When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a face.
A man stood before me, motionless, rigid as a statue carved from shadow itself. He was tall—too tall for the room that contained him—and his mere presence seemed to distort the very atmosphere around us. His hair was darker than the deepest night, and his eyes… his eyes were not merely dark. They were empty. As if all the light in the world had been drawn into their center, leaving behind nothing but a hungry, patient abyss, ready to swallow whatever stood before it.
He was looking at me.
And in that gaze, there was no surprise. No doubt. No hesitation. Only a cold, pure, concentrated fury—so overwhelming it stole my breath before I could even begin to understand what was happening. My heart clenched violently in my chest, and a primitive, visceral fear crawled up my spine. A fear that bypassed reason entirely, imposing itself directly onto my body.
I didn't know where I was.
I didn't know who this man was.
And yet, before I could think—before I could form a single coherent question—my mouth spoke on its own.
"Father…"
The word slipped past my lips with terrifying ease, as if it had always been there, waiting. I blinked, breath short, my mind suddenly on high alert.
Father…?
Why that word? Why now? Why with such certainty, when everything inside me screamed that this man was a stranger? Or at least… that he should have been.
His gaze darkened further, if that was even possible.
"Is that all you have to say?"
His voice was low, controlled, sharp as a perfectly honed blade. There was no explosive anger, no wasted emotion. It was a voice accustomed to obedience—a voice that left no room for discussion.
"I raised you," he continued. "Fed you. Gave you everything since you were a child… and this is how you repay me?"
He took a single step toward me.
Just one.
The air immediately compressed around me, growing heavy, oppressive, almost impossible to breathe. It felt as though an invisible hand was slowly tightening around my chest.
"Did I truly deserve a son this useless?" he went on calmly. "A good-for-nothing who gets his top ranking at the academy stolen?"
Academy.
Top ranking.
The words echoed in my mind without finding any real anchor. I recognized them in a vague, unsettling way, yet they refused to form into clear memories. My head began to buzz, as if my thoughts were colliding endlessly, never settling.
He turned his gaze away then, staring toward the window as if I no longer existed—as if my presence were nothing more than an unsightly stain in his field of vision.
"Do you have any idea how much shame you bring upon this family?" he murmured. "Do you truly understand?"
My mouth opened again. A reflex. An almost desperate need to respond—to defend myself, to explain that I didn't understand, that something was wrong, that I wasn't who he thought I was.
The sound never had the chance to form.
The shadows in the room trembled.
I watched them peel away from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, as if reality itself were cracking under the weight of his will. They stretched, twisted, condensed with an unnatural fluidity, until they took on a distinct shape.
Whips.
Before I could react—before my mind could even process what was happening—they struck.
Pain exploded.
The first lash tore into my back with such violence that the air was ripped from my lungs in a strangled cry. The second coiled around my shoulder, ripping flesh and skin away with a wet sound. The third slammed into my chest, hurling me violently to the ground like a broken doll.
I screamed.
Not by choice. Not from weakness. But because my body knew no other response. It was neither a cry of rage nor of fear—it was a raw, animal scream of survival, ripped straight from my gut.
The blows did not stop.
They rained down with merciless regularity, each one more precise than the last. Every impact was a detonation, a shockwave rippling through my entire being. I felt my clothes tear, my skin give way, blood spraying across the icy floor beneath me. The metallic taste filled my mouth, making me nauseous. My hands shook, my muscles seized against my will, my body convulsed beyond my control.
I didn't understand.
Why this was happening.
What I had done.
Who I truly was.
Between blows, images forced themselves into my mind—fleeting, incoherent. Fragments of another life. Another world. Memories that had no right to exist here. But every attempt at understanding was wiped away by another surge of pain.
The shadows did not tire.
They struck with an almost methodical precision—almost instructional—as if each blow were meant to teach me a lesson. To break me. To crush me until there was nothing left to straighten.
My voice broke. My screams grew hoarse, then faded entirely. All that remained were muffled whimpers, drowned in the silence of the room.
Eventually, the whips dissipated.
I lay there, sprawled on the floor, unable to move. Every breath was an ordeal. My vision blurred, dark creeping in at the edges. I felt warm blood slowly trickling down my side.
He approached.
I managed, with great effort, to lift my eyes toward him.
"Never disgrace this family again."
His words fell upon me without anger, without emotion, delivered with the same distant contempt one reserves for discarded trash on the ground.
Then he turned away.
As my eyelids grew heavy, as the world began to fade, I heard him speak to someone I couldn't see.
"Treat his wounds."
A brief pause.
"And lock him in the black room for the rest of the weekend."
The last sensation I felt was the cold floor against my cheek.
Then everything vanished.
I regained consciousness slowly, as if something were forcibly dragging me out of an invisible abyss. Pain was the first thing to return—dull, deep, embedded all the way into my bones. It wasn't localized. There was no single wound, only an accumulation, a crushing weight, as if my entire body were protesting the mere fact that it still existed. Every breath made my ribs vibrate; every heartbeat sent a burning pulse straight into my skull.
I tried to open my eyes.
I saw nothing.
Not even ordinary darkness. No shadows. No outlines. Only a total, compact void, so dense it seemed to swallow even the attempt to think. I blinked several times, uselessly, my gaze lost in that absolute emptiness. A shiver slowly crawled up my spine. This absence of light wasn't natural. It wasn't reassuring.
