The last thing I remembered was the shriek of tearing metal and the cold embrace of the ocean. Now, I felt only a different kind of cold—the damp chill of stone walls and the feverish fire in my veins. The memories of Liam Volkov, logistics mastermind, bled into the fragile, pain-filled memories of Kieran, seventh prince of the Aethelian Empire. A prince who was, according to the court physician currently ignoring me, not long for this world.
Poison, my new, analytical mind supplied, cutting through the childish terror. Slow-acting. Undetectable by their low-grade magic. A political cleanup.
A grim smile touched my chapped lips. They had killed the weak prince. But in his place, they had awakened something else. And in the deepest part of my consciousness, something vast and hungry stirred.
The physician, a gaunt man with robes too fine for this forgotten corner of the palace, dabbed my forehead with a cloth that smelled of cheap herbs and indifference. "The prince's mana channels are… blocked. A congenital defect. The gods' will." His voice was a bored monotone, meant for the ears of the guard at the door. A death sentence, politely delivered.
My ten-year-old body trembled, but Liam's mind raced. Congenital defect. Right. And the bitter aftertaste on my tongue for the last three meals is just bad luck. I recognized the symptoms from Liam's world: gradual neurological shutdown, muscle weakness, fever. A heavy metal, perhaps. Lead or arsenic. Administered in small, steady doses.
"Water," I croaked, the sound alien in this young throat.
The physician sighed, as if I'd asked for a dragon's egg. He poured a cup from a clay pitcher and held it to my lips. I drank, but my eyes were on the pitcher. The source.
As he turned to leave, I let my arm flop weakly over the side of the bed, my fingers brushing the leg of the small wooden table. A calculated spasm. The cup I'd just used clattered to the floor.
"Clumsy, even in sickness," the physician muttered, bending to pick it up.
It was the distraction I needed. With a effort that made black spots dance in my vision, I pushed the clay pitcher. It didn't fall, but it tipped, splashing water over the table and onto the physician's robes.
He jumped back with a curse. "Useless wretch!"
"Forgive me… so weak…" I whispered, letting my head loll.
Muttering about ungrateful burdens, he stormed out, the guard following with a dismissive snort. The door to my sparse chamber thudded shut. The lock clicked.
Silence, save for the crackle of the meager fire and the frantic drum of my heart.
Alone.
I pushed myself up, every muscle protesting. The room swam. No time. Liam's knowledge was my only weapon. Arsenic poisoning. Treatment? In my old world, chelation therapy. Impossible here. But mitigation? Possible.
I needed activated charcoal.
A desperate laugh bubbled in my chest. How? I was in a stone room with a bed, a table, a fireplace, and a chamber pot.
My eyes landed on the fire. Charcoal.
And the burnt, brittle ends of the bread left on a tray from a meal I couldn't keep down. Carbon.
It was crude. It was desperate. But it was a plan.
For the next hour, I worked in agonizing slow motion. I used the edge of the metal tray to scrape charred wood from a half-burnt log in the fireplace. I crumbled the burnt bread crusts. I mixed them with a little water from the floor, not the tainted pitcher, making a vile, gritty paste.
Every swallow was an act of rebellion. It tasted of ash and despair. My stomach heaved, but I forced it down. Adsorb the toxin. Slow the damage.
As I finished, a wave of exhaustion worse than any corporate all-nighter crashed over me. I slumped back, the gritty paste a lead weight in my gut.
That's when the other memory surfaced. Not Liam's. Not Kieran.
A memory of darkness. A silence so profound it was a sound. And then, a single point of light, distant as a forgotten star. I watched, unblinking, as the light grew, not in brightness, but in substance. I saw galaxies swirl, nebulas birth and die, solar systems dance—all contained within that single, growing point. And then, it stopped growing. And it began to fall. It fell into an abyss below, and as it fell, it stretched into a thin, brilliant line before vanishing into a maw I could not see, could only feel—infinite, cold, and empty.
The Star-Eater.
The name came unbidden, carved into my soul. And with it, a whisper that was not a sound, but a vibration in the fabric of my being:
…hunger…
My eyes flew open. I was gasping, drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the fever. The room was the same. The pain was the same. But everything was different.
I was not just Liam Volkov in a child's body. I was not just Prince Kieran, the poisoned spare.
I was a cage for something that consumed stars.
And someone in this palace was trying to throw away the cage before they realized what was inside.
The fear that followed was paralyzing. But beneath it, forged in the cold logic of my past life and the terrifying truth of this one, a new emotion ignited.
A cold, focused rage.
They wanted me dead? Fine. Let them try.
But they would find that the ashes they intended to sweep away were still warm. And from those ashes, I would build something they could not control.
The game had changed. I just needed to survive long enough to learn the rules.
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