There are things one simply has to do. Not because anyone orders you to, and not because you particularly want to. They are the sorts of things that could cost you dearly—your savings, your sanity, or, on the less fortunate days, your life—and yet, for some unfathomable reason, you still do them.
The only consolation, if you can call it that, is that the world likes to brand such people "heroes." History is built on their backs, after all. Of course, history books don't mention the other kind—the ones who do the right thing, get the job done, and are rewarded not with glory but with mockery. There's a name for them, too. Suckers.
Isaac Griffith was a sucker. Not on purpose. Oh no—he'd been dragged into the role entirely because of one particularly loathsome specimen of humanity.
"Get back here, you—!" Isaac's voice cracked with fury. "This is madness!"
But the man didn't look back.
Charles. Sir Charles, if you went by the title carved into medals and sung about by bards. Greatest holy knight on the continent. A shining symbol of courage. At the moment, however, Charles was showing the back of his gold-plated armour to the enemy and legging it with the speed of a startled deer. It was, Isaac thought sourly, a rather impressive display of athleticism for someone allegedly weighed down by righteousness.
"Such admirable camaraderie," said a voice like steel dragged over stone.
Isaac turned. The Demon King Baal—supreme lord of demons, despoiler of kingdoms, and general ruinous nuisance—was smiling at him. A hundred of the finest warriors had marched all the way to this blasted courtyard to put an end to Baal. Now, ninety-eight of them were lying still, and Charles was making himself scarce. Which left Isaac.
"We don't need rubbish like that anyway," Isaac muttered. He had never liked Charles. Smiling hypocrite. Always dodged the dangerous jobs, yet somehow managed to be adored by everyone. Still—Charles's holy magic was real. One touch and Isaac's battered body might have been whole again.
"What will you do now?" Baal asked, rising slowly.
There was no mistaking the bodies. No mistaking the toll Isaac's side had taken on the Demon King, either, no matter how well he hid it. Isaac was all but spent himself, but there was one card left to play.
Forgive me.
The air turned cold as Isaac called upon the Griffith family's oldest, darkest secret—Black Soul. A colourless vapour rose from the fallen, flowing into him. Strength. Memories. A hundred lives, burning in his veins.
"Aaagh!"
Blood burst from his nose, his ears. His skull felt as though it might crack open from the pressure. The sheer force of it would tear him apart within minutes.
"The Griffiths' Black Soul," Baal said, almost approvingly.
If he simply stood still, Isaac would burn himself out and collapse. But Baal was a creature who loved a fight far too much for that. The Griffiths had once ruled the kingdom of Aerok, until Baal ground it to dust. The clan had sworn vengeance ever since, and Isaac was its strongest blade.
Around him, the other dead had been much the same—champions of lost nations, survivors of massacres, each carrying their own reason to see Baal fall. Now, their wills were joined at Isaac's swordpoint.
"This will be interesting," Baal murmured, striding forward. The ground shuddered beneath his steps. His presence seemed to crush the air itself.
Isaac's legs twitched with the urge to flee. But after calling on Black Soul, there was no running—only forward.
If I'm going to die, I'll die like a Griffith.
He braced his stance. "Aaaargh!" His comrades' souls lent their fading strength to his limbs as he charged.
Baal met him head-on. The blade went in clean—through flesh that had turned aside the blows of the greatest swordsman alive. Baal's own strike drove through Isaac's abdomen in the same instant.
"Once more," Isaac gasped, "as one—"
Baal's eyes bled. Isaac tore his blade free and, with a final roar, swung. The Demon King's head struck the flagstones with a dull thunk.
Isaac sank to his knees in a spreading pool of red.
I did it.
The world would remember him now. Statues in every plaza. Portraits in every great hall.
And the Griffiths—heroes again. Respected. Wealthy. The family name restored.
Not bad, he thought, and allowed the darkness to take him.
***
"My name is Edward Griffith?"
The question came out hesitant, almost as if the speaker was testing how the words felt on his tongue.
Edward Griffith—the eldest son of the Griffith family—had been unconscious for days, his body lying pale and still as though it belonged in a coffin. Only a few minutes ago had he stirred, and since then, every word he'd spoken had been in a strange, almost foreign manner.
"Yes, young master," the elderly man in the immaculate tailcoat replied, his eyes glimmering with pity. "You are the eldest son of the Griffith family."
The man introduced himself as Frederick, the family butler.
"I've served you for nearly twenty years," he said, "and now I find myself having to introduce myself."
Edward, however, didn't so much as blink in recognition.
That was because the man inside Edward's body wasn't Edward at all—it was Isaac, his ancestor.
