Cecilus stared up through a haze of pain.
He's giving up his soul?
A single sheet of paper hovered before him, visible only to him. Beside it, a quill had appeared as if by its own will; a bead of ink clung to the tip. At the bottom of the page, a line waited for a signature.
A soul contract.
I didn't make this. Is it because Father spoke the terms?
Reymund's last-ditch trick to buy time against Trey had failed. Reymund's breathing slowed; his lids fluttered shut. Blood loss had already claimed him.
Shit. I don't have a choice.
Poison burned through Cecilus, but the edge of the pain dulled enough for him to move. He forced his arm up, closed his fingers around the quill, and signed with a shaking hand.
Cecilus Crow.
No sooner had the ink dried than Reymund flared purple. His soul left his body like a second heartbeat, shot toward Cecilus, and struck him full in the chest before dissipating into nothing. The poison eased as if someone had turned down the world's volume. Strength pooled in him—alien, whole, enormous.
Memories flooded through him like a breaking dam, not his own but threaded with his father's life. They washed over him: moments his father had forgotten, moments his father could never speak of. Through the rush of foreign life, a single realization steadied him—he retained the rationality to move.
"Wait! How are you alive?" Trey hammered at a still-standing barrier, frantic. He couldn't get through.
Cecilus didn't answer. He pushed himself up and ran, lungs burning, down the hallways already becoming a haze of smoke and falling masonry.
With each step, more memories resolved into images—faces, sounds, small domestic truths—until the whole of Reymund's past lay unspooling inside him.
A blond man leaned over a cradle. That was Hernais—his grandfather.
A white-haired, violet-eyed woman's voice: his grandmother's. "Hernais, have you decided on the name?"
"Yes. We will name him Reymund."
They passed the baby between them. Cecilus watched the tenderness as if through another man's eyes and felt a strange, private ache.
The roof gave way ahead, cutting off the direct route to the exit. He took a detour, and the memories changed: Reymund at twelve, in the training yard, awkward with a sword while his father sighed.
"It's disappointing your magic is barriers," Hernais said. "But if you put time into the sword, you may yet be useful."
Reymund grew older in the flood of images—fifteen, then off to war for King Afner. The war was ugly and complicated: elven factions split on the king's plan for convergence, skirmishes, and shifting alliances.
Reymund was ordinary among the extraordinary; he fought, survived, and felt himself measured against better swordsmen. His skill never matched his station.
Cecilus then dug deeper into his memories. His eyes widened.
While working in the army, Reymund had met his closest friend.
Cecilus Blaive.
The name hit Cecilus with a physical jolt inside his borrowed chest.
Reymund's friend, the one who would tilt his life's axis. Cecilus Blaive was a contradiction: messy hair, empty hands, a scoundrel who stole army rations and refused weapons, yet with a murder in his fists.
Their first meeting was small and mundane: Reymund, newly assigned, found the man asleep beside the other troops.
Reymund's senior hissed, "Don't wake him! Do you understand how peaceful he is when he sleeps? He'll screech at the tiniest thing otherwise. But he has the highest track record for mission success in this entire branch, so there's nothing else we can do."
"He has the highest?" Reymund blinked at the unarmored, unkempt figure and did not understand.
A scouting mission answered the question. When the elves attacked, the man they called a monster threw his hand through an enemy's chest, ripped out a heart, and began a spree of blows that splintered bone and popped limbs as if they were brittle fruit.
The commander only shrugged. "It doesn't matter how he does it. That thing covers us. Maybe it's enhancement magic? Who knows?"
Days later, in a food hall, the messy man walked up grinning. "Hello! You're the new guy, right? White hair—royal?"
"My mother is the cousin of King Afner," Reymund said.
"What!? Why are you out here in this dump then?
"Family sent me out to toughen up, I guess."
"Hah! Well, you seem strong enough. Want to duel?"
The duel was a lesson: one punch, Reymund on the floor. He woke in the medic's ward with a bruise and a new kind of respect. He'd always suspected his noble blood had opened doors that should have been closed to him; Cecilus's savage honesty forced a clarity Reymund had lacked.
Back in the memories, family wounds opened. Reymund's mother died in his first year away. Hernais remarried quickly. The official story was an assassin's blade; guilty parties caught and punished. But in the quiet of those recollections, Reymund saw his own hand—years prior—crafting barriers to shield his mother's vital organs. A barrier that should have kept her alive if a stranger had tried to stab her through the heart.
Then, during his second year, his brother Huon was born. Reymund had asked his father to relieve him of military duty so that he could go see his brother. However, his father firmly rejected.
His skills with the sword never improved, but during his free time, he would sometimes be approached by Cecilus to hang around. He believed it was due to his passive tone when speaking to him because many of the others seemed to show aversion and disgust when talking to Cecilus.
Reymund didn't mind. His life was a boring stretch of almost nothing to write home about. There was no reason to block out the small peculiarities that came up from time to time.
After years of serving the army, it was almost time for his break from duty, but by that point, Reymund began to ponder whether or not he actually wanted to return home. It didn't matter, though, as it was mandatory.
The return did not bring him any joy. His stepmother seemed to give him glares as he entered his father's residence. He already knew the reason he was likely allowed back home was for something concerning his place in the family.
The greetings his father gave him when they finally met were not those of a loving father-son reunion. It was a tone stained with formality. A document was then brought forth.
"Reymund, if you sign this, I will reduce your military service."
His father brought down a contract. The terms outlined by Hernais stated that Reymund must give up 50% of the assets given to the successor. Hernais did not have the power to choose his successor; the entire royal family would've been in outrage if he did so as to give all the assets to his youngest son.
In order to leave anything to Huon, he needed a direct signature from Reymund, and he could only part with half of the assets at most.
Reymund didn't think much. He signed the document.
Even though he didn't need to go back to the army, he decided to continue his term there. He enjoyed life more on the field of battle.
He met his brother Huon for the first time on the way home. The kid was bright and cheerful. Apparently, his magic type was good for investigative measures. Perfect for a political successor.
Huon would later come to realize how fortunate he was to have a brother like Reymund.
However, during Reymunds visit, he chose to do something different.
He was sure that the person who killed his mother must've been his father. There was no other reason for his father to lie about the cause of death.
Reymund was weaker than Hernais. He was barely a swordsman, and the magic type he had was not offensive at all.
Despite all of that, he decided. He would kill his father before he left.