CHAPTER 1 THE IN THE MIRROR
The bathroom light flickered once.
Then again.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed suspended in that fragile interval between darkness and illumination, as though reality itself were deciding whether it should continue. When the light finally stabilized, it did so with an unforgiving brilliance—white, sterile, and absolute.
Lee Hoyeol stood barefoot on the cold ceramic tiles. The chill seeped upward, grounding him in a way that felt almost cruel. His toes curled instinctively, as if clinging to the floor might anchor him to something real. Both hands were braced against the sink, fingers splayed wide, knuckles drained of color from the pressure he didn't realize he was applying.
For a fleeting, irrational moment, he wondered if gravity had changed.
Not dramatically—nothing so obvious. Just enough that the world felt subtly wrong, tilted by a fraction of a degree. Enough that he felt as though if he lifted his hands from the sink, he might drift sideways instead of standing upright.
Then he looked up.
The man in the mirror stared back at him.
Silver hair caught the light, each strand clean and deliberate, yet styled with an effortless disorder that suggested refinement rather than neglect. Pale eyes—sharp, calculating—regarded him with a calm intensity that made his chest tighten. They were eyes that had never learned to avert their gaze, eyes accustomed to being obeyed.
A tailored black suit wrapped the man's frame perfectly. Not simply fitted to his measurements, but to his posture, his balance, his presence. It was the kind of suit that announced authority without ostentation, wealth without apology.
This wasn't his face.
The thought rose instantly, reflexively, like a rejection issued before reason could interfere.
His heart thudded once, hard.
No.
That wasn't right.
It was his face.
And that was the problem.
He leaned closer to the mirror, breath shallow, eyes scanning every detail with growing desperation. The sharp line of the jaw. The faint scar near the temple—thin, precise, the mark of something deliberate rather than accidental. Even the way the man stood was unfamiliar. His shoulders were relaxed but ready, his weight evenly distributed, as though he could move at a moment's notice.
Lee Hoyeol had never stood like that.
He had always slouched, shoulders rounded from years of trying to occupy as little space as possible. Years of apologizing without words for existing in the same room as other people.
This man did not apologize.
A faint tremor ran through his arms. He gripped the sink harder, porcelain cold beneath his palms, grounding and unforgiving.
Get a grip, he told himself.
But the words rang hollow.
Memories surged inside his head, colliding violently, like two lives being forced into the same narrow space.
One was painfully ordinary.
Cramped dorm rooms with flickering lights and thin walls that did nothing to block the noise of other people living fuller lives. Cheap instant noodles eaten at two in the morning while staring blankly at lecture notes he barely understood. Professors who never remembered his name, classmates who never noticed when he stopped showing up.
Endless nights spent lying awake, staring at the ceiling, bargaining with himself.
If I can just get through this semester.
If I can just graduate.
If I can just be average, maybe that's enough.
A second-year university student.
Unremarkable. Forgettable.
Safe.
The other life—
That one was anything but.
It unfolded not in fragments, but in impressions. Vast and heavy, like a shadow stretching across centuries. Long corridors lined with ancestral portraits, their eyes following silently as he passed. Names spoken in hushed tones, laden with reverence and fear. Rituals conducted not out of superstition, but obligation—ancient acts whose meanings had been eroded by time, yet whose consequences remained absolute.
Power.
Not the flashy kind. Not the kind that announced itself loudly.
This was power that seeped into everything. Contracts signed with a single stroke that reshaped markets. Casual remarks that determined whether families thrived or vanished. Violence delivered cleanly, efficiently, always justified.
A great clan.
A lineage older than nations.
A successor.
Romeo.
The name surfaced unbidden, echoing through his thoughts like a sentence passed down generations ago.
His breath fogged the mirror.
"Who… are you?"
The words barely carried, swallowed by the hum of the lights. He wasn't speaking to the reflection—not really. He was speaking to the hollow space where certainty used to live.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the answer arrived.
Not spoken.
Imposed.
Lee Hoyeol.
His heart stuttered.
Grandfell Clan.
His fingers twitched violently.
Claudius Appeus Romeo.
The full name struck him like a physical blow. His vision blurred, the edges of the world smearing together as a wave of vertigo crashed over him. He staggered back half a step, barely managing to keep his balance by clutching the sink.
Images detonated behind his eyes.
A banquet hall drenched in warm light and colder intentions. Polite applause masking a silent execution. Blood soaking into white linen while everyone pretended not to notice.
A conference room where a single nod sealed the fate of a corporation—and everyone in it.
A young man kneeling, forehead pressed to marble, trembling as he pledged loyalty with tears streaming down his face.
These weren't memories.
They lacked emotion.
They were records.
Inheritance.
The realization made his stomach churn violently. He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to retch.
This body had lived before him.
It had commanded rooms without raising its voice. It had learned violence as a language, authority as a reflex. It had never doubted its right to exist.
And now—
It was his.
A cold awareness crept up his spine, prickling at the base of his neck.
He wasn't alone.
There were no footsteps. No sound at all.
The air itself didn't change.
Yet certainty settled over him like a weight.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze.
The mirror rippled.
The silver-haired man remained in the foreground, perfectly still. But behind him, half-obscured by steam and glare, another figure stood.
Dark hair, slightly unkempt. Shoulders slouched in a familiar way—neither confident nor weak, but perpetually tired. A face he knew intimately, twisted into a grin that hovered somewhere between triumph and madness.
Himself.
No.
His old self.
"You figured it out faster than I thought," the other Lee Hoyeol said lightly, as if commenting on the weather. He reached out and wiped condensation from the mirror, his hand passing through the image without resistance. "Second year, right? I figured you'd scream first."
The sound of his own voice, spoken by someone else, made his skin crawl.
Cold sweat trickled down his back. "You're—"
"Dead?" the other interrupted cheerfully.
"Possibly. Erased. Rewritten. Academically speaking, identity persistence is a fascinating question."
The room felt smaller. The walls pressed inward, the ceiling impossibly low.
"What did you do to me?"
The grin widened, eyes gleaming with manic satisfaction. "I finished something."
At his words, suppressed fragments surged forward—symbols scrawled into the margins of notebooks under the guise of doodles. Late nights spent researching things that didn't exist in any database. Years of obsession hidden behind the mask of mediocrity.
This wasn't an accident.
This wasn't fate.
This was intentional.
"I swapped us," the other said softly. "You get the clan. The power. The enemies. The expectations. The inevitable collapse."
"And you?" Lee Hoyeol asked, his voice hoarse.
The laughter that followed was loud, unrestrained, unhinged. "I get rest. And the satisfaction of seeing if you survive."
The mirror rippled violently.
Then shattered.
Not the glass—
But certainty.
The presence vanished.
Lee Hoyeol collapsed onto the edge of the bathtub, lungs burning as if he had been holding his breath for years. His heart pounded violently, each beat echoing a single, undeniable truth.
He had been chosen.
No.
He had been used.
He was wealthy beyond imagination. Powerful beyond comprehension. Heir to an ancient clan whose shadow reached across borders and generations.
And utterly, catastrophically unprepared.
"I'm fucked," he whispered.
Later, in a kitchen too pristine to feel lived in, he cooked without thinking. His hands moved with practiced precision—knife strokes clean, heat adjusted instinctively, timing perfect. Muscle memory not his own guided every movement.
He ate slowly, methodically.
Outside, the city slept.
Inside him, something vast, ancient, and merciless began to wake.
If the world insisted on turning him into a monster—
Then he would survive it.