The Memory Unearthed
Charlemagne lay under strange stars. His new lungs filled with the thick air of a foreign world. A feeling swept over him—not physical, not tied to this place, but a memory. He'd caught glimpses before. Now, he tried to recall the final moments of the body he inhabited.
Memory slashed through him. Cold, brutal, unforgiving as a dagger of ice.
A whisper echoed in his mind. Tremors grew. Footsteps in a quiet hallway. The smell of damp leaves and soil filled his senses, and he felt the rough forest floor beneath his fingers. Images, voices, and feelings arrived, slow and deliberate.
The soul of the body he now occupied pushed up, asking to be remembered.
Charles, now Charlemagne, was powerless. The flood of memory crashed through him, unstoppable.
The vision began on a gentle afternoon.
Sunlight pierced the golden canopy above the Ziglar estate's old hunting woods. Mosaic shadows scattered on the mossy path. The trees whispered secrets—wind threading through their leaves. Birds trilled. Their song twined with the laughter beside him: soft, clear, radiant.
Amelia.
She walked at his side, her warm hand in his. Her lavender dress moved with the wind, hem brushing the ground. Sunlight caught her bouncing auburn curls and blue eyes that seemed kind—or so he believed.
He had clung to that look like a man drowning in a storm, desperate for breath and terrified of sinking into oblivion.
He shared his dreams as they wandered deeper into the trees. They walked farther from the estate than ever before. Alone together. His voice trembled with hope. Embersteel Academy—years of poor health, ridicule—all behind him. A year ago, he'd opened his Qi core through sheer will. Few expected it. At level two, he had still defied expectations.
She had turned to him, smiling, her eyes soft.
"I believe in you, Charlemagne," she had said. Her voice, like velvet and spring rain, curled around his heart.
Then, her lips grazed his cheek. A beat passed. Another kiss—this time brushing his lips. Light. Unsteady. Pure.
Their first.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, the world paused. There was no pain, shame, or burden—only that kiss and its promise.
He opened his eyes, and joy shattered—sudden dread stabbed him, icy and merciless, leaving him breathless.
Pain, sharp, incandescent, erupted just below his navel. His breath caught in his throat. His knees buckled.
A strike—precise. Brutal. Amelia hit his Qi core with devastating force.
In an effort to numb the pain, he gripped his belly. Like smoke rising into the sky, it poured out of him. The spiritual tie was untangling as his fledgling Qi dispersed.
His heart thundered with confusion and terror as he stumbled backward, pain clawing through his body.
Amelia presented herself to him.
She lost all of her tenderness. After their kiss, her lips contorted into a grimace. With her Qi whirling precisely, she stood poised. She had fixed her gaze on his Qi core earlier on as they strolled. She had reiterated Marcus's warning, which was now crystal clear. To weaken Charlemagne and eliminate an adversary were her goals.
She was a level five warrior, a prodigy of House Gayle, and Baron Arnold Gayle's beloved daughter—beautiful, but cold.
"W-Why…?" His voice trembled, ragged with pain and betrayal.
She raised her hand, wiped her mouth like she had tasted something bitter.
"I never loved you, Charlemagne."
Her words crashed into him, pulverizing every fragile hope, ripping his chest open with a fresh wave of anguish.
From the shadows behind her, another presence stepped into view. The sound of boots on moss rang louder than it should have—measured, smug.
Marcus.
His best friend. The one who had trained patiently with him made him laugh and stood up for him when others bullied him. The one who had said they would go to Embersteel Academy together.
He stood next to his fiancée now, his arm around her waist as it had always been there.
"Why?" Charlemagne choked, and his voice was just a whisper. "Why, Marcus?"
Marcus tilted his head and gave the same charming grin that used to inspire trust. Now, it looked like a mask, empty and mocking.
"Why? Because you were born into a world that rejects you," he said.
"You cling to a fading title. You were always a footnote. My father said I must prove myself, and so I needed you gone to secure my future and cement my standing within the academy and our families. As long as you stood in my way, I could never achieve that."
Amelia's gaze shifted to Marcus, full of admiration. She laid her hand on his chest, breaking Charlemagne anew.
"You were a tool," she added. "A means to secure House Gayle's alliance with House Ziglar. I'm not here to carry dead weight. I need a partner who will elevate my status and that of my family, not a pitiful romantic with no spine. Every step I took was calculated to bring me and my house an advantage. My actions were never about you—they were about ensuring my own future."
Charlemagne's legs betrayed him. Agony, savage and relentless, knocked him to his knees, stealing his breath and hope.
