The pounding in Seth's head felt like a drum being beaten from the inside of his skull.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Each pulse brought with it a wave of disorientation that made the room spin even though he was lying perfectly still. His eyes cracked open slowly, reluctantly, as if his eyelids were made of lead. The ceiling above him was wooden, old and weathered, with visible cracks running through the beams like rivers on a map. Dust particles danced in the shaft of morning light that spilled through the single window, creating a hazy golden column in the otherwise dim room.
'This isn't my room.'
The thought came first, instinctive and immediate. Seth tried to sit up, but his body protested with a groan that escaped his lips before he could stop it. His muscles ached as though he had run a marathon in his sleep, and there was a strange heaviness to his limbs that he could not quite explain. He managed to prop himself up on one elbow, his other hand going to his forehead as if he could physically push away the confusion that clouded his mind.
'Wait. What was I doing before this?'
He closed his eyes, trying to remember. The memories came in fragments, disjointed and unclear. A computer screen. The glow of it in a darkened room. Text scrolling down as he read, chapter after chapter, losing himself in a story that had gripped him for months. "Kill That Witch." That was the name of the webnovel. He had just crossed into chapter nine hundred, a milestone that had taken him weeks to reach. The protagonist had been in the middle of a battle, surrounded by enemies, and then...
And then what?
Seth's eyes snapped open again, but this time something was different. The memories that should have ended there did not end. They continued, but they were wrong. They were not his memories, yet they felt as real as anything he had ever experienced. He remembered being a child in a grand palace, running through marble corridors while servants bowed as he passed. He remembered a father whose face was stern and disappointed, a man who wore a crown and looked at him with eyes that held no warmth. He remembered siblings who outshone him in every conceivable way, their talents and accomplishments casting shadows so large that he had long ago stopped trying to step out of them.
He remembered being Seth Arannis. The fourth prince. The failure. The trash.
'No, this is insane. I'm not... I can't be...'
But the memories were there, undeniable and overwhelming. They sat alongside his original memories like two paintings hanging side by side, both claiming to be the truth. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his bare feet touching the cold wooden floor with a soft thud. The sensation was real. The chill that ran up his legs was real. The rough texture of the floorboards beneath his soles was real.
'If this is a dream, it's the most vivid one I've ever had.'
He stood up, swaying slightly as his balance adjusted, and made his way across the small room. It was sparsely furnished, containing only the bed he had just left, a simple wooden desk with a chair, a wardrobe that looked like it had seen better decades, and that single mirror hanging on the wall beside the window. Seth approached it slowly, almost afraid of what he might see.
The face that looked back at him was not his own. Or rather, it was not the face he remembered having. This face was younger, sharper, with features that could only be described as aristocratic. High cheekbones, a strong jawline, a straight nose, and those eyes. Those impossibly blue eyes that seemed to catch the light and hold it, making them appear luminous even in the dimness of the room. His hair was black, messy from sleep, hanging in unruly strands that framed his face.
He was handsome. There was no denying that. The Arannis bloodline had gifted him with beauty even if it had denied him everything else.
'Seth Arannis,' he thought, staring at the stranger in the mirror who was somehow also him. 'I'm Seth Arannis. But I'm also... someone else. Someone from another world entirely.'
The dual nature of his existence was maddening. He could remember two completely different childhoods, two sets of experiences, two lives that should never have been able to coexist in the same mind. And yet here they were, merged together in a way that defied all logic and reason.
'Think,' he commanded himself. 'Stop panicking and think. If this is real, if I really am inside the world of "Kill That Witch," then I need to figure out what that means. Where am I in the timeline? What's happening right now?'
The novel had been massive, a sprawling epic that spanned continents and decades within its fictional timeline. He had only made it to chapter nine hundred out of over two thousand, which meant there was an enormous amount of the story he did not know. But he did know the basics. He knew about the magic system, about mana and how it manifested in those rare individuals who awakened to it. He knew about the persecution of witches, about the fear and hatred that drove people to hunt them down and execute them. He knew about the political landscape of the kingdoms, the wars and alliances, the power struggles between nobles and royalty.
And he knew that Seth Arannis, the fourth prince, was supposed to be a minor character. A footnote in the grand narrative. The trash prince who had been exiled to some backwater town and was never heard from again.
