The mattress wasn't soft.
The first thing that bled into his awareness wasn't the grating buzz of an alarm clock, nor the blue backlight of his phone screen. It was a thick, damp stench—a mix of rotting stone and burnt pine.
The rough linen beneath his head scraped against his skin. The cold in the room felt less like ambient air and more like an open grave.
He dragged his eyes open. The ceiling wasn't the smooth white drywall of his small apartment. It was a high, dark timber framework crossed by heavy wooden beams, coated in old webs and dried soot.
"What..."
The sound left his throat raspy and weak. Remarkably thin.
He lifted a hand to press against his temple, but the movement froze mid-air.
He stared at his hand ,It wasn't his
The fingers were shorter, scrawnier. The skin had a sickly, pale hue, marked by a thin, jagged scar running across the index knuckle. His fingernails were bitten down, uneven and raw.
These weren't the hands of a twenty-year-old student who spent his days typing notes and scrolling through screens.
A violent throb spiked through the front of his skull, like a cold needle driving straight into his right eye. He sat up fast, his knees shaking beneath the heavy blanket.
He leaned back hard against the cold stone wall, chest heaving in short, quiet gasps. The air entering his lungs was unnaturally sharp. Clean. Entirely devoid of the city exhaust and dust he'd breathed his whole life.
He swung his legs over the frame. His bare feet hit the stone floor, the chill biting instantly into his soles.
The room was small, almost hollow. A crude wooden table sat in the corner, holding a dead candle that still gave off a faint trail of white smoke. A dark blue coat rested over the back of a broken chair. High on the wall, a single narrow window was covered by a frayed piece of cloth.
He pushed the cloth aside.
Outside, there were no streets. No neon signs. No cars.
Just a massive stone courtyard swallowed by a thick silver mist, framed by trees with dark, pitch-black leaves—foliage that belonged to no forest on Earth. In the far distance, towering stone spires cut through the fog, wrapped in massive iron chains as if trying to keep the structures from collapsing into the sky.
"Am I... dreaming?"
His eyes fell on a polished shard of metal sitting on the wooden table. He stepped over, picked it up, and tilted it toward his face. The reflection showed a boy. Sixteen, maybe seventeen
Dark brows. Messy, slate-gray hair. Eyes so pale they looked washed out, stripped of any real spark. It was a young face, sharp around the jaw, but completely ruined by exhaustion and a heavy, lingering pallor.
The kind of face designed to sit in a dark corner and be forgotten.
He reached down and picked up the blue coat. Embroidered on the left chest in faded gold thread was a small emblem: a three-pointed star wrapped in withered branches.
His fingers froze on the fabric.
That crest. That star...
"Lancroft..."
The name left his lips as a low, dry whisper.
His stomach sank. A mind that had devoured hundreds of fantasy novels instantly began assembling the pieces with terrifying clarity.
The marginal lancroft family. The abandoned lower annex. The trees with black leaves.
This wasn't just a random fantasy world.
He was standing inside the very novel he'd closed his eyes to less than an hour ago: The Extra Who Wants to Live.
And this pale body, this neglected coat, this forgotten room...
"Sirius..."
The single line where this name had ever appeared in the story flashed in his mind. A throwaway sentence buried somewhere around Chapter 20:
«The sickly son of the lancroft family, who died of a fever in the annex without anyone ever noticing.»
Not the hero. Not the villain. Not even an extra with a single line of dialogue before getting slaughtered.
He was a named corpse. A plot point used to add a bit of atmosphere to a chapter background.
"Damn it..."
He let out a heavy breath, resting his weight against the edge of the table.
"I transmigrated into a literal footnote."
Before he could give himself another second to process the mess he was in, the heavy iron hinges of the wooden door creaked.
Knock. Knock.
The intruder didn't wait for an answer. The door swung open with a sharp scrape against the floor.
A girl in a plain maid's uniform stepped inside, carrying a wooden tray with a bowl of cold broth and a chunk of stale bread. Her face was entirely blank—a mix of mechanical boredom and hidden disdain.
She set the tray down on the table with enough force to spill a splash of murky liquid onto the wood.
"Master Sirius," she said, her voice dry and devoid of respect. "The Count requires your presence in the main reception hall immediately."
Sirius blinked, staring at her.
"The Count?"
"Yes," the maid replied, adjusting her apron without looking him in the eye. "Guests from the Imperial Palace have arrived. The Count ordered all family members to gather in the courtyard at once. Do not make them wait."
She turned on her heel and walked out, leaving the heavy door wide open ,Sirius remained still, staring at the empty doorway.
In the original novel, guests from the Imperial Palace had never visited the lancroft household at this point in the timeline. The original Sirius was supposed to be lying in this bed, dying in silence right now. He looked down at his thin, pale hands, then back toward the open hallway outside.
The story was already off the rails.