It was deliberate.
I strained my ears, searching for any sound that might anchor me to reality. Nothing. No footsteps. No чужe breathing. Not even the echo of my own. The silence was so complete it became oppressive—almost painful. As if the world itself had ceased to exist around me.
Where was I?
The answer slammed into my mind without warning.
The black room.
My body tensed instantly. Images flashed through my thoughts—still blurry, yet violently familiar: shadows taking shape, crushing pressure, pain ripping screams from my throat before I could stop them. And that face… that man with eyes darker than night itself, whose gaze seemed to concentrate all the darkness in the world.
The one I had called father.
At that thought, a sharp pain exploded in my skull. It felt as though my head were about to split in two. Instinctively, I raised a hand to my forehead, my fingers brushing against burning skin still crusted with dried blood. I clenched my teeth, fighting to contain the flood of sensations threatening to overwhelm me.
Why had that word come so naturally? Why that bond—why that certainty—when everything inside me screamed that this man was a stranger?
The memories began to surface.
Not as a coherent story. Not as a clear revelation. They surged up in fragments—violent, disordered—forcing themselves upon me without giving me a choice. A childhood that wasn't mine. Endless, dark corridors. A constant, oppressive presence. Fear. Always fear. And the beatings—repeated, methodical—justified by words like discipline, inheritance, duty.
Eiden Von Nocthiel.
My name.
It anchored itself in my mind with almost unbearable force. It wasn't information—it was an imposed truth, an identity that crushed everything else beneath it. I tried to reject it, to resist, but every attempt only intensified the pain. Two lives overlapped in my head, fighting for dominance, refusing to coexist.
A previous life, filled with memories foreign to this world.
And this one—shaped by fear, violence, and darkness.
I lost my footing.
The black swallowed me completely. Not just around me, but inside me. My thoughts fractured, dissolving into that total absence. I had the terrifying sensation that if I stopped fighting—even for an instant—I wouldn't die.
I would be erased.
It took long minutes—or perhaps hours, I had no way of knowing—before I regained a semblance of control. I focused on my breathing, slow and painful, clinging to that rhythm as the only real thing left to me. Gradually, the mental chaos eased, though it never fully disappeared.
With great effort, I pushed myself upright, leaning against what felt like an icy stone wall. The simple act of sitting sent another wave of pain through me, but I held on. One hand pressed to my temple, I exhaled slowly, trying to organize my thoughts.
And then, everything clicked.
The world.
The names.
The events.
Lumiaris.
Legend of Lumiaris.
The game I had spent countless hours playing in my previous life. The academy. The six duchies. Light and Darkness. Every detail, every rule, every event aligned perfectly with what I knew. This wasn't a resemblance.
It was the same world.
And I…
My stomach twisted.
I wasn't a side character.
I wasn't a minor antagonist.
I was Eiden Von Nocthiel, heir to the Duchy of Darkness. The one who stood at the pinnacle of evil. The final boss. The one destined to fall beneath the hero's blade at the end of the story.
Thinking of my name—and my father—a joyless laugh rose in my throat. In the game, his role was reduced to a few lines of dialogue. A cruel tyrant. An absolute enemy. An obstacle to be destroyed. Nothing more.
Reality was very different.
Duke Von Nocthiel wasn't merely an antagonist.
He was my executioner.
The man who had beaten me since childhood to force my awakening. The one who locked me in this black room like an animal, convinced that suffering would hasten the birth of my power. The one who was already working in the shadows to bring down the other duchies.
He held absolute authority over darkness.
A slow, cold smile formed on my lips despite the pain.
There wasn't much to think about, in the end.
If I followed the story, I would die. If I remained under this man's control, I would be broken long before that. And if I did nothing… the entire world would pay the price for his ambitions.
So a single conclusion imposed itself upon me—clear and undeniable.
I had to kill my father.
Whether to avoid my own death, or simply to put an end to this senseless suffering. What kind of monster beats his child for years to turn him into a weapon? What twisted mind deliberately shapes a being filled with hatred, destined to destroy everything, just to satisfy its own desires?
A shiver ran through me.
Was that his true objective? To create a monster. To shape me in his own image. To use me to conquer the other duchies… sacrificing himself for the culmination of that monster?
I closed my eyes in the total darkness.
No.
No matter what, this story would not end like the game.
Not this time.
Time dissolved.
I don't know how long passed. In the black room, it had no meaning. There was no day or night, no before or after—only that absolute, crushing darkness that smothered every attempt at coherent thought. I was there, lying down or perhaps sitting—I couldn't have said—my body still aching, my mind adrift, wavering between fragile clarity and total disorientation.
Then something changed.
At the heart of that formless void, something appeared.
It was neither light nor shadow. It wasn't even truly visible in the conventional sense. And yet, I perceived it. Symbols. Letters. Shapes suspended in the void—motionless, sharp, impossible. They existed where nothing should have existed, resisting that unfathomable darkness as if it held no power over them.
My heart skipped a beat.
I wanted to retreat, but my body refused to respond. A dull anxiety rose within me. This wasn't ordinary fear. It was the visceral instinct that something fundamental had just been triggered—something that did not require my consent.
The letters aligned.
[Awakening System Initialization]