The truck horn shrieked.
Aerin's body moved before his brain caught up. Three steps forward, hands shoving the little girl sideways. Her red balloon slipped from her fingers and floated up into the blue sky.
Then sideways came the world.
He hit the ground hard. Something cracked—ribs, maybe. His mouth filled with the taste of copper. The sky was very blue. Strange how he'd never noticed that before.
People were yelling. The little girl was wailing. Good. That meant she was breathing.
Twenty-three years. That's all he got. No wife, no kids, no real friends. Just a desk job and an apartment with water stains on the ceiling.
At least this meant something.
His vision went dark.
---
Cold.
That was the first thing Aerin felt when he woke up. Not the clean cold of an air conditioner, but the wet kind that soaked through cloth and settled into your bones.
He opened his eyes.
A stone ceiling stared back at him. Cracks ran through it like black veins. Water dripped somewhere in the corner—slow, steady drops that echoed in the small space. One tiny window with iron bars showed a grey sky outside.
This wasn't a hospital.
Aerin sat up. His body felt wrong. Too light. Too weak. He stared down at his hands.
These were not his hands.
Too small, too pale, covered in thin white scars. His fingernails were cracked and dirty. When he touched his face, he felt sharp cheekbones and hollow cheeks.
That body was starving.
Then, the memories hit him like a gut punch.
Not his memories.
Fragmented images flashed through his mind:
A manor with white walls. A woman with dark hair reading him bedtime stories. A man teaching him to hold a wooden sword. Two older siblings laughing at the dinner table.
Then fire. Screaming. Blood on marble floors.
Running through smoke while clutching a book to his chest. Collapsing in the ruins. Waking up alone.
The name came with memories: *Aerin Valefor Arclight*.
Fifteen years old. Last survivor of House Arclight. His entire family had been slaughtered three months ago by unknown assassins. No relatives came to claim him. No friends offered help.
He'd been living in this cold room ever since, surviving on scraps and stolen bread, waiting for his chance to enter Arcanis Sanctum—the academy where mages learned their craft.
Waiting to prove he deserved to exist.
The original Aerin had died yesterday. Or maybe two days ago—time blurred when this body was starving. Aerin in this world heart had just died.
And now someone else was wearing his skin.
Aerin pressed his palms against his eyes. Focus. Think this through.
He'd died saving a child. Now he was in a fantasy world, in a body that wasn't his, with memories of a dead boy echoing in his skull.
Isekai. That's what they called it in the novels he used to read. The protagonist dies and wakes up in another world, usually with some kind of special power.
He waited.
Nothing happened. No floating screens. No mysterious voice. No sudden burst of knowledge.
Nothing but a cold room and a body that ached from starvation.
His eyes alighted upon something in the corner.
A book.
The grimoire-the only thing the original Aerin had managed to save from the fire.
Aerin stood—his legs shook but held—and picked it up. Dark leather, worn smooth from years of handling. A silver clasp shaped like a thorned rose held it shut.
He opened it.
Blank pages. Every one of them.
At the academy, students received grimoires filled with spells the moment they were accepted. The original Aerin's grimoire had been empty from the start. A cruel joke from whatever gods ruled this world.
He continued to flip pages until he had reached the middle.
One page was different. Darker, like it had been stained with something rust-colored. In the middle was a symbol drawn in what looked disturbingly like dried blood:
A circle, a sword through it, thorned vines wrapping around the blade.
Below that, words in a script he shouldn't understand, but somehow could:
'Only blood will tell.'
Aerin stared at those words. The original Aerin had tried everything to activate this grimoire. Meditation, incantations, begging. Nothing worked.
But blood magic?
That was different.
Aerin looked at his scarred palm. One scar was fresh—barely healed, still pink. The original Aerin must have tried this too.
What had he to lose?
He was in a fantasy world with no money, no allies, and no future unless he got into that academy. This grimoire was his only possession.
Aerin pressed his thumb against the fresh scar. It split easily. Pain flared bright and sharp. Blood welled up, darker than he expected.
He laid his thumb onto the symbol.
Nothing happened.
Then the page heated up.
Not hot, just warm, like to the touch. The symbol pulsed once beneath his thumb.
Thump-thump.
Like a heartbeat.
The warmth spread up his arm. The dried blood of the symbol began to glow with faint red light, barely visible in the dim room.
Aerin tried to pull his hand away.
His thumb didn't move.
The light grew brighter. The heartbeat faster. Red lines spread across the page like roots breaking through soil, growing beyond the boundaries of the paper—
The grimoire slammed shut.
Aerin stumbled back. The book fell to the floor between them.
It didn't stop beating.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Louder now. The grimoire's cover began to crack—not breaking, but opening, like a seed splitting. Red light spilled through the cracks.
The silver clasp shattered. The book opened on its own, pages flipping too fast to see.
Then the light exploded.
Aerin threw his arm over his eyes. Heat washed over him—intense but not painful, like standing near a bonfire. The heartbeat sound shifted into a high keening note that made his ears ring.
As he lowered his arm, something was condensing above the grimoire.
Red light twisted into solid form. Lines hardened into black metal. The shape took form quickly, like the world had been waiting to do this.
A sword.
It hung in the air. Three feet of black steel. Single-edged blade with a slight curve near the tip. Crimson lines ran along the fuller, pulsing with light.
Thump-thump.
The heartbeat was in the sword.
The crossguard was thorned silver. The grip was black leather, worn smooth. At the base of the blade, letters were etched in that ancient script:
*Sangreal.*
The sword just. waited.
Every instinct told Aerin this was wrong. Dangerous. A line he shouldn't cross.
He reached out anyway.
The moment his fingers closed around the grip, the world disappeared.
-Source:
He stood on a battlefield.
Bodies everywhere. Armor twisted like paper. Weapons broken. The sky burned red—not from sunset, but from fire that wouldn't go out.
And standing in the middle of the carnage was a man.
Dark hair. Grey eyes turned blood-red. He held a sword that pulsed with crimson light—the same sword now in Aerin's hands. Mages fell around him like wheat before a scythe.
The man was crying.
"Forgive me," he whispered to the corpses. "You need to see. All of you need to see what's feeding on you."
He raised the sword. The heartbeat grew deafening.
"I'll show you the truth," the man said, voice breaking. "Even if I have to burn everything."
He swung-
—Aerin gasped back in the cold room.
He was on his knees, clutching Sangreal. Sweat dripped down his face. His hands were shaking.
That man, that battlefield.
Valefor Arclight.
The Crimson Emperor. The tyrant who nearly destroyed the world.
His ancestor.
And this sword had killed millions.
Aerin looked down at Sangreal. The crimson veins had dimmed. The heartbeat was quiet now, patient.
He could feel it in his mind. Not words. Not control. Just. presence. Like someone standing behind you in an empty room.
Waiting.
Outside, the sky was greying. The dawn was near.
Admissions trials were today.
Aerin looked at his ragged clothes, his thin arms, his scarred hands. They'd look at him and see a beggar. A nobody.
Good.
Let them underestimate him.
He had a legendary sword and a dead ancestor's memories in his head. He had no idea what any of it meant, but he'd figure it out.
One step at a time.
Aerin set Sangreal down and lay back on the thin mattress. The sword's heartbeat continued—quiet, steady. He shut his eyes. Tomorrow, everything would change. -