"Gods," the whisper scraped out, trembling. "What have I done?"
Relief surged, hot and immediate, a physical unclenching that left him weak.
He'd done it.
The lie held.
Brom's diagnosis , retrograde amnesia, a protective dissociation , was a shield, flimsy but vital.
He'd bought time. Precious, terrifying time to untangle this impossible knot , who Astrael Ravenastra was, why he'd drowned, how to survive a noble house built on expectations he couldn't fake forever.
The raw pain on Silas's face was a wound he'd inflicted, a necessary cruelty that tasted like ash.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, the unfamiliar smoothness of youth another jarring reminder.
'Uncle Silas…' A pang of grief, sharp and personal, cut through the relief for the man left bleeding on a City V sidewalk. He shoved it down.
Survival first. Mourn later.
His hand drifted absently to his chest, seeking the familiar comfort of a worn cotton tee.
Fingers brushed something cold, hard, utterly alien beneath the fine linen nightshirt.
He froze.
Frowning, he yanked the neckline down. Nestled against his pale skin, hanging from a simple, sturdy leather cord, was a pendant.
His breath hitched. Stopped.
A raven.
Thumb-joint sized. Forged from dark metal, obsidian-black, drinking the light. Stark. Powerful. Wings swept back in a mid-dive, a single, piercing eye rendered in a chip of something deep and dark… like dried blood.
He knew this pendant.
It belonged to Aarav.
A stupid impulse buy from a dusty stall in the old city ruins outside City V.
The crone selling it had mumbled about "harbingers" and "old shadows" as she took his crumpled bills.
He'd worn it for a month, a dark joke, until the cord snapped during a rugby scrum.
Tossed into a junk drawer. Forgotten. Until the truck horn… the light…
"How?"
The silent scream tore through his skull. "How is it HERE? On THIS body?"
A relic. Tangible proof of a life erased.
Impossible.
Deadly.
If anyone saw it, questioned its strange make… Brom's amnesia wouldn't cover this.
Panic, colder than the mountain's void, sharper than the battlefield's fury, seized him. He fumbled with the cord, fingers clumsy as a child's.
As his trembling fingers finally closed around the small, stylized bird, lifting the cord, the impossible happened.
The raven's eye – that chip of blood-dark stone – pulsed.
A single, faint throb of crimson light.
Not reflected sunlight. Not a trick. Light from within. Deep, resonant, alien in the sunlit, lavender-scented room. A heartbeat of ominous red. Then gone.
Astrael jerked his hand back as if burned, a choked gasp ripping from his throat. He stared, wide-eyed, frozen, at the pendant lying innocently against his skin. Dark. Inert. Silent.
But the echo of that pulse vibrated in his nerves. A silent, terrifying confirmation.
This wasn't just a pendant. Not just a piece of his past.
Something had come with him. Something… that just woke up.
He sat bolt upright, silken sheets pooling, breath sawing in short, sharp gasps.
He stared at the dark raven, cold against his too-pale chest.
The sunlight felt thin, insubstantial. The lavender scent turned cloying, sickly sweet.
He'd thought the mountain was the nightmare. He'd thought the lie was his biggest problem.
He'd been catastrophically wrong.
The echo of the raven's crimson pulse still vibrated in his bones when the new sound shattered the silence.
[Ding!]
Sharp. High-pitched. Utterly alien. Like a shard of ice striking a crystal bell inside his left ear canal. Astrael flinched, head snapping sideways. Empty air. Sunlight on dust motes.
'Stress hallucination? Brain finally cracking?'
[Ding!]
Louder.
Unmistakable.
Resonating within the confines of his skull.
Cold panic, sharper than the mountain's void, prickled his skin.
"What the hell was this? Magical backlash frying his neurons? Some latent curse from the battlefield dream?"
[Analysis Complete.]
A… voice.
But not.
It was sound carved from polished obsidian, devoid of inflection, devoid of life. It vibrated directly in the meat of his mind, bypassing his ears entirely.
[Soul Integration: 100%.]
[Neural Pathways: Synced.]
[Bio-Metric Signature: Confirmed: Astrael Ravenastra.]
Astrael's breath seized in his throat. He jerked upright, heart slamming against his ribs like a war drum.
His eyes darted wildly around the opulent prison – silken hangings, ornate mirror, thick rug. Nothing. No hidden speaker, no shimmering spirit. Emptiness pressed in.