A glimmer of optimism flickered as his Qi core surged for a final time. In the darkness, it sputtered as if it were a dying lantern. There was a tenuous instant when Charlemagne believed it might hold.
The shattered pieces of his creation he held tightly. Then, however, it broke. A rift in his soul reverberated throughout him. All of the Qi he had worked so hard to collect had crumbled. Lost. His cultivation was trampled.
"I loved you..." A mixture of shock and anguish caused his voice to crack as he gasped.
They looked on, cold and unmoved. Their heartless indifference froze his agony, leaving him hollow and abandoned.
What a shame, Marcus exclaimed. Cold. Final.
"Do you really think the academy would give a spot to someone who can barely stand?"
With narrowed eyes filled with savage delight, he drew nearer.
As light filtered through her figure, Amelia took a step forward. Over Charlemagne, the shadows grew longer. He was compelled to look into her eyes as her shiny boot pushed his chin higher.
"You thought I'd marry you?" she scoffed, voice dripping with disdain. "You can't even stand straight without coughing blood."
Charlemagne tried to speak, asking why—not for his life, but for truth. He coughed hard. Blood spilled over his lips and chin as he swayed, pain wracking his core.
She fixed him with a gaze of chilling disgust, eyes burning with contempt as if he were filth fusing through her soul.
Marcus stepped forward. Sunlight glinted off his jeweled coat. His smirk disappeared, replaced by coldness. His slow, steady footsteps echoed in the woods as if even the forest anticipated what came next.
"This is mercy, Charlemagne, my best friend," Marcus whispered softly, as if he were being kind. "Thank us for giving you an end."
Marcus unsheathed his sword, polished steel catching sunlight. Then, he reversed it.
Not the edge but the hilt.
For a brief second, Charlemagne's eyes grew wide with confusion. And then the blackness came.
The sheathed blade hit his head with a loud snap. First pain, then darkness.
His body fell apart. His arms and legs went limp, his vision getting blurry. Everything turned into a shadow. Marcus stood over him. He lost consciousness.
And what he saw in those eyes wasn't sympathy.
It was savage joy.
Whispers in the Manor
The Ziglar estate perched on a northern cliff. Wrapped in fog. Noble silence. Its high towers loomed as sentinels. Banners snapped crisp in the breeze—crimson and obsidian, more war than family. In the east wing, long forgotten and quiet, Charlemagne Ziglar lay under layers of silk and linen. The large bed of dark northern oak made him look even smaller. His breaths were shallow. His chest moved like the last embers of a dying fire.
No physician attended to him. No family members watched over him.
Only an old servant remained.
Mistress Anya, once the proud head maid, sat vigil. Her calloused hands gently wrung a bloodstained cloth as she watched over the boy. His pale face twitched in sleep—pained, restless, locked in battle even now.
She had found him.
At the forest's edge, abandoned, gasping like a fish washed ashore.
No one believed he'd survive the night. When Anya dragged his limp body through the back gates, the guards turned away, quick to avoid entanglement in affairs that might anger the family hierarchy. The steward wrung his hands. He muttered about disgrace, not upsetting the Duke, whose indifference was shaped by political calculations—preserving the house's image and focusing on power, rather than any personal malice. Even the physicians refused to come. Orders from the main house, they said, because Charlemagne's survival offered no benefit to the estate.
"Let the weak die in peace," someone had said.
But Anya had not obeyed.
Anya cleaned his wounds with herbs from the greenhouse, warmed him with the last coal on her hearth, and fed him water drop by drop. Now, three nights later, the boy stirred—not healed, but alive.
"Your lordship…" she whispered. "You came back."
She touched his cheek and blinked back tears. "Don't die a second time. Please."
Outside, the hallways of the manor echoed with silence. The Ziglar House, once known for its valor and pride, had long since turned inward—caring only for power and war, not for forgotten sons or quiet betrayals.
Further down the hall, in a private chamber overlooking the sea, the Duke of Ziglar stood alone.
Duke Alaric Ziglar was tall and broad-shouldered, a man as solid as the northern cliffs. He watched gray waves crash against the rocks below. His eyes were hard and unreadable, shaped by years of leadership.
He had not spoken of Charlemagne.
Not since the boy's body was dragged in like a half-dead animal.
But he had ordered no burial either.
A knock echoed once.
"Enter," Alaric said, not turning from the window.
A young warrior stepped in, lean, armored, and out of breath.
"My lord, the hunting party… it returned. No sign of Baron Gayle's daughter or the Drekor boy. Their servants claim they've already traveled back to their estates."
The Duke's lips pressed into a hard line.
"And the rumors?"
The warrior hesitated. "Some say the boy challenged Marcus. Others claim it was an accident. The staff believe he tried to take his own life after being rejected."
