The truck horn shrieked.
Aerin's body moved before his brain caught up. Hands shoving the little girl sideways. Her red balloon slipped from her fingers and floated up into the blue sky.
Then the world turned sideways.
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 until now, maybe he was just very busy.
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 life wasn't in vain at least.
His vision went dark.
Then—white light.
Pure, blinding white that should have hurt but didn't. Aerin floated in it, weightless, formless. No body. No pain. Just... existence.
He waited for something. A god. A goddess. Judgment. Anything.
Nothing came.
Just emptiness wearing light.
Then the white began to shift. Tinted red at the edges. Like blood diffusing through water. The red spread inward, deeper, darker, until the light itself was the color of fresh wounds.
Aerin tried to scream but had no mouth.
Tried to run but had no legs.
The bloody light wrapped around him like a living thing. Pulled. Hard.
And the world sucked him in.
---
Cold.
That was the first thing Aerin felt when consciousness returned. Not the clean cold of air conditioning, but the wet kind that soaked through cloth and settled into bones.
He opened his eyes.
A stone ceiling stared back. Cracks ran through it like black veins. Water dripped somewhere in the corner—slow, steady drops echoing in the small space. One tiny window with iron bars showed a grey sky outside.
This didn't look like a home.
Aerin sat up. His body felt wrong. Too light. Too weak. He stared at his hands.
These weren't his hands.
Too small, too pale, covered in thin white scars. Fingernails cracked and dirty. When he touched his face, he felt sharp cheekbones and hollow cheeks.
This body was starving.
Then the memories hit like a gut punch.
Not his memories.
Fragmented images crashed through his mind:
A manor with white walls. A woman with dark hair reading bedtime stories, her voice warm and safe. A man teaching him to hold a wooden sword, patient hands adjusting his grip. Two older siblings laughing at the dinner table, teasing him about his messy hair.
Then fire .Screaming. Blood on wooden floors.
Running through smoke while clutching a book to his chest. Collapsing in the ruins. Waking up alone among corpses.
The name came with the memories: Aerin Valefor Arclight.
Fifteen years old. Last survivor of House Arclight. His entire family 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 was blurry when this body had been starving. This body's heart had just... stopped. Given up.
Even though it wasn't his body, Aerin could feel it. The loneliness. The cold. The pure agony this boy had endured. It was all there in the body's memories, soaked into muscle and bone.
And now someone else was wearing his skin.
Aerin pressed his palms against his eyes. Focus. Think.
He'd died saving a child. Now he was in a fantasy world, in a body that wasn't his, with a dead boy's memories echoing in his skull.
Isekai. That's what they called it in the novels he used to read.
He waited for the cheat ability. The system notification. The mysterious guide.
Nothing happened.
No floating screens. No sudden knowledge. Just a cold room and a body screaming with hunger.
His eyes landed on something in the corner.
A book.
The grimoire—the only thing the original Aerin had saved from the fire.
Aerin stood. His legs shook but held. He picked it up carefully.
Dark leather, worn smooth from years of handling. A silver clasp shaped like a thorned rose held it shut. The moment his fingers touched it, something in his chest pulled, Like recognition.
He opened it.
Blank pages. Every single one.
At the academy, students received grimoires filled with spells. The original Aerin's grimoire had been empty from the start. A cruel joke.
He kept flipping until he reached the center.
One page was different. Darker, stained rust-colored. In the middle was a symbol drawn in what looked disturbingly like dried blood:
A circle. A sword piercing through it. Thorned vines wrapped around the blade.
Below it, words in a script he shouldn't understand but somehow could:
Only blood reveals truth.
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.
He looked at his scarred palm. One scar was fresh-barely healed, still pink. The original Aerin must have tried this before he died.
What did Aerin have to lose?
He was in a fantasy world with no money, no allies, no future unless he got into that academy. This grimoire was all he had.
Aerin pressed his thumb against the fresh scar. It split easily. Pain flared bright and sharp. Blood welled up, darker than expected.
He pressed his thumb against the symbol.
Nothing.
Then the page grew warm.
Not hot—just warm, like touching skin. The symbol pulsed once beneath his thumb.
Thump-thump.
