Draig Mountains, The Scaled Domain-
The peaks of the Draig Mountains did not merely endure the weather; they were being flayed by it. A prehistoric blizzard shrieked through the canyons, a gale so violent it possessed the raw physical force to cleave granite masses in two. Amidst this white apocalypse, a lone figure moved. Shrouded in a heavy white hood that masked his features, the man walked with a measured, rhythmic gait that defied the howling winds.
He halted at the very lip of a jagged precipice. With a slow, fluid sweep of his arm, he brushed against the "still" air. In an instant, reality groaned. Where his palm passed, space began to warp and fracture, stretching wide until it tore open a jagged, rectangular gateway. Beyond the threshold lay nothing but a silent, infinite void—a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light of the snow itself.
Without hesitation, the man stepped into the abyss.
He emerged not into a vacuum, but into the quiet warmth of a spacious sanctuary. The transition was jarring; the roar of the mountains was replaced by the soft crackle of wax. The room was a masterwork of timber, from the polished floorboards to the grain of the walls. Four candles flickered in the corners of the cabin, while a fifth stood sentinel upon a heavy wooden desk.
The traveller cast back his hood and unbuckled a formidable sword, resting it atop the bed's furs. He wore a simple sand-coloured tunic and dark trousers that did little to hide a frame built of hard-won muscle. He looked to be a man in his fourth decade, though his hair was as white as the peaks he had just left. A jagged blade-scar ran vertically across his closed left eye, a permanent map of a past battle.
"I suppose the dragons have departed the continent as ordered," he muttered, his voice a low rasp in the empty room.
He sank into the wooden chair, his heavy frame leaning back as he exhaled the chill of the Draig peaks. "I must finish the 'Preparation' before they complete the restoration of the Inferno Route."
Reaching into the desk drawer, he retrieved a massive, leather-bound tome, a pot of obsidian ink, and a pristine white quill. The nib scratched against the parchment with a sense of grim destiny as he began to write:
[I record this diary for the one who follows—the successor who must grasp the true weight of history. Within these pages lies the map to power, and the chronicle of my own descent. This is the journey of how a man became a Magician, how a Magician became a King, and how that King became the blackest stain on human history: the 'Evil God.' My name is Felix Bardeen. Read every word, for your life is now bound to my legacy.]
My name was Satoshi Kobayashi, and in the social ecosystem of the elite, I was a ghost. I existed in the grey margins of the classroom, a "trash" tier human whose only companions were the frantic lines of my sketches and the digital glow of online games.
That changed when I met Yamato. He was a brilliant talent—a boy who excelled in every arena, from the lecture hall to the track—yet he was treated like a contagion. He was a scholarship student, a "charity case" in an academy built on the blood and bribes of the wealthy. The other students didn't just ignore him; they despised him for having the audacity to be better than them despite his poverty.
Then Yamato died.
For seven days, I had been a prisoner of my own grief, rotting in a darkened room. But today, the silence was shattered. My father had returned from his latest conquest abroad. He was a titan of industry, a man who had clawed his way from a peasant's life to the boardrooms of global MNCs through cold, academic genius. He didn't walk; he conquered space.
Thud—Thud.
The rhythmic, heavy footfalls of expensive leather stopped outside my door. It swung open to reveal a phalanx of four people. In the centre stood my father, clad in a razor-sharp three-piece suit, his beard trimmed with surgical precision. His face was a mask of thunderous rage.
"I told you a thousand times to stay away from that beggar!" he bellowed, his voice vibrating in my chest like a physical blow. "If you had only stayed with your own kind, with your classmates... oh, but I forgot. You don't have the spine to make friends with them, do you?"
His predatory gaze swept over my walls, landing on the sketches I had pinned there—my only refuge. "You think this pathetic talent will save you? You'll never become anything with these scribbles. I once held out hope when you showed promise in sports, but after that leg injury seven years ago, even your body is a wasted investment."
He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing me whole. "My final warning, Satoshi: if you are truly good for nothing, then have the decency to rot silently in this room."
He turned his back on me, addressing his secretary with a chilling frostiness. "Did you locate the scums responsible for the 'incident'?"
"I apologize, sir," she replied, bowing her head. "We are still scouring the city for them."
My father didn't even look back at me as he addressed the two towering bodyguards flanking the door. "You two. See to it that he doesn't take a single step outside this house."
The door slammed shut, and the click of the lock sounded like the final nail in my coffin.
Time had long since dissolved into a featureless, grey sludge. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my knees pulled tightly against my chest, my forehead resting on my shins in a posture of total surrender. The curtains were heavy, velvet shrouds that choked out the sun, leaving the room in a state of eternal twilight. The only proof that a world still existed outside was the thin, mocking sliver of light that bled beneath the door—a line I lacked the strength to cross.