'But if I'm him now, does that mean I can change things? Or am I trapped in a predetermined story?'
The questions swirled in his mind, each one spawning a dozen more, until the sheer weight of uncertainty threatened to crush him. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus on the present moment rather than the impossible tangle of the future.
Knock knock knock.
The sudden sound made him jump, his heart leaping into his throat. He turned away from the mirror, staring at the wooden door as if it might suddenly sprout teeth and bite him.
"Your Highness?" The voice from the other side was female, young, and hesitant. "Your Highness, are you awake?"
Seth's new memories identified the voice immediately. Lyra. His maid, one of the handful of servants who had been sent with him when his father had essentially banished him from the capital. She was a quiet girl, nervous around him, always keeping her eyes downcast as if afraid that meeting his gaze might invite punishment.
"Yes," Seth called out, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. It was deeper than he remembered, with a slight rasp to it. "Yes, I'm awake. Come in."
The door opened with a soft creak, and Lyra stepped inside. She was exactly as his memories had painted her: small and slight, with light brown hair pulled back into a simple bun and a face that might have been pretty if she ever smiled. She wore a plain gray dress, the uniform of a servant in a minor noble's household, and her hands were clasped in front of her in a gesture that spoke of habitual subservience.
She did not look at him. Her eyes remained fixed on the floor as she curtsied, the movement quick and perfunctory.
"Your Highness, I apologize for disturbing you so early, but there is a matter that requires your immediate attention." Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper, and she spoke quickly as if eager to finish her message and leave.
'A matter?' Seth thought. 'What kind of matter?'
"What is it, Lyra?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady and authoritative. He was a prince, even if he was the trash prince. He needed to act the part.
Lyra's hands tightened where they gripped each other, her knuckles turning white. "The town guards, Your Highness. They've... they've apprehended someone. A girl. They believe she's a witch."
Time seemed to stop.
'A witch.'
The word echoed in Seth's mind, reverberating through both sets of memories. In his original life, it would have meant nothing more than a character type in a story. But here, in this world, it meant something else entirely. It meant power. It meant danger. It meant a person who had awakened to mana, that mystical energy that could reshape reality itself.
It meant someone who was about to be killed.
"A witch," Seth repeated slowly, his mind racing. "They're holding her? Where?"
"At the town hall, Your Highness. They await your judgment on the matter."
'My judgment.' The weight of those words settled on Seth's shoulders like a physical burden. As the nominal ruler of this backwater territory, the responsibility for dealing with such situations fell to him. And in this world, there was only one judgment that was ever passed on suspected witches.
Death.
"I see," Seth said, his voice sounding distant even to himself. "Give me a moment to dress. I'll be there shortly."
Lyra curtsied again and backed out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. As soon as she was gone, Seth sank back down onto the edge of his bed, his mind whirling with implications.
'This is it,' he thought. 'This is where everything begins. Or where it could begin, if I make the right choice.'
He knew what he was supposed to do. He knew what the original Seth Arannis would have done, what any noble in this kingdom would do when faced with a suspected witch. The law was clear, and public opinion even more so. Witches were dangerous, unpredictable, a threat to the natural order. They had to be eliminated.
But Seth also knew something that no one else in this world knew. He knew that witches were not monsters. He knew that their powers, while dangerous, could also be incredibly valuable. He knew that in the novel, the protagonist had succeeded precisely because he had chosen to protect witches rather than kill them, using their abilities to build an empire that eventually changed the world.
'Can I do the same? Should I?'
He stood up and moved to the wardrobe, pulling out the clothes that his memories told him were appropriate for his station. A simple tunic and trousers, nothing ostentatious. The trash prince did not dress in silks and velvets. He dressed practically, because practicality was all he could afford.
As he pulled the tunic over his head, Seth made his decision. He did not know if he could change the story. He did not know if he would even survive long enough to try. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty: he was not going to start his new life in this world by sentencing an innocent person to death.
He would save the witch. Whatever the cost.
