Pain.
That was the first thing I registered. A deep, throbbing ache behind my eyes, like someone had taken a jackhammer to my skull and called it a day.
The second thing I registered was that I shouldn't be feeling anything at all.
Because I was pretty sure I'd died.
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The memories came back in fragments. The screech of tires. The blinding headlights. The weightless moment of impact before everything went dark. I'd been crossing the street, phone in hand, probably doom-scrolling, and then nothing.
Twenty-three years of life, ended by a truck.
How disgustingly cliché.
I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt like they'd been glued shut with industrial adhesive. My body was heavy, sluggish, like I was swimming through molasses. Every nerve ending screamed in protest as I forced myself to move.
Come on. Wake up.
With monumental effort, I cracked my eyes open.
White ceiling. Ornate molding. A chandelier that probably cost more than my entire apartment had.
I blinked. Then blinked again.
This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't anywhere I recognized. The ceiling alone looked like it belonged in a palace, all gilded edges and intricate patterns that spoke of old money, the kind of old money that made regular rich people look like peasants.
Where the hell was I?
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I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it.
Not because of pain, though there was plenty of that. But because the moment I moved, something cracked open inside my head, and suddenly I was drowning in memories that weren't mine.
A woman with silver hair and kind eyes, smiling down at me. Mother.
A man with a stern face and power radiating from every pore, ruffling my hair with surprising gentleness. Father.
A boy. No, a young man, with cold eyes that never quite met mine, always watching from a distance. Brother.
Servants bowing. Tutors lecturing. Training grounds where I failed, again and again and again.
The memories flooded in like a broken dam, sixteen years of someone else's life crashing through my consciousness in a matter of seconds. I gasped, clutching my head as the deluge threatened to tear me apart.
Lucifer.
That was this body's name. Lucifer Morningstar.
Son of Duke Varys Morningstar and Duchess Esper Morningstar. Younger brother of Michael Morningstar, the pride of the family.
And me?
I was the trash.
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The memories settled slowly, like sediment drifting to the bottom of a disturbed pool. I lay there, breathing hard, trying to make sense of what I now knew.
This body, Lucifer's body, had awakened at fourteen, like everyone else. The day your mana core formed, the day you discovered your elemental trait, the day your potential was measured and your future decided.
Most people had mana cores the size of a house. Some lucky ones had cores even larger, mansions, palaces, vast spaces that could hold enormous reserves of power.
Lucifer's core was the size of a room.
A small room.
The memories carried the weight of that discovery. The doctors' pitying looks. His mother's tears that she'd tried to hide. His father's jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. His brother's eyes growing even colder.
Trash.
That's what they called him. Oh, not to his face, his family was too powerful for anyone to be that stupid. But he could see it in the servants' eyes, hear it in the whispers that stopped whenever he entered a room. The young master with the face of an angel and the potential of a worm.
And so Lucifer had given up.
Why bother training when your ceiling was so low? Why study when you'd never amount to anything? Why care about a future that held nothing but disappointment?
He'd become a delinquent. Caused trouble. Made scenes. Anything to feel something other than the crushing weight of his own inadequacy.
I felt his despair like it was my own. The hopelessness. The bitter resignation.
Poor bastard.
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I forced myself to sit up properly, the foreign memories slowly integrating with my own. It was a strange sensation, like having two sets of experiences layered on top of each other. I remembered being an orphan in a world of smartphones and skyscrapers. I also remembered being raised in a duke's mansion, surrounded by luxury I'd never earned.
Two lives. One body.
Well. This is new.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, nearly falling when they turned out to be longer than I expected, and looked around the room with fresh eyes.
Velvet drapes the color of dried blood. Furniture that screamed aristocratic wealth. A four-poster bed that could fit six people comfortably.
And there, across from the bed, a full-length mirror.
I already knew what I'd see. The memories had shown me. But somehow, I still needed to confirm it with my own eyes.
I stumbled toward the mirror.
The face that stared back was handsome. Objectively, unfairly handsome. Sharp jaw, high cheekbones, hair black as a raven's wing falling artfully across a pale forehead.
And the eyes.
Crimson red, like fresh blood, like dying embers.
I stared at those eyes, and something nagged at the back of my mind. Something familiar. Something that didn't come from Lucifer's memories, but from my own.
Where have I seen this before?
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Morningstar.
Duke Varys Morningstar.
A man so powerful that even royalty feared him.
The name echoed in my head, bouncing between Lucifer's memories and something else, something I couldn't quite grasp. It felt like trying to remember a dream after waking up, the details slipping away even as I reached for them.
Morningstar. Crimson eyes. Room-sized mana core. The trash son.
Why did that sound so familiar?
I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to force the connection. There was something there, hovering just at the edge of my consciousness. Something important.
Come on. Think.
In my old life, I'd been nobody. An orphan with no family, no future, nothing but the novels I escaped into. I'd spent my lonely nights reading stories about people who had what I never would: families, powers, adventures, purpose.