Like a heartbeat.
The warmth spread up his arm. The dried blood symbol began to glow faint red.
Aerin tried to pull away.
His thumb wouldn't move.
Light grew brighter. Heartbeat faster. Red lines spread across the page like roots breaking through soil, growing beyond the paper's edges—
The grimoire slammed shut.
Aerin stumbled back. The book fell to the floor.
The heartbeat didn't stop.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Louder now. The grimoire's cover began to crack—not breaking, but opening, Red light spilled through the cracks.
The silver clasp shattered. The book opened itself, pages flipping too fast to see.
Then the light exploded.
Aerin threw his arm over his eyes. Heat washed over him. The heartbeat shifted into a high keening note that made his ears ring.
When he lowered his arm, something was forming above the grimoire.
Red light twisted into solid form. Lines hardened into black metal. The shape materialized quickly, like the world had been waiting for this moment.
A sword.
It hung suspended 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 sword had a heartbeat.
The crossguard was thorned silver. The grip was black leather, worn smooth by countless hands. At the base of the blade, letters were etched in that ancient script:
Sangreal.
The sword just... waited.
Every instinct screamed this was dangerous. Wrong. A line he shouldn't cross.
Aerin reached out anyway.
The moment his fingers closed around the grip, reality shattered.
---
He stood on a battlefield.
Bodies everywhere. Thousands. Armor twisted like paper. Weapons broken. The sky burned red—not sunset, but fire that wouldn't go out. Magic fire.
A man stood in the center of the carnage.
Dark hair. Grey eyes turned blood-red. He held a sword pulsing with crimson light—the same sword now in Aerin's hands.
Mages fell around him- massacred, all of them.
But the man was crying.
"Forgive me," he whispered to the corpses. To the burning sky. "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-
The vision shattered.
Aerin gasped. He was on his knees in the cold room, clutching Sangreal. Sweat dripped down his face. His hands shook violently.
That man. That battlefield.
Valefor Arclight.
The Crimson Emperor. The tyrant who nearly destroyed the world.
His ancestor.
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 just behind you in an empty room.
Then—a voice. Not spoken aloud. Not heard with ears. It resonated directly in his skull, ancient and tired:
"Finally. After seventy years. Someone awakened us again."
Aerin's blood froze. "Who-"
"We are Sangreal:The Bloodbound Sovereign Sword. A curse.A choice you just made."
The voice wasn't threatening. But calm and slightly eerie.
"The boy who died in this body was too weak. He couldn't have wielded us properly. But you..." The sword pulsed once. "You died for someone else. Gave your life willingly. That's rare, you'r different, stronger- So we brought you here."
"You... you brought me here. Why?" Aerin's voice was barely a whisper.
"We pulled your soul through the void. Placed it in this dying vessel. Gave you a second chance." A pause. "And in return, you will help us finish what Valefor started.You can try to uncover the truth on your own, but one day when we deem you worthy enough- we will speak of the truth"
"What if I refuse?"
"You can't... we know what you felt when you saved that child. You're not content with meaningless existence are you?. You want your life to matter." The voice almost sounded amused. "We can give you that. Power. Purpose. A reason to fight."
"But know this, wielder—we made a promise to something ancient. Something that sleeps beneath magic itself. We are bound to feed it, or it will feed on us. Valefor tried to break the cycle. He failed. You are our second attempt. Our last attempt. And if you fail too...There won't be a third chance for anyone "
The presence faded, leaving only the quiet heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Aerin knelt there, sword in hand, mind reeling.
He'd been chosen. Pulled from death. Given another life. But for a price
Outside, the sky was lightening. Dawn coming.
The admission trials were today.
Aerin looked at his ragged clothes, his skeletal frame, his scarred hands. They'd see a beggar. A nobody.
Good.
Let them underestimate him.
He had a legendary cursed sword, a dead ancestor's memories, and apparently a weapon that could speak.
He had no idea what it meant. But he'd figure it out.
One step at a time.
Aerin set Sangreal down carefully and lay back on the thin mattress. The sword's heartbeat continued—quiet, steady, patient.
He closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
The Crimson Tax Collector was awake.
And this time, it was hungry.