"The verdict has been reached."
Aden Vasco stood at the center of the grand disciplinary chamber, his wrists bound in enchanted iron cuffs that suppressed mana. The air was thick with judgment, the gazes of the Walpurgis Academy's Disciplinary Committee drilled into him like nails hammered into flesh.
The Sun's rays filled into the room, illuminating the towering bookshelves and banners bearing the Academy's crest.
The Head Arbitrator's voice rang out, devoid of warmth or hesitation. Silence fell over the room. The students, professors, and noble representatives in attendance barely dared to breathe.
"Aden Vasco, you are hereby found guilty of first-degree murder."
------------------
The hospital hallway stretched endlessly, fluorescent lights flickering like dying stars. Park Hyun's sneakers squeaked against the linoleum, the sound echoing louder than the din of IV pumps and murmured prayers from adjacent rooms.
He stared at the doctor's office door—Dr. Lee Seung, Oncology—its frosted glass smudged with fingerprints. The air smelled of antiseptic and dread.
Inside, the room was cramped. A skeletal potted plant wilted on the windowsill, its leaves browned at the edges. Dr. Lee, a man with wire-frame glasses and a voice like rustling paper, didn't look up from the CT scan lit on the wall. Hyun's lungs glowed on the screen, peppered with shadows like inkblots.
"Mr. Park," Dr. Lee began, "the tumors… Stage four."
Hyun's laugh cracked the silence. "Bullshit. I've never had a problem before—"
"Your body's been compensating for years. But this?" Dr. Lee tapped the scan. "It's congenital. A time bomb."
Hyun leaned forward, fists clenched. The scar through his eyebrow twitched. "Fix it. Cut it out. Burn it. Something."
Dr. Lee removed his glasses. "Treatment could buy you months. But it's expensive."
Hyun slammed his palms on the desk. The plant trembled. "I didn't crawl out of hell just to die in a fucking hospital!"
Rain lashed against the sixth-floor windows, distorting the neon glow of the city below. Hyun lay in bed, tethered to machines that hissed and beaded like mechanical vipers. His savings—stacks of cash earned from smuggling cigarettes and winning back-alley brawls—had evaporated in weeks. The room was a tomb: peeling beige walls, a crucifix hanging crookedly, and a nightstand cluttered with pill bottles.
A nurse adjusted his IV. "Your insurance lapsed," she said, avoiding his gaze.
Hyun yanked the needle from his arm. Blood bloomed on the sheets. "Tell the doc I'm done."
"Mr. Park, without chemo—"
"Done," he snarled.
But by dawn, the pain dragged him back. It wasn't the stabbing kind—it was a slow dissolve, as if his bones were turning to ash. He signed the papers.
Eight years.
The world became a fever dream.
Hyun floated in a black ocean, voices slipping through like shards of glass:
"—no neural improvement—"
"—any immediate family?"
"—orphan, records say—"
Sometimes, he'd surface. A blur of faces—nurses, interns, a janitor humming trot songs. Once, a doctor leaned over him, her perfume sharp and floral. "You're fighting, huh?" she whispered. "Why?"
He wanted to scream. Because I didn't get to be king.
Light.
Real, searing light.
Hyun's eyes fluttered open. The room was different—smaller, dimmer. A plastic curtain rustled in a draft. His body felt alien: muscles atrophied, skin translucent as rice paper. A heart monitor chirped.
A young doctor stood at the foot of the bed, tablet in hand. "Mr. Park? You've been asleep a long time."
Hyun's voice was a rasp. "How… long?"
"Eight years." The doctor hesitated. "The tumors… they're dormant. For now."
Hyun stared at his hands—once calloused, now soft and trembling. "I want to leave."
"You'll need physical therapy. Assistance—"
"Now."
He rented a rooftop shack overlooking the Han River, its corrugated walls rattling in the wind. The city had changed: neon brighter, crowds faster, air thicker. Hyun trained like a madman—push-ups on the rusted fire escape, kicks against a sandbag hung from a leaky pipe. But his legs buckled after five minutes. His punches lacked force.
One evening, collarbone-deep in a public bath's sulfuric waters, an old gangster recognized him. "Hyun-ah! Heard you died."
Hyun sank lower, steam masking his face. "Still here."
The man laughed. "Look like a ghost."
Winter. The rooftop shack groaned under the weight of ice. Hyun crouched by a space heater, its coils glowing orange. A cough tore through him—wet, guttural. The handkerchief came away black.
He stumbled to the edge, gripping the frost-caked railing. The city sprawled below, a beast of light and noise. This is it, he thought. No last stand. No glory.
A figure materialized beside him—an old woman selling roasted chestnuts from a cart. Her face was a map of wrinkles, eyes milky with cataracts.
"Cold night to die," she said.
Hyun stiffened. "Who said I'm dying?"
She held out a chestnut, its shell split open like a wound. "Eat. It's bitter. Like life."
He took it. The taste was smokey, sweet.
"You fought hard," she said.
"But some wars aren't yours to win."
Hyun's vision blurred. The city lights smeared into a single white star.
The heater sputtered out.
Hyun's knees hit the concrete. Snow melted against his skin, mixing with blood. The old woman was gone.
Not like this. Not alone—
The rain froze mid-fall, droplets hanging like glass shards in the air. Park Hyun knelt on the rooftop, blood pooling beneath him in a Rorschach blot of defeat. His breath hitched—_one, two_—then stopped.
A hand gripped his shoulder. He looked up.
The city was gone.
