His bed was warm; warm and wet, just like the nights before. It had been the third time this evening that he woke up again from the nightmares he'd been having. Nightmares that seemed so vivid and so real, he could not help but assume that every time he woke up, that was the dream.
It had begun a few days ago, possibly weeks—he couldn't remember much before today. He had dreams, very vivid dreams, of kingdoms collapsing and a world devoured by fire and deep dark shadows. Shouts and screams of agony and twisted, malicious, dark glee alike. Levi remembered it all.
His life had not been much, or at least the previous one. The dreams he'd been having were of a life he once lived—a life that he was desperate not to repeat now that he was aware of it. Today, he had woken up while in the middle of a ferocious battle against one of the commanders of the Royal Guard, a man he slew mercilessly.
"I can't keep doing this. What the hell is going on?" he said as he got up from his bed to dry himself with a towel he'd kept nearby routinely and out of habit because of recent events.
"Gosh, did that really happen? All those people, all that…" he spoke quietly to himself, not to anyone in particular—he was by himself.
He looked towards the window. The night sky was still starry, and the moon had yet to cross over. He walked slowly towards his window, and there he stood quietly. The duchy was quiet, and not a single soul was moving, and yet as he gazed out, he saw the beauty—the beauty of its courtyards, its training grounds, its well-manicured pathways.
With a sigh, he turned back to his bed and just stared.
"How long is this going to go on for? How many memories am I going to relive?"
Levi had realised that his dreams were, in fact, memories of a life he once lived, and that in that life, he had become a villain.
At the age of ten, when most of his peers awakened their threads, he had awakened nothing and was deemed threadless. For seven years, until the age of seventeen, he lived in shame and torment from both his peers and those who served under the house of Solareth.
It was not common that a noble would be threadless, much less the son of a duke. However, in the rare instance that it did happen, the individual who was threadless would suffer, and suffer greatly, just as he had up until now. That, however, warped his character. He became more cruel to servants and less friendly to his family, and over time, his heart hardened, and he was darkened.
It was not until he started experiencing the dreams that he came back to his senses. However, the damage was already done.
"Oh my gosh, what was I thinking?" he said as he stubbed his toe against his bedpost intentionally.
With a sigh, he plopped himself back onto his bed, still a bit damp and moist from the sweating. He sighed again.
"How am I going to go about this?" he said.
He stared at the ceiling and quietly took it in. His room was not modest at all, quite the contrary, it was very lavish, befitting the son of a duke, and a grand duke no less.
As things stood, Levi was aware that his reputation was in the gutters—slums even—and that the work he would need to put in to rescue it was, by and large, almost impossible. All he could hope for was to minimise the damage and at least be at peace with those within his own household before he had to confront the coming storm.
In his previous life, after having awakened, all the malice that he held in his heart consumed him and gave birth to a wicked creature.
"I don't blame myself too much, though. That was a horrible way to grow up for such an unimpressionable ten-year-old child," he thought.
However, having lived through that life already, he knew more than ever that he did not want to go through that again and that it was not all worth it in the end. And so, he steeled himself not to go through that again.
Levi Ardyn Solareth was the son of Grand Duke Draken Caelum Solareth, a man of immense influence and reputation, and the oldest of two children. To his mother, he had always been the golden child, a bright spark amidst the grandeur of the duchy. But life, as it often does, had a way of twisting expectations. When Levi reached the age of ten, the world he had known so far began to crumble, piece by piece, into an unforgiving reality.
He had not awakened—a fact that marked him as threadless—and in that moment, the life of privilege and admiration that had been his became a shadow of what it once was.
Before that fateful age, Levi had been adored and celebrated, treated as the very jewel of the duchy. Everywhere he went, he was met with smiles and gentle words of praise. Nobles sought his favour, merchants hoped for his blessing, and his peers, for the most part, regarded him with a mixture of awe and envy. Yet, the day it became known that he was threadless, that admiration and expectation vanished as if swept away by a storm. In an instant, Levi had become nothing more than an ordinary boy—or worse, a disappointment. His mediocrity, in the eyes of the world, was a stain on the family name, and his future, once wide and promising, narrowed sharply into a series of limitations and constraints.
The consequences of his threadlessness were immediate and severe. The betrothal to his childhood friend—the girl he had quietly admired for years, a girl whose heart he had hoped to one day call his own—was annulled. The engagement had been arranged with the duchy of Manos, a union meant to solidify alliances and strengthen the political position of House Solareth in the eastern reaches. Its sudden dissolution sent shockwaves through the aristocratic circles of the continent. Not only was Levi's personal life thrown into disarray, but his family's reputation suffered a humiliating blow. House Solareth, once regarded with respect and deference, became the subject of whispered doubts and insults in courtly gatherings.
In the years that followed, the decline only deepened. Noble houses that had once sought alliance proposals withdrew them one by one, seeing no advantage in maintaining relations with a family whose youngest had failed to awaken a thread. The duchy, powerful though it was, faced the grim reality of political isolation, relying solely on Levi's younger sister as the potential future heir. Levi himself became the embodiment of disappointment, a constant reminder to both peers and adults alike that even the most promising paths could lead to ruin.
"What a wicked bunch of people," he muttered bitterly to himself on more than one occasion, though he quickly realised that this was only a fraction of the challenge he faced.
Yet, the loss of admiration and political alliances was only the surface of the turmoil Levi would endure. The neighbouring kingdom of Duskveil, cunning and ambitious, seized upon the family's weakened position. Spies and assassins were dispatched in a calculated campaign of espionage. House Solareth became a scapegoat, their misfortunes exploited to ignite tensions and provoke a larger conflict among the kingdoms of the continent. Duskveil's strategy was brilliant in its cruelty, a precise orchestration of manipulation and deceit designed to serve their political ambitions. Every act of sabotage, every whisper of betrayal, was intended to sow discord, and Levi, even at his young age, understood that the consequences could be catastrophic.
Having awakened three threads in their own right was also not enough; Duskveil's operatives moved with the precision of trained predators, striking when the duchy was most vulnerable. Their actions were calculated to ensure maximum chaos and minimal resistance, and for a time, it seemed that the machinations of fate had entirely forsaken House Solareth.
Levi now, however, did not see himself as powerless. Despite the weight of humiliation, the threat of war, and the betrayal of once-trusted allies, a spark of resolve burned within him. The lessons of past failures, the vivid nightmares of what could come, and the bitter taste of injustice all converged to shape his determination.
He would not allow history to repeat itself. He would not endure the same humiliation, nor would he allow his family's legacy to be extinguished by the hands of others. Every slight, every betrayal, every act of malice he had witnessed in the wake of his awakening was catalogued in his mind as a lesson, a guide, and a warning. And as he reflected on the trials that had shaped his previous life, Levi made a silent vow: in this life, he would repay the kingdom of Duskveil and its unseen allies. Every act of treachery would be met with consequence, and every ounce of injustice would find its reckoning.
The boy who had once been merely the "threadless son" of a powerful family now understood the gravity of his own potential. Though ten years of life had been marked by disappointment, humiliation, and political isolation, they had also forged in him a sense of purpose stronger than any thread could confer. In the shadow of loss and betrayal, Levi Ardyn Solareth would rise—not just to reclaim what had been stripped from him, but to ensure that the injustices of the past would never dictate the course of his future again.