CRACK
The fire vanished, replaced by a sharp, stinging pain across his left cheek.
His body lurched backward, balance completely gone, and he hit the ground hard. Cold marble. The impact knocked the wind out of his lungs.
"Khwk..."
'What the fuck?'
"Know your place, you disgrace."
Viktor blinked, vision swimming. A knight stood over him—polished armor gleaming in the chandelier light, sword at his hip, hand still raised from the slap that sent him sprawling.
The man's face was twisted in contempt.
Before Viktor could even process what was happening, a woman's voice cut through the ringing in his ears.
"Young master!"
Footsteps rushed toward him.
Helena—his nanny—dropped to her knees beside him, her weathered hands hovering over him like she wanted to help but didn't dare touch.
She was in her mid-thirties, brown hair pulled back in a simple bun, wearing the plain gray dress of house servants. Her eyes, usually warm and kind, were filled with panic.
She spun toward the knight, positioning herself between him and Viktor.
"Please, sir knight," she said, voice trembling. "At least allow the young master to speak in his defense!"
Defense? What—
Viktor pushed himself up on his elbows, and that's when it hit him. Everything. The chamber around him crystallized into sharp focus.
The Count's Hall.
Vaulted ceiling stretching thirty feet high. Crimson banners bearing the Redwood family crest—a blood-red oak tree on black—hanging from the walls.
Fourteen high-backed chairs arranged in a semicircle. Seven on each side. All occupied. Family elders in their formal robes. Advisors whispering to each other.
Small nobles with expressions ranging from disgust to morbid curiosity.
And at the head of it all, sitting in the largest chair like it weighed a thousand pounds, was his father.
Count Aldric von Redwood. Graying hair. Weathered face. Eyes that once held warmth now just looked... tired. Disappointed. Old.
No.
No, no, no.
Viktor looked down at his own body and felt his stomach drop.
Fat. He was grotesquely fat. His fine noble clothes—a velvet doublet that probably cost more than most people made in a year—strained against his bulk.
His hands were pudgy, fingers like sausages.
He could feel the weight of his own flesh, the way his breathing came in wheezes.
His cheek still burned from the slap, and he could taste blood in his mouth.
Nineteen years old.
He was nineteen years old.
The realization crashed down like thunder splitting the sky.
This day. This exact fucking day he got framed for the first time and got the realization of this world being that of those cliché novels where heroine and Son of Heaven existed.
He'd transmigrated into this world eleven years ago as an eight-year-old kid from Earth.
The day he'd woken up in this body, in this world, confused and terrified after losing his old chill life, blamed by people for killing his mother who, to save him, died alongside the real body owner.
Living this life in this world for eleven years now, that presently he was 19, he was blamed and nearly gotten executed.
The day everything started to make sense.
He'd lived this before.
"I've... regressed," he muttered, barely a whisper.
The timeline had reset. Somehow, someway, he'd been thrown back. Not to the beginning of his transmigration, but to THIS moment. Eleven years later.
The day when he got to know his real status in this world not as a genius or a prodigy everyone appreciated but rather an unlucky third-rate stepping stone getting cringed trashed by his fiancée—like how big of a brain cell needed for him to see the pattern and just know all this.
"Don't fuck with me."
The words slipped out through clenched teeth before he could stop them.
"Viktor!" His father's voice boomed across the chamber, sharp with warning.
Viktor barely heard him. His mind was racing, memories flooding back. He remembered this trial. The charges. The accusations. All of it.
Dark magic. Forbidden rituals. Attempting to summon demons.
All bullshit. All lies.
He'd been framed.
His eyes swept the chamber, taking in the faces of those who'd condemned him. Old Lord Marsten, who'd always resented his father. Advisor Crowe, who had his own political ambitions. The other nobles who saw him as nothing more than a fat, useless heir.
And then... her.
Elena Hartfield.
She stood among the accusers, positioned perfectly in the light streaming through the stained-glass windows. Seventeen years old. Beautiful in that delicate, porcelain-doll way that made men stupid. Long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders.
Blue eyes that should've been cold as ice but instead were filled with tears. Her hands trembled at her sides, clutching a handkerchief like it was her only lifeline.
The picture-perfect image of a heartbroken maiden forced to expose her beloved's terrible crimes.
Viktor almost laughed.
Because he saw it now. The tiny smirk at the corner of her lips, barely there but impossible to miss once you knew to look for it.
The satisfaction in her eyes, hidden behind those fake tears. The way she held herself—not broken, but victorious.
Elena Hartfield. His fiancée. The woman who'd orchestrated this entire fucking trial.
Not because he was evil. Not because he'd actually done anything wrong.
But because he'd ignored her.
For eleven years—from the moment he'd transmigrated into this world as an eight-year-old until now—Viktor had focused on one thing: survival.
Understanding this new world. Studying its power systems, its politics, its power structures. Learning everything he could so he wouldn't die like some trash mob character just because he did not possess any single ability.
He'd had no interest in romance. No interest in playing the doting fiancé to some noble girl he'd never met—not because he was a fool.
But because he knew due to his disease of this fat body being not able to be attractive to any single woman, his brain just could predict rather than heartbreak or getting those cheating noblemen vibes, better he just stay celibate.
Not like he could do a thing with a body where he could just see the head of his dick from his belly.
So he was hyperaware of himself, not dense.
Elena had been chosen by their families when they were children. An arrangement. A political alliance.
Viktor had treated it exactly like that—a formality he'd deal with eventually—after all, why would he let himself suffer in the future due to a body that kept gaining weight as he aged?
But Elena? She'd taken it as the gravest insult imaginable.
Her pride couldn't handle being ignored.
She'd expected him to court her, to worship her, to propose to her with grand romantic gestures.
When he didn't, when he barely acknowledged her existence beyond polite greetings at formal events, she'd decided to destroy him until he accepted her as his only master—those kinks women have to have a boot licker.
"Lord Aldric," Elena's voice rang out, soft and trembling. "I... I didn't want to believe it either. But the evidence..."
She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. Several of the nobles nodded sympathetically.
Such a good actress.
"The ritual circles in the east tower," she continued. "The forbidden texts. The... the blood. I saw it with my own eyes."
'And what were you doing there at that time? Masturbating?' All of it. Viktor nearly laughed out at such ridiculous logic where none of the idiots cared to ask what she was doing there.
"Enough."
His father's voice cut through the murmuring that had started up. Count Aldric stood slowly, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
He looked at Viktor with an expression that made something in his chest twist.
Not anger. Not hatred.
Just... sadness.
"Viktor," he said quietly. "My son. You've heard the accusations brought against you. Practicing dark magic. Attempting to summon entities beyond our world. Breaking sacred laws that have stood for centuries." He paused, closing his eyes briefly. "Do you have anything to say in your defense?"