Got it—same dark isekai setup, **male MC**, rewritten cleanly from the ground up.
Here's the new **Chapter 1**.
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## Chapter 1: Born into Darkness
I died once.
I remember that much with painful clarity.
The sound of shattering metal. The weightless moment before impact. The regret that followed—sharp, immediate, and utterly pointless. Then came the darkness. No light. No afterlife. Just silence so complete it swallowed thought itself.
So when I felt **cold**, I knew this wasn't death.
Air tore into my lungs, raw and burning. I gasped, choking as my chest convulsed on instinct alone. The world assaulted me all at once—heat, noise, pressure. Harsh voices echoed around me, speaking a language I didn't understand, yet somehow *did*. My ears rang. My head throbbed.
I tried to move.
My body refused to obey.
Panic surged through me. I attempted to shout, to demand answers, but all that escaped my throat was a thin, helpless wail.
A baby's cry.
The realization hit harder than any injury I remembered from my past life.
I had been **reborn**.
Rough hands lifted me, wrapping me in coarse fabric that scratched against my skin. My vision was blurred, but I caught glimpses of my surroundings—a dimly lit room with cracked wooden beams, walls stained with smoke and age. The air smelled of iron, herbs, and something bitter underneath it all.
A man's face hovered above me. He was young, but exhaustion had carved deep lines into his features. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack.
"It's a boy," someone said.
The man exhaled shakily.
"Is he breathing?"
"Yes."
Relief flickered across his face—but it didn't last.
Another voice, quieter this time. Afraid. "Check his chest."
The man hesitated.
Even before he pulled the cloth aside, I felt it.
A sudden **burning pain** flared beneath my collarbone, searing hot, as if something invisible had branded me from the inside. My body convulsed, my cry rising in pitch. The air in the room thickened instantly, heavy and oppressive, pressing down on everyone present.
The candle flames bent inward, flickering wildly.
The man froze.
"…He has the mark," he whispered.
Silence swallowed the room.
No one celebrated. No one smiled.
In that moment, as a newborn trapped in a fragile body, I understood something with terrifying clarity.
I was not meant to be here.
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I was born in a small, forgotten town called **Eldermire**, nestled near the edge of a crumbling country on a vast and dangerous continent. It was the kind of place people passed through only when they had no other choice. Mud roads. Wooden houses held together by desperation. And people who prayed not for happiness—but survival.
Magic existed here.
Not the heroic kind from legends.
This magic was cruel. Ancient. Alive.
It flowed through the land like poisoned blood, seeping into stone and soil alike. Everyone had some affinity for it—just enough to get by. A spark to light fires. A trickle to heal shallow wounds. Anything more was rare.
And anything darker was feared.
As I grew, I became painfully aware of it. I could *feel* magic long before I could speak properly. It lingered in the shadows, curled beneath the ground, whispered through the forest beyond town limits. Most people couldn't hear it.
I could.
The memories of my previous life never faded. They sat quietly in the back of my mind, shaping the way I saw this world. I didn't cry without reason. I didn't act like a normal child. I watched. I listened. I learned.
People noticed.
I grew into a thin boy with pale skin and black hair darker than anyone else in Eldermire. My eyes were worse—unnaturally dark, almost bottomless. When I looked at people, they grew uncomfortable, as if I were staring *through* them rather than at them.
Whispers followed me wherever I went.
"Unnatural."
"Cursed child."
"Marked one."
My parents tried to protect me.
My father was a quiet man who worked until his hands bled. My mother grew weaker every year, her smiles growing rarer, her eyes always lingering on me with a mixture of love and fear. They never spoke of the mark burned into my chest, but I felt its presence every waking moment—an invisible weight, pulsing faintly with warmth.
Dark magic answered to it.
By the time I was five, I understood something terrifying.
The magic wasn't just around me.
It was *inside* me.
On the day the sky turned black at noon, the truth finally revealed itself.
The air twisted violently, mana flooding the heavens like a spreading wound. People screamed and fled indoors as shadows stretched unnaturally long. I stood frozen in the dirt road, staring upward as the world seemed to strain under an unseen pressure.
Deep within my chest, the mark burned.
And something ancient stirred in response.
That was when I realized this wasn't an accident.
I hadn't been reborn here by chance.
I had been *chosen*.
Placed into a dying world saturated with dark magic. Marked at birth. Surrounded by fear and superstition.
This was not the story of a hero.
It was the beginning of something far worse.
And somewhere beyond Eldermire—beyond the forests, the ruined kingdoms, and the blood-soaked continent itself—the world had already taken notice of me.
Whether I wanted it to or not.