Episode 1: The Blood of the Sky
The copper taste of blood was the last thing I expected to wake up to.
I pressed my palm against the cold stone floor, my fingers trembling. The air was thick with the scent of incense and old parchment—a sharp contrast to the sterile, bleached smell of the hospital room where I was supposed to have died five minutes ago.
"He's awake," a raspy voice whispered from the shadows. "The vessel held."
I forced my eyes open. I wasn't in a hospital. I was standing in the center of a jagged, glowing pentagram etched into a marble floor. Surrounding me were three figures draped in obsidian robes, their faces hidden behind porcelain masks.
Caelum Thorne, I told myself. My name is Caelum Thorne. I died of heart failure at twenty-four.
But as I looked down at my hands, they weren't the pale, withered hands of a dying man. They were calloused, strong, and covered in strange, glowing runes that pulsed with a faint blue light.
Ding.
A sound like a crystal bell echoed directly inside my skull. A translucent blue screen flickered into existence before my eyes, hovering in the air where only I could see it.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
Host Compatibility: 99.8% Current Status: Critical Soul Integration Objective: Survive the next 60 seconds.
Reward: Permanent Binding. Failure: Soul Erasure.
The man in the center mask stepped forward, a jagged ritual dagger gleaming in his hand. He pulled back his hood, revealing a face of sharp, aristocratic angles and eyes like cold flint.
"The Thorne blood hasn't stirred in a thousand years," Valerius Vane hissed, his voice dripping with elegant malice. "Let's see if you're actually the heir, Caelum, or just another corpse for the pile."
I didn't have time to process the "system." I didn't have time to mourn my old life.
The timer on the screen began to count down in blood-red digits.
00:59... 00:58...
"Wait—" I tried to speak, but my throat was raw.
Valerius didn't wait. He lunged, the dagger whistling through the space my throat had occupied a second ago. My new body moved with a fluid grace I'd never known—a reflex born of muscle memory that wasn't mine.
If this was a dream, it was the most painful, vivid dream of my life.
If it was real? Then I wasn't going to spend my second life dying on a ritual floor.
I ducked under his next swing, my heart hammering against my ribs—not with the weakness of a dying man, but with the thunder of a predator.
00:10... 00:09...
Valerius snarled, his eyes widening as I caught his wrist. "Impossible. A gutter-born brat shouldn't have these instincts!"
"I'm not the Caelum you remember," I wheezed, twisting his arm with a strength that cracked the floor beneath us.
As the timer hit zero, a blinding light erupted from my chest.
[STARKING ANNOUNCEMENT: SUCCESSFUL BINDING.] [UNLEASHING DIVINE PREROGATIVE...]
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading the first chapter of my new journey! If you enjoyed Caelum's narrow escape, don't forget to add this to your library and drop a Power Stone! New chapters coming daily.