Luke was dreaming. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell anymore.
In dreams, you forget things, faces melts, voices slip. The world looks like a blur.
He found himself living a life that wasn’t his. Names came to the forefront of his mind. Vencian Vicorra. House Vicorra. Kingdom of Airantis.
He could swear none of that were related to him.
Yet he knew that at the age of fourteen, Vencian had led a mock battle and defeated a veteran knights.
At sixteen, he had won a border skirmish that none thought was possible.
At seventeen, he entered the kingdom’s elite academy without the merits of his family.
It was a perfect life. Too perfect that even some movie directors who make movies with Mary Sue characters will shy away.
But then the dream changed. It stopped telling him a story.
The dream shattered into a blinding white light. So bright that it made his mind recoil. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel it.
And from inside that light came a voice. It sounded to kind to Luke’s ear.
He felt it creeping into his mind, pushing, squeezing. Like it was trying to overwrite something. Like it wanted to consume him or replace him.
Luke’s instincts screamed at him to reject it. To not take its hand. It felt wrong. Like he’d lose something vital if he accepted it.
He didn’t know how. But his mind flinched so hard that the world shattered.
He opened his eyes, gasping. His lungs felt like they were on fire.
The room around him felt wrong. It was too big. Too clean. The walls were decorated with ornate patterns. The bed nearby looked like something out of a historical drama. He was lying on the floor beside it.
The floor beneath was extremely cold.
He looked toward the window. It was night. Moonlight spilled into the room, enough for him to make out the details. He pushed his palm against the floor to stand up, but he stopped when a sharp sting shot through his hand.
He looked down. There was a deep gash across his palm. The blood had dried, crusted over. The sight jolted him.
Confused, he slowly got to his feet. His movements felt foreign - the reach of his arms different, his center of gravity shifted. Even the simple act of standing required conscious adjustment.
Thoughts rushed in. What the hell was happening?
Did someone kidnap me?
But then he dismissed it. Who would even bother?
"Not like I’m a rich guy. Or a girl. Or rich girl." he said out loud, trying to make light of it. The voice that emerged surprised him - deeper, more refined than what he expected. Even that simple joke sounded different coming from this throat.
"Still got both kidneys, right?"
He felt his sides, just to check. Everything seemed in place.
Something was wrong. This wasn’t his apartment.
Trying to keep his thoughts steady, he turned toward the full-length mirror leaning against the wall.
He froze. The person staring back wasn’t him.
Gone was his usual skinny frame, dull eyes, and unkempt black hair.
In the mirror stood a young man. Taller. Lean but clearly strong. Platinum white hair, not messy but naturally styled. High cheekbones. Clear skin. Sharp jawline. Someone who looked like he belonged in a movie.
His mouth moved, but no sound came out.
He already knew his name.
He stared at the reflection, heart pounding, mind blank.
His heart started beating faster. This wasn’t within anything he had prepared for. He hadn’t calculated for this.
Just a moment ago, the pain in his palm had made it clear that this wasn’t a dream. This was real.
How the fuck did it come to this?
In his distress, he looked around the room again. His eyes landed on the study table in the corner. It stood out immediately. It didn’t look like a normal desk.
Spread across its surface was a large piece of parchment. On it, a strange and detailed symbol had been drawn. Parts of it had been traced over in red, as if someone had rewritten certain sections. Candles were placed carefully at several points around the symbol, aligned in a symmetrical pattern - now burned down to mere stubs, wax pooled and hardened around their bases.
And next to it all, sat a knife. Its blade was stained with dried blood, the crimson now dark and flaking. Hours had passed since it was used.
Luke stared at it, then glanced down at his own hand. The gash on his palm matched too perfectly. The angle and the depth were so precise that it had to be self-inflicted.
What could have driven someone to this? The precision suggested deliberate action.
In the corner of the parchment, something was written in a language he didn’t recognize. The letters were unfamiliar, yet his mind insisted they meant something. It was like trying to remember a word on the tip of his tongue, only this word had never belonged to any language he had ever learned. Official source is novel✶fire.net
He leaned forward slightly to get a better look at the strange writing.
The symbols seemed to shift in the candlelight, and suddenly the room felt different. Colder. The shadows in the corners appeared deeper, and the silence pressed against his ears.
Something was watching him.
He felt it before he saw anything: a presence. His skin prickled as he turned sharply toward the window.
Nothing. Just the night sky and moonlight.
He stood still for a long moment, pulse quickening. "Just my imagination," he muttered, but his voice sounded thin in the empty room.
He turned back to the table, trying to shake off the unease. The writing seemed important somehow, familiar yet foreign. His body moved on instinct, leaning closer.
As his eyes focused on the first character, something stirred in his mind. A recognition that shouldn’t exist. The symbol meant something, and somehow he knew—
The presence returned. Stronger now. Not watching anymore, but reaching.
His vision blurred. The room tilted. He could feel something vast and alien pressing against the edges of his consciousness, trying to push its way in.
His brain went numb. A sudden, crushing pressure slammed into his mind like a freight train, and the world exploded into that same blinding white light from his dream.
Then everything went dark, and he collapsed.
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