The transition from the cold, blood-slicked concrete of a Teiko Academy stairwell to the suffocating warmth of silk sheets was a violent displacement of the soul.
Caelum's eyes snapped open. He didn't see the flickering lights of the maintenance hall. Instead, his gaze met a vaulted ceiling of impossible height, decorated with celestial frescoes where golden chariots chased silver moons across a field of deep lapis lazuli. The air didn't smell like metallic blood; it smelled of expensive sandalwood and the sharp, ozonic tang of active mana—a scent like the air right before a mountain thunderstorm.
He tried to sit up, but his body felt heavy and unfamiliar.
"The young lord is awake!" a voice cried out. A maid dropped a silver basin, the water splashing across an ornate rug depicting a five-headed drake. She scrambled toward the heavy oak doors. "Fetch the Physician! Tell the Duke! Lord Caelum has returned!"
Caelum. The name sparked a wildfire in his brain. But it wasn't the Caelum who had lived on instant noodles. A secondary set of memories, jagged and ugly, began to stitch themselves into his consciousness.
He wasn't in his world anymore. He was in Aetheria.
It was a world he knew with terrifying clarity because he had read it in a novel titled The Chronicles of the Void Star. A sprawling epic of magic, gods, and a looming apocalypse. Here, the World Will guided those who yielded Mana. The gods maintained factions and Apostles within the Holy Church, all locked in a struggle against the Void Monsters—nightmarish aberrations that had torn through rifts a thousand years ago, consuming half the world.
But as the memories solidified, a cold dread replaced the confusion. He looked in a dragon-bone mirror. The boy staring back was handsome and sharp.
He was Caelum Dragon. The fifth heir of House Dragon, one of the five Great Duke Houses.
In the novel, Caelum Dragon was a footnote—a "mid-boss" designed to be hated and disposed of. Despite his legendary lineage, his mana sensitivity was abysmal. While his siblings could move mountains, Caelum's mana circuits were "shitty"—clogged and unresponsive. To overcompensate, he had used the Dragon name to terrorize everyone. He was a bully and a leach.
And he was destined to die at the hands of the protagonist, Aris.
In the original plot, Caelum had bullied Aris and tried to kidnap his sister. Driven by a sudden awakening, Aris had tracked Caelum down just before the Royal Academy term started and executed him in a dark alley. The Duke's House hadn't even sought revenge; they were glad to be rid of the stain.
Caelum sank back into the pillows, a cold sweat breaking out. The irony was suffocating. He had died as a victim of the elite, only to be reborn as the most hated member of the elite, destined to be killed by the hero.
"This isn't a book anymore," he muttered. "This is my life."
The weight of the situation was immense. He was in the Dragon Estate in the capital. According to the timeline, he had exactly three months before the Academy Entrance Ceremony. Three months before Aris would put a blade through his heart.
He lacked talent. He lacked allies. No one in the kingdom liked him—not the commoners he'd stepped on, and certainly not his own family, who viewed him as a genetic failure.
But he had something the original Caelum Dragon never did. He had a mind forged in a world of cutthroat competition. He had the "genius" that had made him a target at Teiko, but here, it wouldn't be used to solve equations. It would be used to rewrite his fate.
He knew where the hidden artifacts were buried. He knew the weaknesses of the Void Monsters. He knew the political scandals of the other Duke houses.
"If the World Will wants me to be a sacrificial lamb," Caelum said, his gaze hardening as he looked out the window at the distant, jagged rifts in the sky where the Void still pulsed, "it's going to be disappointed."
The heavy doors swung open. A man stepped in—tall, clad in armor made of dragon-scales. His hair was mercury-silver, but his eyes were like frozen tundra. This was Duke Alaric Dragon, the "Iron Wall of the North" and Caelum's father.
The man didn't look at Caelum with love. He looked at him with the cold exhaustion one might feel for a recurring debt.
"I am told you survived your latest bout of idiocy," the Duke said. "Falling off a balcony while intoxicated is a new low."
Caelum stared at the man. In his previous life, he had no parents. In this life, he had a father who wished he were dead.
"I apologize for the trouble, Father," Caelum said. His voice was flat, devoid of the usual whining.
Alaric paused, his eyes narrowing. "The Academy term begins in three months. If you fail the entrance exam again, I will strip you of the Dragon name and send you to the border garrisons as a common conscript. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," Caelum replied.
The Duke lingered, then turned and marched out. Caelum waited until the footsteps faded. He turned to his desk and grabbed a quill. He didn't need mana to be dangerous. He needed information and timing.
"I died once because I was weak and alone," Caelum whispered. "I won't do it again."
He began to plan. The first step was to find a way to unblock his mana circuits before the protagonist arrived. If he was to survive the coming void and the hero's blade, he would need to be more than just a genius. He would need to be a god.