Luke was on a battlefield. The ground was littered with bodies and broken weapons, the air thick with smoke and the acrid smell of blood. The sky above was bruised red, the sun struggling to pierce through the haze. Every step he took felt heavy, as if the weight of the fallen pressed against his chest.
He had spent years as a border soldier. Fighting monsters and surviving the elements had become routine. Death was expected. Betrayal, however, was not. He had trusted his comrades, relied on them, and they had turned against him. Smiles one moment, blades the next. The Empire's so-called loyal soldiers had done their work thoroughly.
He gripped his sword, worn and slick with blood. Around him, the battlefield was chaos — the clash of metal, the cries of the dying, the distant roar of monsters. Every motion, every sound reminded him that nothing in that world was fair.
And yet, in the midst of it all, a cold clarity settled over him. The rage that burned in his chest was sharp and precise. He would survive if he could, and if he died, he would ensure that those who betrayed him did not forget the cost.
"This is your fault, Luke," she said quietly, as if delivering a simple fact rather than a death sentence. "Had you not witnessed what you shouldn't have, you would still be alive."
She stood before luke in armor that clung to her frame like a second skin, polished enough to catch even the faintest light. Her long, golden hair drifted with the cold breeze, soft curls brushing against the harsh plates of metal. Her eyes — dark, striking, and impossibly calm — held none of the warmth one might expect from a so-called savior. They were the eyes of someone who had already decided my fate.
Her name was Alice Atheria. To the world, she was the Heroine of Chaos.
"Go to hell, Alice," Luke said, forcing the words past the pain in his chest and the bitterness in his throat. "The moment I saw the truth behind your heroics, you chose to kill me — and now you blame me for it? You make me sick."
Luke spat onto the ground, not out of strength, but because it was the only act of defiance he had left.
She didn't even blink. "It is what it is," she replied, her tone almost gentle. "Farewell, loyal dog."
She raised her sword — Excalibur — with a grace that would have been beautiful under any other circumstance. Its edge gleamed, catching the pale light as if eager for blood. She lowered the blade with deliberate slowness, pressing the tip against my battered chest.
When it pierced my skin, the pain didn't come all at once. It crawled through me slowly, a white-hot thread unraveling everything. He's breath hitched; his muscles trembled. Each inch the blade sank deeper felt like a reminder of every loyalty he had given, every order he had followed, every lie he had chosen to believe.
Alice watched with unsettling serenity, as though this was nothing more than an unpleasant task she intended to finish cleanly. There was no rage, no malice — just certainty. The certainty of someone who believed the world would always bend to her will.
My vision blurred. The cold seeped into my bones. And all the while, the blade kept pressing forward, carving the truth into me with undeniable clarity:
The empire I trusted, the heroes I admired, the justice I fought for — all of it had been a lie.
And as the pain finally settled into a dull, distant ache, Luke closed his eyes. A single thought rose in his mind — quiet at first, then burning with desperate intensity.
If rebirth, regression, reincarnation… if any of those things truly existed, then he wished for only one thing: the chance to return and exact his revenge on them with unfiltered, merciless rage.
With that final thought, Luke's consciousness slipped away, and he passed into darkness.
With that final thought, Luke's consciousness slipped away, swallowed by a darkness that felt both endless and strangely calm. His rage simmered at the core of him, refusing to die even as his body gave out.
And then—
A sharp breath tore through another body entirely.
Caleb's eyes snapped open.
He lurched forward in his bed, drenched in sweat, chest heaving as though he'd just surfaced from deep water. The velvet blankets tangled around him, clinging to his skin. For a moment he didn't see the gilded walls or the polished floors of his room — he only saw flashes of steel, betrayal, and the cold smile of a woman with golden hair.
His hand instinctively moved to his chest, expecting the wound that should have been there.
There was nothing.
Only the frantic pounding of a heart that wasn't supposed to be beating anymore.
Caleb stared at his trembling fingers, breaths unsteady. Luke's final emotion — that burning, unforgiving desire for revenge — pulsed through him like a second heartbeat.
The light hit him first—warm, steady, nothing like the cold haze of the battlefield. For a moment he didn't move, letting the quiet press against him, unfamiliar and almost irritating in its calm.
As the last echoes of war peeled away, the truth settled in with a weight he couldn't ignore.
He wasn't Luke anymore.
But Luke hadn't vanished either. He lingered—sharp, awake, and very much alive—inside a body that wasn't his.