Levin's hands trembled as he stared at the ceiling above him. His breathing came in short, sharp gasps that echoed too loudly in the vast chamber.
This wasn't real. Couldn't be real.
He'd read enough stories, watched enough anime during those rare moments his parents had been too busy micromanaging the empire to micromanage him. Transmigration. Reincarnation. Isekai. Terms he'd consumed like escapist fiction during stolen hours in his childhood, before even his entertainment had been regulated and approved.
But this. This was too much. Too vivid. Too real.
The softness of the sheets beneath his fingers felt genuine. The cool air against his skin registered with perfect clarity. The faint scent of incense drifting through the room invaded his nostrils with botanical precision he couldn't ignore.
His heart hammered against ribs that felt different. Narrower. Younger.
Panic clawed up his throat.
He threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed, legs unsteady beneath him. Everything felt wrong. His center of gravity shifted. His limbs responded with unfamiliar timing, muscle memory that belonged to someone else entirely.
Levin grabbed his arms, squeezing hard enough to hurt. Solid. Real. He pressed fingers against his chest, feeling a heartbeat that shouldn't exist. He'd drowned. Felt the water fill his lungs. Experienced the absolute certainty of death.
Yet here he stood. Breathing. Living.
In a body that wasn't his.
His eyes swept the chamber again, desperate for something rational, some explanation that didn't require accepting the impossible. The celestial murals seemed to move when he wasn't looking directly at them, stars shifting in their painted courses. The symbols on the bedsheets pulsed with faint luminescence.
Magic. The word whispered through his mind like blasphemy.
He needed to see. Needed confirmation that this nightmare had limits, boundaries, some tether to sanity.
A full-length mirror stood against the far wall, framed in silver that caught light like liquid. Levin approached it slowly, each step deliberate, part of him terrified of what he'd find.
He stopped three feet away.
Then two.
Then directly in front of it.
The person staring back made his breath catch.
Not Levin. Nothing like Levin.
Violet hair fell in a wild mane around a face carved from fantasy itself. Sharp cheekbones. Strong jaw. Skin pale as moonlight. But the eyes captured him most. Piercing blue, so vivid they seemed to glow with inner light, framed by dark lashes that belonged in paintings rather than reality.
Beautiful. Inhumanly beautiful.
And tall. Levin had been average height, maybe five-ten on a good day. This body towered. Six-three, easily, maybe more. Broad shoulders tapering to a lean waist, muscle definition visible even through the thin sleeping shirt he wore.
Young, though. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. All that height packed into an adolescent frame still growing into itself.
Levin lifted a hand. The stranger in the mirror did the same. He touched his face, tracing features that felt alien beneath his fingertips. The violet hair felt like silk. The blue eyes stared back with his own confusion reflected in their depths.
"What is happening to me?" he whispered.
His voice came out deeper than expected. Richer. With an accent he didn't recognize coloring the edges of his words.
This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening. People didn't just die and wake up in different bodies in different worlds with different faces.
But the mirror didn't lie.
The door opened.
Levin spun, heart leaping into his throat.
A woman entered. No, not a woman. A girl, maybe early twenties. Dressed in a maid's uniform that seemed both practical and elegant, black fabric trimmed with silver threading. Her most striking feature was her hair: long, lemon-green locks pulled into a high ponytail that cascaded down her back like a waterfall of spring leaves.
She was busty. Impossibly so. Curvaceous in ways that made the uniform strain slightly at the seams. But her hair in front fell across her face in carefully arranged strands, obscuring her features so completely that Levin couldn't make out her expression.
She looked toward him.
And froze.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then she dropped to one knee so fast her joints cracked against the polished floor, head bowed, hands pressed flat against stone.
"I greet the Seventh Star!"
Her voice rang with formal precision, each word enunciated with practiced reverence that sent chills down Levin's spine.
"Seventh Star?" The words escaped him before he could stop them.
The maid tensed. Her shoulders drew up tight, posture radiating alarm. "Seventh Star, you had an acute fever which was very serious. At some point during your treatment we lost you, but then suddenly you were revived. After that I had to take care of you everyday, monitoring your condition." Her voice quickened, taking on a desperate edge. "I apologize for not obeying courtesy by knocking before entering. I heard movement and feared you might have collapsed. Please forgive my impertinence."
She was terrified. Levin could hear it in the tremor beneath her formal words. Terrified of him. Of whatever consequences might follow her breach of protocol.
He stood there, mouth hanging open, mind completely blank. What was he supposed to say? How was he supposed to respond to any of this?
"Okay," he managed finally. The whisper barely qualified as sound.
The maid rose slowly, clearly relieved not to be punished, and moved toward the bed with quick, efficient movements. She began straightening sheets that didn't need straightening, fluffing pillows already perfect, hands busy with meaningless tasks.
An opportunity crystallized in Levin's racing thoughts.
She thought he'd been sick. Delirious with fever. That gave him cover. An excuse for ignorance. A way to ask questions without revealing the complete impossibility of his situation.
"Wait." His voice came out stronger this time.
The maid stopped immediately, turning to face him with that same obscured expression.
Levin swallowed hard. "I... the fever. It affected my memory. Things are unclear. Fragmented." The lie felt necessary. Survival instinct overriding his usual honesty. "Could you tell me your name? And... who I am?"
Silence stretched between them. He could see her processing, weighing his words against whatever she knew of fevers and their effects.
Finally, she bowed. Properly this time, a deep formal gesture that spoke of genuine respect rather than fear.
"My name is Esme, Seventh Star. I am a personal maid assigned exclusively to your service."
Esme. The name felt right somehow. Fit the green hair and hidden face.
"And I keep calling you Seventh Star because..." She paused, clearly trying to decide how much to explain. "You are Riven Astravar, Seventh Star of the Astravar Line."
Riven. The name settled over him like an ill-fitting coat.
"In the Astravar family," Esme continued, "the Patriarch's children are titled by stars. Your father, Hugo Von Astravar, has seven sons. Among them all, you are the youngest. The seventh child. Which makes you the Seventh Star."
Seven sons. One father. A family of stars.
Levin, no, Riven, felt the weight of that title settle onto shoulders that weren't his, in a world that shouldn't exist, wearing a face that belonged to fantasy.
The Seventh Star.
He looked back at the mirror, at the violet-haired stranger who wore his confusion like a crown.
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the towering windows and impossible moon, this new world waited. Full of mysteries and dangers and possibilities he couldn't begin to comprehend.
But for now, in this exquisite chamber with a maid named Esme and a title that meant nothing to him, Levin took his first breath as someone else.
As Riven Astravar.
The Seventh Star.