I reached the training arena where the sword master was waiting, my footsteps echoing against the stone floor of the corridor. As I approached the doorstep, two young butlers stationed on either side of the entrance straightened to attention. They moved with synchronized precision, reaching for the heavy double doors and pulling them open in a gesture that felt rehearsed, ceremonial, as if I were someone special arriving for an important engagement.
Wait, I am someone special now, don't I? The thought arrived with a strange mixture of discomfort and irony. In my old life, I'd been the person doors closed on, the one who slipped through spaces unnoticed. Now I was Theodore Valtair Roosevelt, heir to a noble house, someone for whom doors were opened by servants who bowed their heads as I passed.
The door creaked open with the low groan of aged hinges bearing substantial weight, and suddenly the world beyond exploded into my senses.
Light hit my eyes with immediate intensity, the kind of brightness that made me squint involuntarily and raise a hand to shield my face. It wasn't the soft, filtered light of the manor's interior with its carefully positioned windows and elegant curtains. This was open space light, unobstructed and unforgiving, carrying with it the full force of morning sun that had climbed high enough to beat down without mercy.
Heat came with it, a wave of warmth that touched my skin like a physical presence. The training arena was outdoors, I realized, as the temperature difference between the cool stone corridor and the sun-drenched grounds washed over me. The air itself felt different here, thicker somehow, carrying the scent of packed earth and grass baked under sustained exposure to sunlight.
I blinked against the brightness, my eyes struggling to adjust from the manor's comfortable dimness to this assault of luminosity. Slowly, shapes began to resolve themselves from the white-gold glare. The training grounds spread out before me in a wide expanse of packed dirt, marked with lines and circles that suggested structure and purpose.
Wooden training dummies stood at intervals along one edge, their surfaces scarred and splintered from countless strikes. Weapon racks lined another wall, holding an array of practice swords, spears, and other implements I couldn't immediately name. And in the center of it all, a figure waited.
The sword master.
As soon as I saw the sword master, my hopes shattered like glass dropped on stone.
His posture was curved like a boomerang, spine bent in a way that suggested years of poor alignment or perhaps an injury that had never quite healed properly. He stood In the center of the training ground with his shoulders hunched forward, creating a silhouette that spoke more of exhaustion than martial prowess. His eyes, visible even from this distance, carried the hollow, red-rimmed quality of someone who didn't sleep at nights, like an owl perpetually caught in daylight hours. Dark circles pooled beneath them, shadows so deep they looked almost bruised.
And he was skinny. Not lean in the way Theodore's body was lean, with its efficient muscle and trained strength. This was the kind of skinny that came from meals skipped and appetites lost, the gauntness of someone whose body had begun to consume itself in the absence of proper sustenance. His training clothes, similar in style to mine, hung loose on his frame in places they should have fit snugly.
This was the sword master they'd assigned to me? This man who looked like he could barely lift a real sword, let alone teach someone else how to wield one properly? Did they want me to train under him or something? The question formed before I could stop it, tinged with disbelief and a disappointment I hadn't realized I'd been carrying.
I'd pictured someone formidable. Someone with presence and scars earned through decades of combat. A warrior whose very stance commanded respect and whose instruction would transform me into whatever Theodore was supposed to become. Instead, I got someone who looked like he needed training more than he could provide it.
But since I had arrived here, since I'd already committed to this path by leaving my room and crossing the training ground threshold, I might as well see what he was capable of. Appearances could be deceiving, after all. In a world with magic and divine symbols and tournaments that separated the worthy from the forgotten, perhaps physical appearance meant less than I assumed. Maybe this hunched, hollow-eyed man possessed skills that his body didn't advertise. Maybe he'd earned his position through merit rather than appearance.
Hehe, I think like a warrior now, I praised myself, recognizing the shift in my own thinking. Leon would have turned around and left, made some excuse about feeling ill or having other obligations. Leon would have let first impressions dictate his actions without giving anyone a second chance.
