I was born into House Avernus, and the name itself carried weight heavier than any sword could ever bear. A house whose legacy stretched back centuries, whose banners of crimson and gold had flown over battlefields where the air hummed with aura, and whose children were trained from the moment they could walk to wield blades as extensions of their very souls. To be born into Avernus was to inherit both a privilege and a curse: the expectation of perfection, and the shame of failure.
I was its youngest son, Jude Avernus, and I failed.
I remember the first day I held a sword. My small hands trembled, and my arms shook with the effort of lifting a weapon designed for men who had trained for a decade already. The aura—this invisible, vital energy that my older siblings seemed to command with effortless grace—was foreign to me, like water refusing to touch dry soil. They moved as if the world itself obeyed them. Every strike, every stance, every flicker of aura around their blades was a silent testament to the power I would never have.
I trained. I tried. I endured. But no matter how many sunrises I greeted with practice, no matter how many nights I lay awake imagining the perfection I could never reach, the aura remained stubbornly absent. My body betrayed me. My mind betrayed me. And eventually, even the house that bore my name betrayed me.
By the age of eighteen, after years of failure, ridicule, and countless humiliations before my family and the tutors of the house, I was cast out. The doors of Avernus Manor closed behind me, and I walked into a world that had no interest in my bloodline, no regard for my name, and no patience for weakness.
For a long time, I wandered. The roads of Eryndor were neither kind nor forgiving. Merchants avoided travelers carrying the weight of insignificance; nobles looked past me as though I were already dead. It was in this harshness that I found a mercenary corps willing to accept me—not for my name, nor my skill, but for my willingness to endure, to fight, and to bleed. There, among soldiers hardened by hunger and death, I learned lessons Avernus could never have taught me. I learned that survival demanded more than perfection; it demanded cunning, persistence, and an understanding that power could come in forms beyond the sword.
It was during those years, when my body had grown strong and my spirit tempered by hardship, that I discovered something I had never known: magic. Not the disciplined sword aura of Avernus, but a strange, latent force within me, whispering possibilities I had never imagined. It was subtle at first, a flicker of energy when I was angry, a tug at the edge of my thoughts when I concentrated. And as I learned to coax it forth, a new world opened to me, one that had been invisible in the shadow of failure.
My life shifted once more when I found my master—a man whose body was frail with age but whose presence commanded the room. He was a sage, a scholar, a mage, and in his lifetime he had traversed the realms of knowledge and arcane power that few could even dream of. I became his apprentice, and under his guidance, I began to understand. Spells, incantations, energy flows, the shaping of power itself—I learned them all. Slowly, painfully, I began to see that my first life had not been wasted, but rather, it had been preparation.
Even so, the weight of regret remained. Every humiliation, every failure, every door that had closed in my face during my youth pressed against me like a stone in my chest. And in the quiet hours, when the night was silent and the fires burned low, I would ask myself the same question: What if I could go back? What if I could start over?
The room was quiet, save for the faint hiss of the dying fire in the hearth. Shadows stretched long across the walls, dancing like ghosts. The old master lay upon a narrow bed, frail, bent, yet sharp-eyed. His breaths were shallow, each one a whisper of the life he had poured into countless apprentices. Jude knelt beside him, holding his hands, feeling the rough warmth that had guided him through years of learning.
The master's eyes, sharp and piercing even in weakness, studied him with intensity.
"Jude…" His voice was faint, yet there was a firmness in it that made the air itself seem heavier. "Do you… regret your past?"
Jude's hands tightened around the master's. He felt every memory rise up—the bitter taste of failure, the shame of exile, the countless hours of sweat and fruitless effort. His voice was barely audible. "Yes," he whispered. "If I could start over… I would change everything. All the wrongs, all the mistakes, all the pain."
A faint smile curved the master's lips. With hands that trembled with age, he brought forth an artifact, small, ancient, humming with a quiet energy older than memory itself. It radiated warmth, power, and something that felt… alive.
He placed it into Jude's hands.
"Then…" the master's voice gained strength, a tremor of command beneath the frailty, "…go. Go and clear your regret."
The artifact pulsed violently. Light erupted from it, spilling across the room like a sun born of stone. Shadows fled as if burned by brilliance. Jude felt his body lift, weightless, unbound, drifting through space that was no longer his own. Stars, void, color, and darkness twisted together, infinite and eternal. He moved through realms that had no names, through dimensions where time and reality were meaningless.
And yet, amidst the chaos, there was a sense of calm. A whisper that promised a new beginning, a clean slate, a chance to reclaim what he had lost.
Then… light.
And Jude opened his eyes.
The air smelled of dew, stone, and beginnings. The morning sun glinted off the walls of Avernus Manor, and the crimson-and-gold banners fluttered lazily in the wind. His body… was small, fragile, like a baby's crinkle, yet inside him, he felt something vast and potent stirring. Energy that had been denied him before, waiting.
The world was the same, yet it felt different. Time had shifted. Fate had shifted. And with it came a single, unshakable certainty:
This time, he would not fail.
Jude flexed his tiny fingers, testing the strange, new feeling of youth that was both a curse and a gift. Memories of the past life—the failures, the humiliation, the lessons—flooded him. They were no longer weights, but tools. He would walk a path no Avernus child had ever walked before.
Outside, the courtyard was quiet. The air smelled of grass, stone, and the faint tang of morning mist. Somewhere in the distance, birds sang as though the world itself were awakening to his presence. And Jude, smallest son of the greatest sword house, rose on wobbly legs, feeling possibility where once there had been only despair.
The artifact had given him more than a second chance—it had given him the chance to rewrite not just his fate, but the fate of the house, the kingdom, and perhaps, the very world.
And so, in the stillness of dawn, Jude Avernus took his first step into a life he would shape with his own hands, a life where failure would no longer define him, and where shadows and swords might one day bend to his.