"Who's there?" The rasp scraped raw from his throat, barely audible. Panic clawed its way up his spine.
[Aetheric Codex: Online.]
The stone-cold voice continued, indifferent to his terror.
[Welcome, Host.]
Astrael stared.
Unblinking.
The numbness that followed the initial shock was a smothering blanket.
A system? Like the ridiculous cheat from the trashy webnovels he'd devoured in his old life? Where grinning protagonists punched above their weight and collected harems like trophies? His desperate mind clawed for that frail hope.
'Is this… my golden finger?'
[Primary Directive: Host Survival & Ascension.]
The mechanical pronouncement echoed in the hollow silence of his skull.
[Assessing Host Status...]
[Vulnerability: Critical.]
[Threat Matrix: Active. Optimal.]
[Termination Probability (6 Mo..): 91.8%]
[Initializing Foundational Protocols...]
.
.
.
.
[Initialization Complete. Accessing Core Status.]
The obsidian voice sliced through his panic like a shard of frozen glass. The geometric grid flickered, dissolved, then reformed into stark, structured panels - less a game interface, more like autopsy reports projected onto his soul.
<<< AETHERIC CODEX: STATUS >>>
Termination Probability (6 Mo...): 91.8%
The numbers pulsed, blood-red.
Ninety-one point eight.
Not a chance.
A sentence.
Delivered by a machine-cold voice echoing in the hollows of his mind.
Six months.
Frail body.
Survival & Ascension?. The Codex's words mocked him. How? With what? A noble title and these trembling hands?
Name: Astrael Ravenastra (Host)
Age: 12 yrs(19)
Race: Human
Title: The Heir, Young Master, The Cursed One, The One Who Defies Death
Class: Young Master
Cultivation: Mortal
Level: 0
Bloodline: Ravensastra Bloodline
Physique: Mortal
-------------------------------
Attributes:
- Strength: 3 (Weak)
- Agility: 3 (Impaired)
- Intelligence: 3 (Negligible)
- Endurance: 3 (Critical Deficiency)
- Vitality: 3 (Fragile health)
- Mana: 0 (Null)
- Charm: 3 (Goblins scoff at your social grace)
- SP: 0
-------------------------------
Skills and Abilities: -
-------------------------------
CURRENT TIER: 0 (Restricted)
- Available Functions: Attribute, Basic Threat Analysis
[TIER 1 UNLOCK COST: 10 Units Soul Essence (Insufficient)]
-------------------------------
A blue intricate panel, like a game manifest, lay before him.
Astrael's fingers hovered over the blue screen. Moonlight and starlight seemed trapped in its pages.
Astrael reached out. But his hand passed through as if it were a hologram.
"What are you exactly?" Astrael demanded
[Aetheric Codex is a soul-bound artifact akin to an artificial intelligence from the host's memories, whose purpose is to assist the host to become powerful and to efficiently and effectively use the abilities the host learns.]
A brief pause. More text appeared.
[For better understanding and to help the host, it is adjusted into an AI user interface from the host's Memories.]
Astrael stared, mind racing. "So… your purpose is to assist me."
[Affirmative] flashed brightly.
The single word hung in the air.
Assistance. Power. It sounded too neat.
Too convenient for someone who was a college student just a moment ago and thrown into a dangerous world.
Astrael stepped closer. His questions came fast, hard, each one a hammer blow:
"So tell me, I died there, so how did I reincarnate here?"
The panel flickered.
[Query Recognized: Transmigration Event.]
[Analysis: Host biological termination confirmed.]
[Origin Dimension: Earth-Prime.]
[Cause: High-Grade Spatial-Anima Rupture (Probability: 0.00047%) at locus of termination. Soul-matrix captured during dispersal phase.]
"A… rupture? A cosmic hole opened where I died?" Astrael's voice was flat. "And just sucked me in?" Suspicion coiled tight in his gut. Like fate had cheated him twice – once with death, once with this.
[Statistical Anomaly. No Higher Intent Detected.]
"Is there a way to go back?" The question tore from him, raw with a hope he instantly hated himself for feeling.
The hologram dimmed. Symbols swirled sluggishly. Red warning sigils bled through the blue.
[Query: Dimensional Return Pathway.]
[Analysis...]
[ERROR: Core Data Corrupted.]
[Conclusion: Pathway Status… UNKNOWN.]
