A voice called to him through the haze.
"Your Highness... please, you must wake up."
Olivier Cinderfall frowned and turned away. The sound didn't fade — it insisted, sharp and too close. Then something tugged at his sleeve.
"Your Highness, Prince Olivier!"
His eyes snapped open.
The familiar hum of electricity, the glow of his monitor, the comforting chaos of his one-bedroom apartment — all gone. In their place stood a cobblestone square framed by narrow brick houses, and in the center... a gallows. A crude, towering thing that split the morning fog like a scar.
He sat at a long iron table facing it, surrounded by people in ornate coats and corsets — nobles, judges, priests. They watched him expectantly, some trying and failing to suppress their amusement.
"What... the hell," he muttered. The air reeked of damp wood and sweat, not the faint ozone of a lab.
The last thing he remembered — he'd been hunched over his drafting table, working on a circuit schematic. Another all-nighter. Another deadline. His eyes ached, chest heavy. He'd been running on cheap coffee and nicotine for three days, chasing a prototype that could convert static energy from the atmosphere into power. A small miracle — if it had worked.
He remembered the sharp pain in his ribs, the way his heart had skipped a beat — and how he'd thought, I'll rest for a minute...
Then — nothing.
And now this.
"Your Highness, the verdict," said the old man beside him — thin, white-haired, wearing a scholar's robe embroidered with silver. His voice was cautious, deferential.
"Verdict?" Olivier blinked. "What verdict?"
He followed the old man's gaze to the gallows. A crowd had gathered — peasants, guards, merchants — shouting, throwing stones. The condemned stood upon the platform: a figure in torn grey rags, thin as famine, hood drawn over her face. Her bare ankles trembled in the cold.
And just like that, memories not his own began to bleed in — a tide of foreign thoughts surging through his mind. He knew this place. He knew who he was.
He was Olivier Cinderfall, fourth prince of the Kingdom of Cinderfall, exiled to the border town of Ashbourne. The prisoner was accused of being Soulbound — one who carried the fragments of lost spirits, cursed by the Church of Saint Lumen as heretical and unclean.
His hand twitched. He felt the weight of power — and disgust.
"Your Highness?" the old man whispered again.
The name surfaced in his mind: Gaston Moreau, royal accountant, his assigned advisor. Just a tired bureaucrat doing his duty in a dying land.
Olivier looked at the gallows, the mob's fury, the trembling figure. The executioner waited for his signal.
He swallowed. "...So this is the dark age I've been reborn into."
Electricians didn't believe in miracles, but this was no dream. His mind catalogued details automatically — the humidity, the flickering torches, the faint vibration in the iron table. Too real. Far too precise.
In his past life, he'd chased light — literal light. He'd lived in a world where progress was worshipped, where every spark mattered. But in the end, it wasn't invention that killed him — it was exhaustion. He'd died alone in his workshop, slumped over blueprints for a device meant to harness invisible currents from the air. He'd wanted to light up villages that had never seen a bulb. Ironically, he'd died in the dark.
Now he was a prince — and about to snuff out another's light.
"Your Highness, the people await your command," Gaston murmured.
Olivier looked down at the parchment before him — the official order of execution, stamped with his royal seal.
He took it, stared at it... then let it fall to the mud.
"I'm tired," he said flatly. "We'll deliberate tomorrow. Disperse the crowd."
Gasps rippled through the square. Gaston froze. The nobles exchanged looks. Then came the voice of protest — firm, commanding.
"Your Highness, this is no time for jest."
A tall knight in steel armor rose to his feet, sunlight flaring off his pauldrons. A name whispered through Olivier's new memories: Hugo Llorente, Commander of the Ashbourne Guard.
"To spare a Soulbound is to invite the Church's wrath! If word spreads that one lives under your watch—"
Olivier cut him off with a lazy smirk.
"Are you frightened, Commander? Of a starving girl bound in rope?"
His words dripped with mockery, but his eyes burned with quiet defiance.
"Tell me, Hugo — if one frightened girl can topple our kingdom, perhaps the problem lies not in her, but in us."
The knight stiffened, jaw clenched. The square fell silent except for the rustle of the noose.
Olivier stood, gesturing to his guards.
"Court dismissed."
He turned and left the square, ignoring the stares — some contemptuous, others bewildered. The murmurs followed him like smoke.
The castle of Ashbourne lay at the town's edge — a damp stone relic overlooking miles of misty forest. Inside, torches flickered weakly against the walls, their light more smoke than flame.
Olivier dismissed Gaston at the door to his chambers, muttering something about fatigue. Only when the latch clicked did he allow himself to breathe.
He leaned against the wall, chest pounding. "God... this can't be real."
But it was. His mind swam with inherited memories — the fractured politics of Cinderfall, the King's cruel decree, the siblings scattered across the realm like pawns on a board.
The rule was simple: Whichever child governs best shall inherit the crown.
In theory, meritocratic. In reality, a death match.
Olivier's territory — Ashbourne — was a joke. A swamp of superstition and poverty at the kingdom's edge. The others had fertile lands, rich ports, standing armies. His? A dying town, a broken garrison, and a hanging square.
"Wonderful," he muttered. "An unfair start in a game I never signed up for."
He moved to the mirror.
A stranger stared back — pale, light-haired, fine-featured, eyes faintly grey. Hands that had once soldered wires now bore a signet ring.
This body had known wine, women, and idleness. A useless prince, they had called him. Now that uselessness might be his greatest disguise.
He smirked faintly. "If I act too sane, they'll burn me. If I act too foolish, they'll replace me." He tilted his head, watching the flicker of the torches dance in the glass.
"Electricity... you beautiful thing. You'd make gods of men in this world."
The mirror showed a man half in shadow, half in light — a man reborn not to rule, but to reignite.
He straightened, smoothing his coat, voice steady at last.
"So be it," he whispered. "From today onward... I am Olivier Cinderfall."