I was born in a slum in the Custodian Kingdom, where the sun rarely reached the narrow alleys between crammed wooden shanties. My parents were thieves not by choice, but because work was scarce and hunger never let go. They taught me everything they knew: how to move silently through shadows, how to read faces for danger, how to take what we needed without being caught.
Maybe that's why I survived the warzone as long as I did.
When I was thirteen, they were killed during a botched attempt to steal grain from a merchant's wagon. I found them in a dark alley, blood pooling around their bodies, the bag they'd risked everything for spilled across the mud. That day, I learned how cruel the world could be how life meant nothing to those who had more than enough of it.
Pain and anger, emotions no young mind should have to carry, consumed my heart.
I became a boy who fended for himself: sleeping in empty crates or under bridges, eating scraps from market stalls, fighting off other street kids who tried to take what little I had. I believed fate had forced me into its cruel game that I was born to suffer, to struggle, to be nothing more than dirt beneath the feet of nobles who'd never known hunger. I cursed fate itself. If it thought I'd accept that lot in life, it was wrong. I fought to survive, to push back against every blow it dealt.
I was sixteen when a recruiting officer spotted me fighting off three boys twice my size, using nothing but quick feet and a sharp piece of broken pipe. He gave me a choice: join the army and get three meals a day, or stay in the slums and likely die before twenty. It wasn't much of a choice at all.
But I told myself: Finally a chance to change my life. To turn fate's game against it.
At seventeen, I saw my first front line. Battle was worse than anything I'd imagined in the slums. The noise, blood, and fear blurred into a nightmare I couldn't wake from. But I was good at it. My years on the streets had taught me to move fast and think faster, to use every possible advantage. After that, I was always where the fighting was thickest used as cannon fodder, because boys like me were cheap and easy to replace.
I run my fingers over my palm, where a scar once sat the one from that first battle, when an enemy's dagger sliced through my glove. Even now, in Prince Vernom's body, I can still feel its sting sometimes, as if the memory is carved into my soul. That enemy was the first person I ever killed. The act is etched into me like a curse I can't shake one that became an obsession.
The mirror shows me Vernom's gentle features, but my hands though slimmer now move with the practiced ease of a soldier who's spent half his life holding a blade. I look out the window of the prince's chambers at the manicured gardens and gleaming towers of the Callibean palace, and feel like a stranger in a world built to keep people like my old self far away.
Why did this happen? I ask myself again, turning from the glass. Why did I survive the arrow only to wake up in the body of an enemy prince? Is this a curse or a blessing?
If it's just another of fate's cruel games… should I play along willingly this time?
A soft knock at the door pulls me from my thoughts.
"Your Highness?" A young servant boy peeks his head in, eyes wide with nervousness. "Have you had a good dream, Prince?"
Define a good dream. I can't remember the last time I slept peacefully without battlefield scenes seeping into my rest. Can I call this situation a good dream? Is this reality or just another nightmare dressed in gentle clothes?
Ten days have passed, but I still can't settle into this body. Faint, vague memories flicker at the edges of my mind: snippets of a quiet boy tending flowers in the palace gardens, harsh words from nobles who barely noticed him, a mother who held him close when no one else would. The whole ordeal feels like waking up as a toddler again a blank slate despite being twenty-eight years old.
All I know for certain is that Prince Vernom hit his head hard in an accident, and voilà I'm here. Playing someone with amnesia is easy enough. We're the same age, but I doubt we shared much else. A slum kid and a prince worlds apart. I'm sure Vernom was soft-spoken, gentle, raised with care even if he wasn't favored. I was raised in filth and died on a battlefield I must seem barbaric by comparison.
Every memory is vague, like fog over still water. It's as if whoever put me here didn't want to complicate things only giving me small fragments from both my past and Vernom's. Maybe to keep me from getting tangled in what was, so I could just live as I am now.
But how? How does one live as a prince? I have no idea and right now, I don't want to know. I just want to run away.
I nod to the attendant but say nothing about the dream. Words feel heavy in my throat, and I don't want to raise suspicion. Instead, I watch him set down a tray steam rising from porridge, fruit glistening like jewels on the plate. Back in the slums, this meal would have fed me for days. In the army, we'd have fought over scraps far worse… or gone hungry entirely.
The boy's name is Cael he's new here, about the same age I was when I became a soldier. He once told me his family sold him to work in the palace. Now he lingers by the door, eyes darting from the untouched food to my face. He looks worried, and I realize Vernom must have been the kind to notice when his servants were troubled. So different from me who only ever cared about surviving, never about others. Though this warmth feels strangely familiar… maybe the prince was truly a kind person.
"Is something wrong?" I ask, my voice quieter than I'd intended. If it were just me, I'd shout it with anger. But something about being in this body makes raising my voice feel wrong. I tried holding a sword once my hand trembled, and the blade felt impossibly heavy.
He jumps slightly, bowing his head quickly. "No, Your Highness! Nothing at all. I just… you've barely eaten these past few days. The physician says you need your strength."
"I'm not very hungry," I say simply, letting out a deep sigh. Who could have an appetite when you wake up in a stranger's life with no idea why?
I look from the food to him the worn patches on his tunic, the way he shrinks as if afraid to take up space. It all reminds me of myself at thirteen. I know that feeling too well.
"Sit," I say, gesturing to a small stool by the table. I'm a Custodian soldier brutality was once second nature to me. But seeing boys like him stirs something different inside now.
His eyes go wide with shock. "Your Highness, I couldn't possibly."
"It's alright," I say, trying to smile the way I think Vernom would. "I don't like eating alone. And you look like you could use something warm in your stomach."
He hesitates before slowly pulling the stool over, sitting on the very edge as if ready to flee at any moment. I push the porridge toward him and tear off half the loaf of bread.
"As I said I'm not very hungry," I repeat. "Sharing is better than letting food go to waste, isn't it?"
Cael stares at the food, then at me. Tears well in his eyes, and he bows his head to hide them but I've already seen. Life is hard for every unfortunate person like us, I think to myself.
"Thank you, Your Highness," he whispers. "No one has ever… no one has ever done something like this for me."
I pick up my spoon, stirring the porridge slowly as I watch him eat. Sharing a meal feels more natural than anything I've done since waking up here. Maybe this is where I should start not with learning etiquette or protocol, but with remembering what it means to be human. To care for others, even when you carry your own burdens. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but today… today I want to be far from the brutal person I was in my past life.