Isaac lifted a hand to his own chest, running it over skin and bone that felt far younger than it had any right to be. The deep wounds he had taken in the battle against the Demon King were gone, vanished as though they had never existed.
Have I been reincarnated as my own descendant?
It was absurd. He had killed the Demon King—of that he was certain—and died moments later. And yet, here he was, alive again, born into another body. He'd heard the odd tale about reincarnation, of course, but had always dismissed them as tavern gossip and drunken superstition.
"The priest warned that you might lose your memory," Frederick said, his expression darkening. "It appears he was right. I'm not sure how I'll explain this to the Baron."
Isaac blinked. "Wait—my father is a Baron?"
"That's correct."
"The Griffiths are royalty. How are we barons?"
The butler gave a long, tired sigh. "In ancient times, yes."
The Demon King's destruction of the kingdom wasn't unique; plenty of realms had fallen the same way. But the leaders of the anti-Demon King alliance had sworn—publicly—that when the war was over, all borders and thrones would be restored. The Griffiths, as the royal family, should have been reinstated without question. With Isaac's own accomplishments, they should have been treated better than any other house.
"What year is it now?" Isaac asked, the words tight.
"It is the year 2522 of the Holy Sun Calendar."
Five hundred years. Enough time for dynasties to rise and rot away.
Isaac's mouth curled in distaste. "What kind of catastrophic misrule did my descendants manage to pull off to sink this low?"
"They governed well enough," Frederick said, voice firm. "But your ancestor's crime was far from light."
Isaac frowned. "Ancestor? Who?"
"Have you forgotten that 'Isaac the Betrayer' was from the Griffith family?"
Isaac's eyes narrowed. "Betrayer? Are you talking about the Isaac who killed the Demon King five hundred years ago?"
"No. The Isaac who sided with the Demon King and stabbed the heroes in the back."
"What?" The heat in Isaac's gaze could have burned through stone. "The one who killed the Demon King was me—Isaac!"
Frederick's brow furrowed. "Have you been to another world? The one who killed the Demon King was His Holiness, Charles."
"Charles?" Isaac's voice turned venomous. "The holy knight Charles?"
"That's right. He slew the Demon King, saved the world, and went on to found the Holy Empire."
"That bastard didn't do a damn thing!" Isaac roared.
"You're the only person in the world who would think that." Frederick shook his head.
What happened back then?
The memory came easily enough: the main allied army waiting beyond the Demon King's front courtyard, hemmed in by a sea of demons. They had been holding their ground, barely. The moment the Demon King fell, those demons would have lost their strength, the siege would have broken, and the main force could have reached the battlefield in time to see the truth.
The Black Soul technique of the Griffith family was infamous. A single glance at the bodies and the battleground would have told them who had made the impossible possible.
Unless… Charles had come back after running away, destroyed the evidence, and claimed the kill for himself. When the main army arrived, he must have spun his tale of heroism, taking all the glory—and then, for reasons Isaac could not fathom, branding him a traitor.
"I'll kill that bastard with my own hands—" Isaac tried to push himself upright, rage boiling over.
But reality hit him like a hammer. Charles had been dead for centuries. His bones, if any remained, would be dust. The thought made his vision blur and darken, the fury in his chest clawing for escape.
He coughed—once, twice—and then blood spilled from his mouth, dark red against the sheets.
"Young master!" Frederick lunged forward, catching him before he collapsed.
Isaac gritted his teeth, clutching at his chest. The pain was worse than when the Demon King's sword had skewered him.
"Do I have… some kind of illness?"
"You suffer from mana reflux syndrome," Frederick said quietly.
Mana reflux syndrome—where the mana inside the body flowed in reverse, tearing it apart from within. It crippled magic use and shattered the body's balance, cutting life short.
So I reincarnated for this?
His great sacrifice had left him remembered as a traitor, and now he was dying by inches from a disease. He half-expected to keel over from sheer frustration before the illness finished the job.
No… it's not entirely hopeless.
Isaac forced himself to breathe, to think.
Only fools die from mana reflux syndrome…
He froze. Those thoughts—they didn't feel like his own.
The notion that mana reflux syndrome, now considered incurable, had once been revered as a divine blessing. That reverse-flow mana meant one's output was higher than normal, and that if it could be controlled, the mage could surpass all others.
Where… did that come from?
He had never read such a thing. Never heard it. In his previous life, his own younger brother had died from the same disease, and Isaac had studied every scrap of information available at the time. This knowledge had never been part of it. And yet now… he knew not just the theory, but specific methods for controlling it.
This feels like…
Like someone had slipped the knowledge directly into his mind.
And then the memory struck him—his final act before dying.
The Black Soul.