But Theodore, or at least the version of Theodore I was trying to become, would approach this with the discipline and openness that nobility apparently required. Theodore would give his sword master the courtesy of demonstration before judgment.
I adjusted my grip on the wooden practice sword Sebastian had provided and stepped fully into the training arena, letting the heavy doors close behind me with a solid thud that cut off any possibility of retreat.
The sword master watched me approach, his hollow eyes tracking my movement with an intensity that belied his exhausted appearance. And despite everything, despite the disappointment still churning in my chest, I kept walking forward.
At a certain distance between us, something changed in the air.
It wasn't gradual. One moment I was walking across packed earth toward this hollow-eyed sword master, and the next, pressure descended like an invisible hand pressing down on my shoulders, my chest, my entire body. The air itself became heavy, thick with a force I couldn't see but could feel in every fiber of my being. It was as If gravity had doubled, tripled, become something more than physics, something intentional and aimed directly at me.
My steps slowed, then stopped entirely. My legs trembled with the effort of simply remaining upright. The wooden practice sword in my hand suddenly felt like it weighed as much as iron, dragging my arm down despite my attempts to maintain my grip. My lungs struggled to draw breath against the pressure compressing my chest, each inhale a victory fought for and barely won.
If it was the real Theodore standing here, he might have been able to withstand this pressure. The memories showed me fragments of a boy who'd trained since childhood, who'd been conditioned for this world's demands, whose body had been forged through years of discipline I'd never experienced. That Theodore might have stood tall under this crushing force, might have pushed through it with the stubborn determination that came from knowing nothing else.
But it wasn't him standing here now.
It was me. Leon. The boy who couldn't even make a decision on his own without second-guessing every choice until paralysis set in. The one who couldn't connect with people, who'd spent his entire life watching conversations from the outside, never quite understanding the rhythm of human interaction well enough to participate naturally. The one who couldn't even dream, whose sleep had always been nothing but blank darkness between one day and the next, as if his subconscious had given up trying to communicate through symbols and stories.
I was weak in ways that had nothing to do with physical strength. And this pressure, whatever it was, seemed to know it. It found every crack in my foundation and pushed, testing how little force it would take to make me crumble completely.
My vision blurred at the edges. The training ground swam in and out of focus. The sword master's hunched figure wavered like a mirage in desert heat.
But even as my body prepared to collapse, even as my knees began to buckle under the impossible weight, a thought crystallized in my mind with sudden, diamond-sharp clarity.
This was my new life now. I didn't understand it. I didn't ask for it. But it was mine, and I had to find answers. I had to understand why and how I'd gotten here. What had happened to the real Theodore? Where was Honald? What was the pendant with its teal stone and mysterious symbol, and why had touching it thrown me across worlds into someone else's existence?
I couldn't collapse now. Not when I'd barely begun to search for the truth. Not when so many questions remained unanswered.
When that thought came to me, when that spark of determination ignited in the center of my chest, the divine symbol they'd been talking about started to tingle.
It began as a sensation so faint I almost missed it beneath the crushing pressure, a subtle warmth that bloomed somewhere in my chest, just left of center where my heart hammered against my ribs. The tingling spread like electricity beneath my skin, following pathways I couldn't see but could feel as clearly as veins carrying blood. It moved down my arms, across my shoulders, up my neck, until my entire body hummed with an energy that felt both foreign and somehow fundamentally right.
The divine symbol, the blessing from gods I didn't believe in, given to people in this world as marks of power and authority. I'd heard about it from Sebastian, understood it in abstract terms through Theodore's inherited memories. But feeling it activate, experiencing the actual sensation of divine power awakening in response to my will, my need, my refusal to break, that was something entirely different.
The pressure pressing down on me didn't disappear. But suddenly, I could breathe through it. The weight remained, but I found strength I hadn't known I possessed, something rising up from that tingling warmth to meet the force trying to crush me. My legs steadied. My grip on the practice sword tightened. My vision cleared.
I raised my head and met the sword master's hollow eyes across the distance between us, and for the first time since arriving in this world, I felt like I might actually survive it.