Aetherion liked to pretend strength was simple. It wasn't.
There were Aura Knights who shattered boulders with their fists.
Mages who bent wind and stone with delicate fingers.
Spirit Summoners who walked with beings only half-seen by mortal eyes.
And Bloodline Warriors whose inherited power changed them limb by limb.
Everyone fit somewhere on that map.
Except Kate and Max.
They didn't belong to this world at all.
They belonged to a past life—another era, another universe, another battlefield made of pixels and pain.
Then they woke up here as infants.
And fate, with its usual lack of creativity, put them into two characters destined for the worst possible endings.
---
Kate Emberlin's new life began in fire.
She didn't just cry at birth—she coughed sparks.
Spirits of flame clustered near her cradle, drawn to her like moths to a lantern.
Her magic was unmistakable.
Her talent undeniable.
Her temper? Catastrophic.
By age four she had burned six training dummies, one carpet, and an entire tower of spell scrolls after a tutor told her she "lacked control."
But beneath that volatility was someone else—a girl who remembered grinding fire-spell rotations for hours, memorizing cast timings, talking down rogue fire spirits in late-game dungeons.
She learned faster than she should.
Controlled better than she should.
Burned brighter than she should.
Her family saw a prodigy.
She saw a countdown.
In the original story, Kate died young—overwhelmed by corrupted spirits she couldn't tame. Her fire affinity spiraled, she lost control, and became a mini-boss the other protagonists were forced to eliminate.
Kate had no intention of letting that happen again.
She would bend flame to her will.
She would break the script.
She would live.
Even if the world didn't want her to.
---
Max Maximillion's new life was quieter.
his family boasted warrior ancestors who carved their names into war chronicles.
That history ran deep in his blood.
But Max refused swords, spears, shields.
He wanted his body—his flesh and bone—to be his weapon.
A Martial Warrior.
It was a path feared for one reason:
they trained until their bodies became harder than forged steel, using aura to grind, temper, and rebuild themselves far beyond natural limits.
Max pursued it with unsettling discipline.
Breath control.
Bone strengthening.
Aura compression.
Mapping weaknesses in others with a single glance.
He watched people too closely.
He remembered too easily.
He moved too quietly.
His mother called him "observant."
His father called him "promising."
His tutors called him "unnerving."
But Max had reasons.
In the original storyline, his character's martial aura swallowed him from within.
His body became a prison of corrupted strength.
He turned into a calamity the heroes had to kill.
Max refused to repeat that fate.
He built his aura core like a fortress.
He memorized everything in a mental palace of infinite rooms.
He studied technique, discipline, and control with ruthless intent.
He would live.
He would choose his destiny.
He would not fall.
He had no idea he shared this determination with someone else.
Not until age nine.
---
The Royal Heir Summit was loud, political, and filled with children pretending to be adults. Max hated it. Kate despised it.
Both attended because they had to.
Both escaped because they wanted something more important:
The Hidden Piece.
A chance.
A fragment of enlightenment.
A place inside the palace's illusion garden where one could glimpse—ahead of time—the foundations of a divine technique.
The kind of power their characters were never meant to have before tragedy struck.
Max slipped out first.
He walked like someone who had studied pressure points and blind angles.
His footsteps melted into the floor.
He breathed shallowly, reducing presence.
In minutes he reached the moonlit garden's entrance, fog drifting like soft breath from the ground.
He mapped escape routes.
Calculated guard rotations.
Prepared contingencies.
Then he felt heat behind him.
Not ordinary heat.
Aggressive.
Emotion-laced.
Spirit-tinted.
Kate Emberlin marched into the garden archway, flaming hair-tips floating like living embers.
She stopped when she saw him.
He stopped when he saw her.
Her eyes narrowed immediately.
"Move."
Max raised a brow. "No."
"That's my line," she snapped.
He noted the flaring spirits behind her, the fire-touched mana rippling in waves, the stance of a veteran caster hidden in a nine-year-old body.
So familiar.
He tilted his head slightly. "You're here for the Hidden Piece."
"And if I am?"
"Then we have a problem."
She stepped closer, flames licking at her sleeves. "I don't share enlightenment."
"You've never shared anything."
Kate blinked. "What?"
He didn't answer.
He studied her.
Her aura.
Her breathing.
The rhythm of her mana pulse—faster when irritated, steadier when calculating.
His mind replayed a memory: a fire caster in another world who always shouted at him in PvP for dodging her spells "too efficiently."
Kate, meanwhile, looked him up and down.
His center of gravity.
His calm but ready posture.
His eyes—sharp, assessing, annoyingly familiar.
"Why do you stand like that?" she asked.
"Like what?"
"Like you're waiting for me to cast Fireburst."
Max blinked once.
Kate froze.
Silence dropped like a stone.
She whispered, barely audible, "Max?"
His pulse stumbled.
"…Kate?"
Her fire spirits exploded into tiny fireworks behind her head.
"You!" she shouted.
He smiled faintly. "It really is you."
"You sneaky, aura-hoarding, trap-setting menace!"
"You flamed my entire guild because you miscast one spell."
"It was lag!"
"You were standing still."
Kate stomped forward until she was nose-to-nose with him.
"This can't be real."
"It is."
"You're really here."
"Yes."
"And reincarnated."
"Obviously."
"And we're nine."
"That part is unfortunate," Max admitted.
She threw her hands up, sparks flying. "Unbelievable!"
He sighed softly.
"I knew the Hidden Piece would attract someone dangerous. I didn't expect you."
She barked a laugh. "Dangerous? You're literally built to break walls."
"Only small ones."
Kate struggled between wanting to strangle him and wanting to hug him, settling on neither and crossing her arms aggressively.
"So," she said, glaring, "you're after the divine technique comprehension too."
"Yes," he replied. "We both need it."
"To avoid dying horribly?"
"To avoid corruption."
Their eyes met.
For the first time, neither looked away.
Two reincarnated prodigies.
Two walking tragedies who refused to follow the script.
Standing together in the moonlit garden where fate itself seemed to hold its breath.
Kate exhaled sharply.
"We're really doing this, aren't we?"
Max allowed himself a small, warm smirk.
"Yes," he said. "Together."
And the garden illusions rippled—
as though welcoming two players
who had just broken the story on page one.