Stories about...
Oh.
Oh no.
The realization hit me like a second truck.
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"The trash of the Morningstar family, blessed with the face of an angel and the potential of a worm."
That was a line. A specific line. From a specific novel.
Ascension of Heroes.
The web novel I'd been obsessed with for three years. The story I'd been checking for updates when that truck decided to redecorate the street with my internal organs.
Lucifer Morningstar. The black sheep of a powerful duke family. The cautionary tale that every other character used as an example of wasted potential. A minor character who appeared in maybe a dozen chapters, usually just to be mocked or pitied.
I was in the novel.
I was in the goddamn novel.
And I wasn't just any character, I was the one everyone used as a punchline.
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I laughed.
I couldn't help it. The sound came out wrong, too deep, filtered through vocal cords that weren't mine, but I laughed anyway until my eyes burned and my chest ached.
Of all the characters to become. Of all the people in this entire world, with its heroes and villains and legendary warriors.
I had to be the trash.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
But even as I laughed, my mind was racing. Because if this was Ascension of Heroes, then I knew things. Important things. Things that no one else in this world could possibly know.
I knew who the protagonist was, Aeron, the orphan from the slums who would rise to become humanity's greatest hero.
I knew about the demon champions, the academy arc, the political machinations between noble houses.
And I knew how it ended.
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The Demon King.
The final boss. The apocalyptic threat sleeping beneath the Demon Continent, waiting to awaken and burn the world to ash.
The novel had ended, or rather, hadn't ended, with his return. The last chapter I'd read before dying had been nothing but death and despair. Heroes falling one by one. The protagonist overwhelmed. Every character I'd grown to love over three years, slaughtered like cattle.
And then the author had gone on hiatus. Indefinitely. Leaving nothing but corpses and questions.
I'd been so angry. Three years of investment, hundreds of chapters of emotional attachment, and the author had just... stopped.
Now I was living in that unfinished story.
And unlike the readers, I couldn't just close the browser and walk away.
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I looked at my reflection, at Lucifer's reflection and tried to think past the panic.
Okay. Facts. What do I know?
I was Lucifer Morningstar. Sixteen years old. F-rank with a room-sized mana core. The trash of my family.
But I also had something the original Lucifer never had: knowledge of the future. Every plot point, every secret, every disaster waiting to happen, I knew it all.
So what are you going to do about it?
In my old life, I'd been powerless. An orphan with nothing, no one, just stories to fill the silence. I'd accepted that I'd die alone and unremarkable.
But here...
Here I had a family. The memories showed me how much they loved Lucifer, even as he pushed them away. A father who still ruffled his hair. A mother who still checked on him at night. A brother who, according to the novel, secretly protected him from the shadows.
A family that loved me unconditionally.
I'd spent twenty-three years wondering what that felt like.
And now you'll find out, won't you?
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like swallowing glass. Because I also knew the stakes. I knew what was coming. And I knew that if I did nothing, everyone, including this family that had somehow already wormed their way into my heart, would die.
No.
I refused.
I'd been powerless my entire life. I refused to be powerless here too.
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I straightened up, squaring shoulders that didn't quite feel like mine yet, and looked my reflection dead in those crimson eyes.
"Alright, Lucifer," I said, testing out the voice. It was smoother than mine had been, with a natural aristocratic drawl. "Let's see what we're working with."
I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching for what Lucifer's memories told me should be there, the System Panel that every awakened individual possessed.
A translucent window flickered into existence in my mind's eye, cold blue text burning itself into my consciousness:
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Name: Lucifer Morningstar
Age: 16
Rank: F
Mana Core Space: Room-sized
Elemental Trait: Space
Actual Combat Ability: F-
Skills: None
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I stared at those stats for a long moment.
Then I started laughing again.
F-rank. Room-sized mana core. Combat ability somehow worse than my already pathetic rank. And not a single skill to my name.
I am so incredibly screwed.
But even as the despair threatened to swallow me whole, one line caught my attention. One detail that the novel had barely mentioned, dismissed as irrelevant given Lucifer's garbage-tier potential.
Elemental Trait: Space.
The novel had focused on his failures, not his abilities. But Space... that was a rare element. One of the rarest, actually. Most people got common elements like Fire or Water or Earth.
Space was something else entirely.
Now that's interesting.
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A knock at the door made me jump, the System Panel dissolving as my concentration broke.
"Young Master?" A voice called from outside—male, elderly, with a tone that managed to be respectful without being warm. "Your father has requested your presence."
My father.
Duke Varys Morningstar.
One of the strongest beings on the planet. SS-rank. A man who could level cities if he wished, who made even royalty think twice before crossing him.
And apparently, he wanted to see me.
I took a deep breath, smoothed down the silk nightshirt I hadn't even noticed I was wearing, and walked toward the door.
"Tell him I'll be there shortly," I called back, my voice steadier than I felt.
My first day in a new world. A new body. A new life.
Let's see how badly I could screw it up.