A crimson expanse stretched endlessly, the sky a wound-scab red, churning with blackened clouds. The ground beneath him wasn't earth but the calcified remains of giants—ribcages arched into bridges, skulls hollowed into crumbling fortresses. At the horizon loomed a stairway of fused swords, their blades rusted and weeping ichor. At its peak sat a throne carved from a single onyx meteor, and upon it, _the figure_.
It—_he?_—was a paradox: armor forged of liquid shadow, a crown of fractured starlight, and a face obscured by shadow,
The air around him warped, as if reality itself recoiled.
"You clawed at life like a starving dog," the figure crooned, his voice a chorus of shattering glass and distant screams.
Hyun's hand twitched toward a shard of bone at his side. "I don't… want your pity."
The figure laughed, the sound peeling layers from the sky. "Pity?" He knelt, his crown of starlight fracturing into a halo of needles.
"I'm just handing over what's rightfully yours."
"You owe nothing to this world, Park Hyun," the man said, voice layered—a chorus of growls and whispers. "Come. Live in one that fears your name."
Hyun's vision blurred. The throne behind the figure pulsed, its onyx surface alive with screaming faces—soldiers, kings, _monsters_—all dissolving into smoke. "Why… me?"
The figure's gauntlet seized Hyun's jaw, cold searing through flesh to bone. "Because you &%$#^%."
His eye's widened, it was something he could not hear.
Hyun's laugh bubbled with blood. "Who… are you?"
The man's grin glinted, streching to his eyes, sharp as a scalpel. "The King."
Hyun reached out. The realm vanished.
A sword materialized in the figure's free hand—a shard of pure void, edges vibrating with a sound like a collapsing star. Hyun tried to recoil, but the blade was already plunging into his chest.
No pain.
Only pressure—a universe collapsing into his ribs.
Then—
Memories flood into him of someone else... someone greater.
A world far more dangerous than his engulfed before his eyes, where kings battled each other for power and after what i looked like years passed before him in fragments.
He then opened his eyes, only to be welcomed by an unwanted scenary.
--------------------
"The verdict has been reached."
Aden Vasco stood at the center of the grand disciplinary chamber, his wrists bound in enchanted iron cuffs that suppressed mana. The air was thick with judgment, the gazes of the Walpurgis Academy's Disciplinary Committee drillied into him like nails hammered into flesh.
The Sun's rays filled into the room, illuminating the towering bookshelves and banners bearing the Academy's crest.
The Head Arbitrator's voice rang out, devoid of warmth or hesitation. Silence fell over the room. The students, professors, and noble representatives in attendance barely dared to breathe.
"Aden Vasco, you are hereby found guilty of **first-degree murder**."
Murmurs spread through the audience like wildfire. The heir of one of the Empire's Five Great Houses had been killed. There could be no mercy.
"You are sentenced to imprisonment under the custody of the Imperial Knight Order until further judgment is decreed by the Empire."
Aden Vasco—the name echoed in his mind, foreign yet familiar.
Because he wasn't Aden Vasco.
And now? Now, he was standing in the body of a man condemned to ruin.
A sharp pain clawed at his temples, fragmented memories flooding in. The scent of steel, the sound of flesh being torn, the taste of iron on his tongue. Aden Vasco—this body's original owner—was a man steeped in blood, but this crime…
This crime wasn't his.
Above him, seated in an elevated section of the chamber, Duke Ed Vasco looked down at his son with cold, unreadable eyes. The patriarch of House Vasco, one of the Five Great Families of the Empire, was a man whose mere presence commanded both reverence and fear. His dark coat draped over his powerful frame, his every movement exuding an air of absolute authority.
For all his power, he had not spoken a word throughout the trial.
The only reason the Disciplinary Committee had not moved to execute Aden on the spot was because of him. The very air in the chamber had been suffering with an unspoken tension—what would Duke Vasco do? Would he intervene? Would he wield his influence to overturn the verdict? Would he fight for his son's innocence?
But as soon as the sentence was declared, Duke Vasco slowly rose from his seat. He reached for his coat, draping it over his shoulders, and without a word, turned his back on the proceedings.
A hushed silence fell upon the room. The members of the Disciplinary Committee, who had been holding their breath, exhaled in relief.
The storm had passed. Ed Vasco would not interfere.
Aden's gaze followed his father as he strode toward the exit, his footsteps echoing through the chamber. No words of protest. No last glance.
Nothing.
Heavy footsteps broke through the haze of his mind. A squad of Imperial Knights, in gleaming armor bearing the Emperor's crest, approached with military precision.
One of the knights, a grizzled man with a deep scar running across his left cheek, stepped forward. His piercing gaze locked onto Aden Vasco as he rested a hand on the hilt of his sword.
"By order of His Imperial Majesty,"
he intoned, his voice steady, unwavering, "You are to be taken into custody immediately."
"Take him."
Clamps tightened around his wrists as he was escorted. The enchanted cuffs dug into his skin, suppressing any attempt at resistance. His body, however, moved with unnatural grace. His senses were sharper, his instincts honed.
Even as chains bound him, the oppressive weight of his own bloodlust filled the room like an unsettling storm.
A professor flinched.
The Headmistress, usually composed, paled slightly.
Even the knights hesitated. Despite his restraints, despite his fall from grace, Aden Vasco still radiated the presence of a predator.
The great doors of the chamber opened with a deafening creak. The academy's corridors, once familiar, stretched out before him like the path of exile. Students and faculty stood frozen as he was escorted out, their faces twisted in awe and fear.
For them, this was not the fall of a man.
It was the march of a monster.
As he reached the courtyard, he turned his head one last time, gazing upon the towering spires of the Walpurgis Academy. The sky above was a storm of gathering clouds, mirroring the tempest raging within him.
This was not his world. This was not his crime.
But if they wanted a villain—
He would become one.