My mind was a hollow chamber. There were no thoughts left, only the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the guard's knuckles against wood at mealtimes. Sometimes the tray would be taken away untouched, the food cold and congealed. Other times, I would crawl toward it like a starving animal, picking at a few crumbs of bread just to quiet the gnawing ache in my stomach.
Was it a month? Six months? A year? If years then how many? I couldn't say. My hair had grown into a tangled mane that spilled past my waist, a physical measurement of my decay. This wasn't a prison—the door wasn't locked from the outside. I was free to walk out, to breathe the air, to see faces. But the world outside offered nothing but the suffocating weight of disgrace. To the world, I was a broken tool; to my father, I was a failed investment. I had simply chosen to bury myself before they could do it for me.
I have nothing left; I whispered to the shadows. My voice was a dry rasp, unfamiliar to my own ears.
I reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out a small utility cutter. The metal was cold, clinical. With a terrifyingly steady hand, I drew the blade across the veins of both wrists. There was no scream. No flinch. My face remained a pale mask of absolute despair, as if the life leaving my body was a guest that had stayed far too long.
As the heat pooled on the floor, my vision began to fracture. I watched the room grow dim, the heavy silence finally becoming permanent. By the time the next mealtime knock echoed through the hallway, I was already gone—just a cold, discarded shell on a blood-soaked carpet.
When the guard finally pushed the door open, he found a corpse. He called for the family, his voice panicked and shrill. They came. They looked. And as I had known in the marrow of my bones, not a single eye welled with a tear. My death was not a tragedy to them; it was merely a messy conclusion to a disappointing story.
Satoshi's eyes drifted open, a heavy, habitual fog clinging to his mind. For a heartbeat, it was just another morning in his tomb-like room. Then, the memory hit him like a physical blow—the cold steel, the spreading crimson, the final, welcoming darkness.
I died. I know I died.
His eyes snapped wide in a panicked flinch. How am I alive? Did they find me in time? Am I in a hospital?
He tried to sit up, but his muscles felt like water. His sense of balance was warped, and as his vision cleared, the "hospital" dissolved. There were no white tiles or sterile lights. Instead, he was staring at a ceiling of rough-hewn timber. The air was thick with the scent of pine and beeswax, illuminated only by the flickering orange glow of a few scattered candles.
In the corner of the room, three shadows shifted. A man's face suddenly caught the candlelight, his expression breaking into a wide, gap-toothed grin. He called out to his companions, and three figures moved toward the bed.
Satoshi's survival instinct flared. He shoved his palms against the mattress to put distance between himself and these strangers, but his upper body barely budged. His centre of gravity was gone. What is happening to me?
The man—a giant with an unruly, mountain-man beard—reached down and scooped Satoshi into the air. Terrified by the lack of control, Satoshi tried to scream, to demand an explanation, but the sound that escaped his throat was a thin, high-pitched warble. He looked down at his own body and froze.
His limbs were pudgy, porcelain-white, and impossibly small. His feet were no larger than a grown man's thumb.
The word clicked in his mind with the force of a thunderclap: Reincarnation. He had consumed enough webtoons and light novels to recognize the trope, but the visceral reality of it was a sensory overload. The man was speaking now—a rhythmic, guttural language Satoshi had never heard.
A woman with cascades of blonde hair took him from the man's arms. She leaned in, her blue eyes brimming with a warmth he hadn't felt in years, and spoke a few melodic sentences. He couldn't understand a word, but her joyous laughter acted as a universal translator.
A second woman stepped forward, wearing a stark white robe embroidered with flowing blue strokes. She laid a cool palm against his forehead and closed her eyes. As she chanted, a vibrant emerald radiance erupted from her hand. Satoshi watched, mesmerized, as glowing green particles drifted through the air and sank into his skin. The sensation was a paradox—simultaneously as warm as a hearth and as cool as a mountain spring.
That was magic... real, undeniable magic!
The woman in white nodded to the others and departed, followed shortly by the parents. Satoshi was left alone in the fading green glow. He thrust his tiny hands upward, trying to mimic the woman's gesture, but he only succeeded in swatting at the air.
The door creaked open again. His new "parents" returned, and Satoshi studied them with the clinical eye of his former life. The man had dark blue hair, black eyes, and that wild beard, but now Satoshi noticed the heavy wooden staff he leaned on—his left leg had been severed at the knee. The woman was undeniably beautiful, but their reality was stark. Their clothes were little more than tattered, dirt-stained rags, and their "palace" was a humble hut of unpolished timber.
They were dirt poor. They were broken. But as the sheer weight of his new existence caught up to him, Satoshi's infant body gave out. His eyes glazed over, and he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.