Consciousness returned not as a single spark but as a tide pushing quietly across a distant shoreline slow, insistent, and carrying with it a heaviness I couldn't immediately name.
It rose and fell in waves, each one lapping a little further into the dark space where thought had been swallowed whole.
Sound reached me first: the faint rustle of fabric shifting in gentle motion, the rhythmic pattern of breathing that wasn't my own, the subtle creak of old floorboards beneath someone's careful steps. These noises interwove themselves into a subtle tapestry of presence, informing me long before my eyes opened that I was not alone.
When I finally managed to pry my eyelids apart, it felt as though stones had been laid across them smooth, heavy, river-worn. Light seeped through in slow, uncertain gradients: at first a soft blur of pale brightness, then vague shapes dissolving and reforming with each blink, and slowly, painfully, silhouettes sharpening into coherent outlines.
The world solidified grain by grain, the way a faded photograph blooms back to clarity in a chemical bath, revealing what had always been there, waiting behind the veil of unconsciousness.
People stood around me.
Not one or two but several. They formed a loose semicircle by the bedside, their faces turned toward me, every expression tinted with meanings I didn't yet have the clarity to decipher. As their features resolved, I recognized three figures closest to me: a woman standing just behind two younger girls, and farther back, the familiar black-and-white uniforms of maids positioned in disciplined rows near the doorway.
Instinctively, I searched the faces for the only familiar one the butler I had seen earlier, the man whose composed presence and careful discipline had anchored me in that first moment of bewilderment.
He wasn't there.
My throat tightened with the urge to speak, to ask a dozen questions at once, but before even a fragment of sound could escape, the two girls in front of me surged forward.
They moved with uncanny synchrony, like reflections in a mirror breaking loose from glass. Arms wrapped around my torso from both sides, pulling me into an embrace so fierce it knocked the breath straight out of my lungs.
Their fingers clutched at my shoulders and back, trembling with a desperation that bordered on frantic, an unspoken plea to keep me solid, real, present. The scent of lavender and rose water enveloped me, too sweet and too close, flooding my senses.
My ribs screamed. My lungs seized against the pressure.
"I… can't… breathe," I gasped, each word a small battle forced out past the crushing hold.
The girls jerked back instantly, releasing me as if scalded. Air rushed into my chest in a sharp, greedy inhale. Relief washed through me in a tremor, like surf retreating from a drowning man finally breaking the surface.
I took several slow breaths until the pounding in my chest settled into a calmer rhythm, though the lingering ache in my ribs pulsed with every inhale.
Silence descended over the room.
Not the peaceful kind, this was a silence stretched taut, a tightrope of unspoken tension stringing the atmosphere together. Every tiny sound became magnified: the muted tick of a clock on the mantlepiece, the subtle shift of a maid's posture, the whisper of heavy curtains stirring in a faint draft.
It was the kind of silence heavy enough to swallow even a footstep whole.
The woman behind the girls finally broke it with a question that sliced through the air like perfectly honed steel.
"Are your divine symbols tingling?"
Her tone was smooth and measured, but beneath it lay a razor-thin sharpness, a practiced edge belonging to someone accustomed to extracting truth with precision rather than force. Her face remained calm, but it was a calm studied into permanence, the kind worn like armor.
The question made no sense to me.
But before I could react, something else surfaced slow and cold, like forgotten objects rising from deep water. Memories. Flickers of them. Not mine.
A child's small hands turning through heavy leather-bound tomes. The echo of footsteps in stone hallways. Tutors speaking of lineage, etiquette, magic. This room. This body. This family. Images and emotions unraveled in broken strands, weaving around my own confused consciousness until it became difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
These were not my memories. They belonged to the boy whose body I now inhabited.
A quiet panic tightened around my mind. I didn't belong here. I didn't know how or why I had crossed into this place, this world. The last thing I remembered was the bus. its smell, its warmth, the familiar drone of the engine. Then nothingness. Only to awaken here in another life, another body, another world entirely.
But I couldn't reveal any of that. Not until I understood more. Not until I knew the rules of this strange existence.
So I answered the only way I could.
"No," I said quietly, steadying my voice despite the storm roiling inside me.
The woman -my new mother, memories supplied- did not visibly react. But something faint shimmered through her icy gaze, too subtle to name: a flicker of relief, or disappointment, or perhaps calculation. Liora Valtair Roosevelt. Countess. Cold precision molded into human shape. Her silver hair shimmered beneath the chandelier's glow, catching threads of light like woven strands of frost.
She watched me with the composure of someone who had survived too many storms to flinch at a small ripple.
To my sides stood the twins who had nearly crushed me. Sienna and Vienna Valtair Roosevelt. Identical to the point of uncanny perfection. Even their mother often failed to tell them apart. Memories flashed mischief, confusion, swapped identities, shared secrets. Their hands hovered close, as if some unseen thread tethered them to me and they were afraid that letting go again might make me vanish.
Before I could think further, a gentle knock echoed against the door.
Knock, knock.
Not urgent. Polite. Controlled. The kind of knock delivered by someone who respects boundaries but expects to be received.
Mother straightened, posture flawless. "Enter."
The door swung open with the slow, dignified creak of well-aged wood. And there he was.
The butler.
He crossed the threshold with a quiet, smooth grace, his steps so fluid it was as though the air parted for him. His presence was a perfect stillness, deeper and more natural than even Mother's cultivated calm. Her composure was armor; his was a tranquil ocean unshaken, unreadable, profound.
"M'lady," he said with a respectful incline of his head, voice low and measured. "I have spoken with the priest."
Mother's eyes sharpened like glass catching the light. "What did he say?"
The butler swept the room with a thoughtful glance, then clasped his hands lightly behind his back. When he spoke, his tone held a quiet insistence wrapped in polite restraint.
"May I request that we continue this discussion in private?"
It was phrased as a request, but everyone knew it was a boundary drawn with elegant firmness. Mother understood instantly. Her chin dipped in a subtle nod.
One look from her, and the maids bowed and retreated in graceful silence.
The twins hesitated, however. They clung to the moment with reluctance so palpable it tugged at the air. Their feet remained rooted, their fingers curling around the edge of the blankets as if refusing to release me a second time.
But Mother's gaze brooked no argument.
After a beat of resistance, they obeyed, moving toward the door with all the enthusiasm of children being dismissed from a secret they desperately wanted to hear. The door clicked shut behind them, the sound soft yet monumental.
Now only the three of us remained.
The butler approached with soundless steps until he stood at a polite distance from the bed. His face, carved in unwavering serenity, revealed nothing.
"M'lady," he said, "the young master's black bone has reverted to its natural state following the awakening of his divine symbol." He paused, letting the significance hang for a heartbeat. "Because of this transformation, he will be unable to participate in the Royal Tournament this year."
The words didn't so much settle as sink heavy, final into the still air.
Mother's expression remained unreadable, as unmoving as carved marble. Not anger, not relief, not disappointment. Nothing broke through the wall of her practiced composure. She simply turned.
And walked toward the door.
Silver hair swaying like moonlit silk. Steps measured. Back straight. No farewell. No comfort. No acknowledgment.
The door opened.
She stepped through.
The door closed.
And I was left sitting in silence, staring at the empty space where she had been, the weight of her absence somehow louder than her presence.
The reality of this world pressed in around me, unfamiliar and merciless.
And I had no idea what would come next.