KALLIAS: Tangled Thread

Kallias was just an ordinary office worker until he fell into one of the oldest clichés imaginable—reincarnating into the novel he had just finished reading. Unsatisfied with its ending, he left a sharp, critical comment. He never expected it to drag him straight into the story itself. The moment he realized where he was, caution became his second instinct. In the original novel, the male lead was a tyrannical Crown Prince destined to bathe the royal court in blood. Unfortunately, Kallias soon discovers that he has possessed the body of the second prince—a character who never existed in the story at all. The son of a concubine, supported by an influential woman. A prince who never existed in the original plot, and cursed with the same name: Kallias. At least the story had not begun yet. Determined to survive, he devised a careful plan: avoid the main plot while making full use of his position. No reckless ambition. No open power struggles. Just enough presence to stay alive—without drawing fatal attention. Meeting the male lead while he was still a teenager was never part of that plan. Yet for reasons Kallias could not understand, the future tyrant grew strangely attached to him. The Crown Prince treated him with unsettling warmth, calling him brother, acting friendly—as if the two of them were not bound by a brutal royal tradition where succession was written in blood. That was dangerous. To secure his future, Kallias chose to bind himself with a mutually beneficial contract, carefully shaping a relationship that balanced favor and distance. For a time, everything went exactly as planned. Until he entered the academy. There, something occurred that had never been written in the novel. He met the female lead. And the way she looked at him—filled with recognition, confusion, and something far deeper—made his skin crawl. Slowly, a story long buried and never meant to surface began to unravel, piece by piece.