The first thing Victor Von Ruin tasted when he woke was lavender.
Not the cloying, perfumed kind the maids sprayed on the pillows to hide the mildew that crept through the old stone of the estate, but the real thing: sharp, green, almost bitter, the way itched at the back of the throat. It came from the sachets his mother still insisted on placing beneath every mattress, a habit carried over from the days when the Von Ruin family had been merely rich instead of ancient, when the name still meant something outside the marble corridors of Eldridge.
Victor's lungs pulled in a slow, deliberate breath and felt the herb scrape his tongue like a memory he wasn't supposed to have yet.
He was fifteen again.
The ceiling above him was the same cracked fresco of seraphs and void-wyrms locked in eternal struggle, paint flaking in tiny snowflakes whenever the heating vents coughed. Moonlight, thin and silver-blue, slid through the gap in the velvet curtains and painted a stripe across the foot of the bed. His bed. Smaller than he remembered, because the body lying in it was smaller.
Fragile.
He flexed his fingers. Bones like porcelain, skin so pale the blue-green map of veins showed through as though someone had drawn rivers on rice paper. In his last life these hands had been scarred, callused, stained with gunpowder and someone else's blood. Now they looked like they would snap if he gripped a sword hilt too hard.
Victor sat up slowly. The silk sheets whispered against his skin and pooled at his waist. Cool air kissed his chest; the nightshirt had ridden up while he slept. He could feel every rib. He could count them if he wanted to. He didn't want to.
The room was exactly as it had been the morning of his fifteenth birthday in the previous timeline. Same mahogany armoire with the crooked left door. Same silver hairbrush on the vanity that had once belonged to a great-grandmother no one spoke of. Same faint smell of candle smoke lingering from the vigil the house priest had held the night before, praying that the curse in Victor's blood would finally loosen its grip.
It hadn't.
Not then.
It wouldn't now either, unless he forced it.
Victor swung his legs over the side of the bed. The marble floor was cold enough to burn. He welcomed the pain; pain was honest. His bare feet left damp prints as he walked to the window and pushed the curtain aside.
Eldridge City glittered below like a broken necklace of light. Hovercars traced glowing arteries between the towers. Far to the east, the Draven spire stabbed the sky, its crimson beacon pulsing once every seven seconds, a heartbeat the entire city had learned to live by.
Five years, four months, and nineteen days.
That was how long he had until the Eclipse Veil tore open and the world drowned in teeth.
Victor rested his forehead against the chill glass. His breath fogged it, then cleared, then fogged again. In the reflection his eyes looked too old for the face around them. Black irises ringed with a thin circle of violet, the Von Ruin mark that only showed itself when death was close. It had appeared the first time the day he actually died. Seeing it now felt like the universe coughing up a joke at his expense.
A soft knock at the door.
"Young Master Victor?" The voice was low, careful, the kind of voice that had learned to apologize for existing. "It's Mira. I've brought your morning tonic."
Victor didn't answer immediately. He watched the Draven beacon pulse again. One. Two. Three. On the seventh beat he turned.
"Come in."
The door opened with the faintest creak. Mira stepped inside carrying a silver tray. Nineteen years old, maybe twenty. Auburn hair twisted into the severe knot all upper servants wore, but a few strands had escaped to curl against her cheeks. Freckles across the bridge of her nose like cinnamon on cream. The black-and-silver uniform fit her well enough that Victor wondered, not for the first time, who had taken her measurements.
On the tray: a crystal goblet filled with something thick and dark red, almost black in the moonlight. Next to it, a small porcelain dish holding three pale blue capsules.
Mira kept her eyes lowered as she approached. Proper. Trained. But Victor caught the tiny flicker of worry when she glanced at his bare chest, at the sharp lines of collarbone, the way the nightshirt hung off shoulders that looked one strong wind away from dislocation.
"You're awake early," she said, setting the tray on the bedside table. "The healer said you might sleep until noon after last night's fever."
"Fever," Victor echoed. His voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat. "Right."
Mira's hands hesitated over the goblet. "They increased the dose. Lady Aurelia's orders. She thinks—" She stopped herself, cheeks pinkening. Servants weren't supposed to repeat what the family thought.
Victor knew what his mother thought. Same thing she'd thought the first time: that if they poured enough alchemical sludge down his throat, the ancestral blood would eventually wake up and stop embarrassing the Von Ruin name.
He picked up the goblet. The liquid inside smelled of rust and overripe cherries. In his previous life he had gagged it down every morning for three years until the Eclipse came and tonics became worthless.
He met Mira's eyes. "Did you add the honey?"
She blinked. "I… yes, my lord. Just a little. The taste—"
"Good." He tipped the goblet back and drank it in four long swallows. It coated his tongue like liquid iron. When he lowered the glass a red mustache clung to his upper lip. He licked it away deliberately, watching her.
Mira's pulse jumped in her throat.
Victor set the empty goblet down and reached for the capsules. He rolled them across his palm. "Do you know what happens if I stop taking these?"
Mira's voice came out smaller than she probably wanted. "The healers say your heart might—"
"My heart is fine," he interrupted gently. "They're afraid of something else."
He tossed the capsules into the cold hearth one by one. They shattered against the stone, powder puffing out like blue dust.
Mira stared. "Young Master—"
"From today forward I won't be needing them." He stepped closer. Close enough to smell jasmine on her skin beneath the starch of the uniform. "And neither will you."
Her breath caught. "Me?"
Victor reached out and brushed an escaped curl behind her ear with the same care someone might use to defuse a bomb. "You've been having dreams, haven't you? Shadows under your skin. Whispers when the house is quiet."
Mira's eyes widened. "How did you—"
"Because I've had them too." His thumb lingered against her cheek a second longer than necessary. "They're going to get louder."
He stepped back, breaking the spell, and moved to the wardrobe. Opened it. Rows of black shirts, silver-threaded vests, trousers tailored for a body that had never been allowed to grow strong. He pulled out the simplest shirt he could find and dragged it over his head.
When he turned around again Mira was still standing there, tray clutched to her chest like a shield.
"Tell the kitchen I'll take breakfast in the solarium," he said. "And tell my mother and sisters I want them there. All of them. No excuses."
Mira curtsied, quick and shaky. "Yes, my lord."
She was almost at the door when Victor spoke again, softer this time.
"Mira."
She paused.
"After you deliver the message, come back here. Bring a second uniform. Something that actually fits you instead of whatever hand-me-down that is. And burn the old one."
Her mouth opened, closed. "Burn it?"
"Burn it," he confirmed. "The world is going to change soon. We won't have time for starch and modesty when it does."
Mira fled.
Victor listened to her footsteps patter down the corridor until silence returned. Then he walked to the full-length mirror beside the wardrobe and studied the boy reflected there.
Fifteen years old. Sickly. Hated by half the noble houses in Eldridge and pitied by the other half.
In five years this boy would be dead, betrayed, dissected for whatever scraps of void essence clung to his cursed veins.
Victor smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"Not this time."
He pressed his palm to the mirror. The glass was cold. For a heartbeat he thought he saw the surface ripple, a hairline fracture racing outward from his fingers like frost on a winter window.
When he pulled his hand away the crack remained.
A promise, perhaps.
Or a warning.