weren't the scarred, iron-hard limbs of a veteran. They were thin. Soft. Weak.
"Look at him! He tripped over his own feet!"
"Get up, half-breed! The doll hasn't even hit you yet!"
The voices pierced the fog in my mind. I knew that laughter. It belonged to ghosts. To cousins and brothers who had died screaming five hundred years ago.
I blinked, spitting out the sand. I looked up.
Looming over me was not a Celestial, but a wooden construct. It was a Basic Training Doll—a crude thing of enchanted oak and leather joints, powered by a single low-grade spirit stone. It held a blunted wooden sword in a jerky, mechanical grip.
My heart hammered against my ribs—not from fear, but from a sudden, dizzying realization.
I knew this sand. I knew this humiliation.
This was the Yaksha Academy Entrance Exam. The day I tried to use a spiritual barrier I didn't have. The day I was beaten unconscious by a wooden toy, creating the rumor that Lucifer's youngest son was defective trash. This was the day I lost my future.
I clenched my small, fragile fists. The Phantom pain of the Seven Skulls burned in my chest, a cold weight settled deep in my heart, silent but present.
I asked for a second chance, I thought, a grin tugging at the corners of my bloody mouth. And the Dragon God sent me back to the very first joke.
*
*
*
Ciel Morningnoir stood up.
The laughter in the arena faltered, just for a second. The silver-haired boy who had been cowering in the dirt a moment ago stood differently now. His posture, usually hunched in shame of his horns, was loose. Relaxed. Predatory.
"Instructor," Ciel said, his voice cracking slightly with puberty, yet carrying an odd, heavy calmness. "Is the exam still active?"
The instructor, a burly Yaksha with thick, dark horns and dark green scales running down his neck, sneered from the sidelines. "You haven't surrendered yet, runt. But don't worry, the doll will make you quit soon enough."
He snapped his fingers. The wooden doll jerked to life, its eyes glowing with a faint, pathetic yellow light.
In Ciel's previous life, this moment had been terror. He had squeezed his eyes shut and tried to summon the noble spiritual energy of his father, praying for a miracle that never came.
Now, Ciel looked at the doll and saw... garbage.
Even without spiritual perception, his eyes—sharpened by five hundred years of survival—dissected the threat. Left knee joint is loose. The swing arc is wide. It telegraphs every strike.
The doll lunged. The wooden sword whistled through the air, aiming for Ciel's ribs.
The crowd of young Yaksha nobles leaned forward, expecting the crack of bone.
Ciel didn't retreat. He didn't try to block. He stepped into the swing.
Thwack.
The wooden blade slammed into Ciel's left shoulder. It hit hard enough to bruise bone, hard enough to make a normal child scream.
Ciel didn't even blink.
He took the hit voluntarily, using the impact to gauge the doll's strength. Weak, he assessed. It can't kill me. And if it can't kill me, it's nothing.
While the doll was stuck in the follow-through of its attack, Ciel moved.
He didn't use a graceful palm strike. He didn't chant a spell. He wrapped his small hands around the doll's wooden wrist and twisted his hips.
"Break," he whispered.
Using the doll's own momentum against it, he slammed the construct hard against the gritty sand. Wood splintered.
The arena went silent.
The doll, programmed only to attack, tried to rise. Its gears ground together.
Ciel didn't let it. He mounted the wooden thing, straddling its chest. He raised a fist that glowed with no magic—only the raw, kinetic intent of a killer.
Bam.
He punched the doll's face.
Bam.
He punched it again.
Bam.
Wood cracked. The leather binding the spirit stone tore open. Ciel's knuckles split, blood dripping onto the oak, but the wounds knit themselves together in seconds, leaving only fresh pink skin ready to break again.
"Die," Ciel grunted, the word feeling good on his tongue.
He drove his fist down one last time, not aiming for the surface, but through it. His hand punched clean through the doll's wooden chest, his fingers wrapping around the glowing spirit stone inside.
With a wet, tearing sound, he ripped the core out.
The doll seized, then collapsed into a pile of lifeless lumber.
Ciel sat there for a moment, breathing hard, holding the fading spirit stone in his hand. He looked at his knuckles. They were already healed.
Slowly, he stood up amidst the wreckage. He turned his gaze to the instructor, whose jaw was practically on the floor. The other students—His siblings and cousins included—were staring at him with a mixture of confusion and horror. They hadn't seen a martial art. They had seen a street brawl. They had seen a prince fight like a beast.
Ciel tossed the spirit stone to the instructor's feet. It rolled across the sand, coming to a stop against the man's boot.
"I passed," Ciel said. It wasn't a question.
He turned and walked toward the exit, his back straight, leaving the silence of the stunned arena behind him.
But as he reached the dark tunnel leading to the armory, Ciel felt a sharp, cold pulse from his chest. The Seven Skulls were waking up. And they were hungry.