The walk from his modest residence to the town hall was short, a journey of perhaps five minutes through streets that were barely worthy of the name. The town itself was small, home to maybe a thousand people at most, and it showed all the signs of being a place that had been forgotten by the rest of the world. The buildings were old and in poor repair, their wooden walls weathered by years of neglect. The streets were unpaved, little more than dirt paths that turned to mud whenever it rained. The people who lived here were farmers and laborers, simple folk who scraped out a living from the unforgiving land.
And this was what Seth had been given to rule. A punishment disguised as a responsibility.
Two men waited for him outside the town hall, and Seth's memories supplied their identities even before they spoke. The first was Roderick, his chamberlain, a man in his late twenties with sandy blonde hair and a perpetually pinched expression that suggested he smelled something unpleasant. The second was older, perhaps in his fifties, with gray hair and a beard that was neatly trimmed. His name was Wilhelm, and he served as Seth's treasurer, managing the meager finances of the territory.
Both men bowed as Seth approached, but the gesture lacked warmth. There was a perfunctory quality to it, a sense that they were going through the motions because protocol demanded it rather than because they held any real respect for him.
"Your Highness," Roderick said, his voice flat and businesslike. "Thank you for coming so quickly. The situation inside is... delicate."
"Delicate," Wilhelm echoed, shaking his head. "The whole town is in an uproar. They want justice, Your Highness. Swift justice."
'They want blood,' Seth thought grimly. 'That's what they really mean.'
"Take me to her," Seth said simply.
The two men exchanged a glance, something passing between them that Seth could not quite read. Then Roderick nodded and turned, leading the way into the town hall. Wilhelm fell into step beside Seth, and the three of them entered the building together.
The town hall was the largest structure in the settlement, but that was not saying much. It was a simple wooden building with a single main room that served as a gathering place for the community. Normally it would be empty, or perhaps hosting a small market day. But today it was packed with people, dozens of townfolk crowding together, their voices raised in a cacophony of anger and fear.
They parted as Seth entered, creating a path down the center of the room. Their eyes followed him, and he could feel the weight of their expectations pressing down on him. They wanted him to do what any proper noble would do. They wanted him to uphold the law and protect them from the monster in their midst.
At the far end of the room, surrounded by a ring of armed guards, was the witch.
She was bound in chains, heavy iron links that wrapped around her wrists and ankles, connecting to a collar around her neck. But it was not the iron that held her powerless. Seth could see the dull gray stones embedded in the metal, stones that had been pulled from the riverbed and worked into the chains. Mana nullifying stones. In this world, they were the only thing that could render a witch helpless.
The girl herself looked young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen at most. She had long silver white hair that fell past her shoulders in tangled waves, and her eyes, when she lifted her head to look at the approaching prince, were a striking shade of blue. Her skin was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes that spoke of exhaustion or perhaps days without proper rest. She wore simple clothes, a dress that had once been white but was now stained with dirt and what might have been blood.
She looked defeated. Broken. Like someone who had already accepted that her life was over.
The crowd's murmuring grew louder as Seth approached, a rising tide of voices demanding action. He could pick out individual words and phrases: "Burn her," "Witch," "Evil," "Protect us."
Seth stopped a few feet away from the chained girl, studying her in silence. His mind was working furiously, processing everything he knew about this world, about the story he had been reading, about the choices that lay before him.
'This is the moment,' he thought. 'This is where I decide what kind of person I'm going to be in this world.'
He turned slightly, addressing Roderick without taking his eyes off the girl. "What is her name?"
Roderick seemed taken aback by the question, as if it had never occurred to him that the witch might have a name. "I... I'm not certain, Your Highness. We did not ask."
Seth looked back at the girl, meeting those blue eyes directly. There was no defiance in them, no anger. Only a kind of hollow resignation, as if she had seen this scene play out before and knew exactly how it would end.
"What's your name?" Seth asked gently.
The girl blinked, surprise flickering across her features. For a long moment, she did not respond, and Seth wondered if she would refuse to answer. But then, in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible, she spoke.
"Eris."
Just one word. A single name, with no family name attached. It told Seth everything he needed to know about her origins. She was common born, someone from the lowest rungs of society. The kind of person who could disappear and no one would notice or care.
"Eris," Seth repeated, tasting the name. Then, before he could second guess himself, before the rational part of his mind could talk him out of it, he raised his voice so that everyone in the hall could hear him clearly.
"Free that witch!"