Alaric turned at last. His gaze could break stone.
"What do you believe?"
The warrior swallowed hard. "I believe… it was no accident, my lord."
The Duke didn't say anything for a while. Then he waved his hand to send the man away.
Alaric looked out at the sea again, all by himself.
Long ago, he had seen Charlemagne rush through these halls with a wooden sword in hand, wanting to be like his older brother Garrick—fierce and unbreakable. But sickness had taken that road away from him.
And Alaric did not suffer weakness. But there was a nagging contradiction inside him, a little voice of sorrow that he swiftly pushed down.
"I taught him courage but not mercy," Alaric mused for a moment before looking out the window again.
Now, the youngster was holding on to life in the ancient wing, where there was only silence and shadows.
The Duke's hand got tighter behind his back.
He said in a low voice, "Let him prove he deserves to live."
The Spark Beneath the Ashes
Charlemagne woke with a start.
The ceiling above him was made of carved wood, old and cracked but still grand. The smell of pine and dried lavender lingered on the sheets. His chest hurt with every breath, not just from the blow, but from something deeper—a sense of loss, of a broken identity.
He remembered everything now.
Not simply the death of Charles Alden Vale or the betrayal of Charlemagne Ziglar, but both.
Two lives. Two times of treachery.
The weight was too much.
"Water..." His speech was rough and hard to hear.
Someone put a warm cup to his lips. "Slowly, my lord."
The voice was soft, new to me, but pleasant. He drank, letting the liquid coat his parched throat. Each drop promised to make things clearer.
The woman came into view when he opened his eyes fully.
There was a servant there, a woman in her late forties with gray streaks in her dark hair and a worn grace. Her face reflected her age, yet her eyes were full of anger. He remembered her from bits and pieces of recollections that had come back to him.
"Anya…" he muttered, and he was surprised.
She stopped for a moment, then smiled. "You remember."
He tried to nod, but pain surged through his neck. He winced instead.
Anya reached for a cloth and dabbed his brow. "I thought we'd lost you, little lord. They all did."
He closed his eyes again. The pressure behind them felt like thunder.
They had left him.
No words from his brothers. Not a flicker of concern from the duke. Only whispers in hallways. Only silence.
"I was attacked," he said at last.
Anya's hand froze.
"I know."
"Do they?"
She hesitated. "They know something happened. But no one speaks of it. Not aloud. You were found with your qi shattered and your body half-dead. But in this house… shame is quieter than murder."
A silence stretched between them.
Then Charlemagne opened his eyes again.
And for the first time, they were not the eyes of a wounded noble boy.
They were sharper. The stammer that used to break up his words was gone. Now, every word he spoke was clear and precise, showing how much he had changed. This was not just an act; it was a change shaped by betrayal and determination.
"I will remember this," he said quietly.
Anya studied him. "You've changed, my lord."
He didn't respond.
She dipped the cloth into a basin and wrung it slowly. "You were always kind. Too kind. You trusted them. All of them."
Charlemagne's fists clenched beneath the covers.
Not anymore.
Not ever again.
Elsewhere in the manor, whispers swirled like smoke. The servants were the first to notice the change.
The boy in the East Wing lived.
Not only that, but his eyes were clear now. He didn't stammer anymore. Even though his steps were slow and painful, there was something new about him—a quiet, commanding presence that unsettled those around him.
Even Garrick, the eldest son, had paused when passing the East Wing that morning, only to shake his head and mutter, "Ghosts should stay buried."
And Seraphina—sharp-eyed, battle-born Seraphina—watched from the second-floor balcony, arms folded as the wind tugged at her braid.
"That boy isn't dead," she said aloud, to no one in particular. "But something is."
A shadow moved behind her. "You think he'll rise?"
She didn't look back. "If he does, we should worry."
Back in the chamber, Charlemagne forced himself upright. The ache in his core screamed with every motion, his muscles still weak, nerves misfiring—but he endured it.
He had endured worse.
Sigma had taught him discipline beyond flesh.
He had faced a thousand high-stakes decisions before, with millions on the line. One mistake could mean disaster. Now, the risks were life-or-death, but the challenge was familiar.
He was playing again.
"I need paper," he told Anya.
She blinked. "My lord?"
"Paper. Ink. A ledger, if possible. And a mirror."
Her brow furrowed, but she bowed and obeyed.
When she returned with the items, Charlemagne—Charles—stared at his reflection once more.
The silver-haired boy stared back, fragile but composed.
"You're a Ziglar," he whispered to himself. "They think you're broken."
He smiled.
"Let them keep thinking that."