Unknown. The word hit like ice water. No way home.
"Why me?" Bitterness edged his words. "Why pull a nobody office drone with rent due and a cat waiting? Why my soul?"
The Codex responded instantly, clinically:
[Analysis: Soul Resonance Parameters Met.]
[High Compatibility: Soul-Matrix signature synced with local Aetheric Weave (This Reality).]
[High Latent Potential: Unquantified energy signature detected at dispersal.]
[Minimal Anchoring: Weak existential ties to Origin Dimension (Earth-Prime).]
"Compatibility? Potential?" Astrael scoffed, the clinical terms feeling like mockery. "I had spreadsheets, not superpowers."
"Who brought me here?" Astrael leaned in, eyes locked on the blue light. "Who or what made that rupture? Who sent you?"
The hologram flared violently. Static ripped across its surface.
The soft blue light instantly hardened into a deep, forbidding obsidian black. Harsh, blood-red text burned across its surface:
[ENTITY IDENTIFICATION QUERY.]
[SCANNING...]
[CROSS-REFERENCING ANIMA TRACES...]
[ERROR! ERROR!]
[CORRUPTED DATA STREAM!]
[SECURITY PROTOCOLS ENGAGED!]! ACCESS DENIED.]
The Codex's mental voice became clipped, urgent
[Host Query Rejected. Restricted Knowledge.]
[WARNING! EXTERNAL ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED! SIGNATURE: OMINOUS. SOURCE: UNKNOWN.]
The obsidian-black panel pulsed once, a warning throb.
It didn't vanish. It became a dark, silent shield hovering before him. Utterly unresponsive. Locked down.
Astrael stumbled back.
The air grew thick, charged with unseen menace. His skin crawled. Silence roared louder than any explosion.
Before he could react further, the obsidian panel flickered again. A new message scrawled in jagged red text:
[WARNING: OMINOUS SCRYING SIGNATURE INTENSIFYING.]
[THREAT ANALYSIS: UNKNOWN ENTITY. BEHAVIOR: PREDATORY.]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO CONTACT: 3 MINUTES.]
Three minutes.
Astrael looked down at his hands.
Soft. Uncalloused. A student's hands. Useless.
[SELF-ISOLATION PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
The Codex's voice cut through his panic, cold and precise. Before Astrael could question it, the air around him shimmered.
A faint hum vibrated through his bones, and the blue moonlight filtering through the room dimmed as if swallowed.
The panel flared, projecting a translucent dome of pale, crackling energy that encased him.
It was like a soap bubble, fragile yet humming with latent power, sealing him off from the world.
After 5 minutes
"What is this?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
[Self-Isolation Protocol creates a localized distortion, rendering the Host undetectable to tracking entities. Effective against most metaphysical and physical detection methods.]
Astrael's mind raced. "So… I'm invisible? To whatever's coming?"
[Partially Correct. The Shroud disrupts soul-signature tracking and masks physical presence. Direct visual contact may still occur if the entity breaches proximity.]
He swallowed hard, glancing at the panel. The timer ticked down in blood-red digits.
[SELF-ISOLATION PROTOCOL: DEACTIVATED.]
[ENTITY STATUS: WITHDRAWN OR DISPERSED.]
The words glowed softly, a reassurance in the restored blue light of the interface. Astrael's trembling hands unclenched, his breathing steadying. "I'm… safe?" he asked, voice hoarse.
[Affirmative.]
"What a rollercoaster it was." Astrael muttered under his breath.
Astarel clenched his fist. "I don't like this feeling. The powerlessness. The weakness. And to survive in this world, I need strength."
"System, tell me how I gained the strength," Astrael demanded.
[Affirmative....]
---------------------------------
Meanwhile, In the world
High above the world, unseen by mortal eyes, a vast, unblinking eye manifested in the night sky.
It shimmered with light but with an otherworldly absence, a void that drank in the stars.
Its pupil, a swirling abyss, pulsed with a cosmic intent, scanning the lands below.
Forests, mountains, empires—none escaped its gaze. The air thrummed with a low, resonant pressure, felt not as sound but as a weight on the soul.
It pressed not on the body, but on the soul, on the very fabric of magic and existence.
In distant corners of the world, ancient beings stirred.
In a cavern beneath a shattered peak, a dragon's golden eyes snapped open, its scales shimmering with unease. 'That gaze again,' it rumbled, coiling tighter around its hoard.