The words had faded from the stone, but they still burned behind Zhang Lu's eyes.
EVERYONE DIES.
He sat slumped against the archive desk, the stolen ledger heavy in his lap—an anchor dragging him deeper into a reality he still refused to accept. Moonlight slanted through the high window, illuminating drifting dust motes and casting long skeletal shadows between the shelves. The air smelled of old paper and secrets never meant to be read.
This body—Leonard Voss's body—felt wrong.
And yet… not.
Muscles responded instinctively. Balance came naturally. Even the faint ache behind his eyes felt familiar, as though this form had carried exhaustion for years before Zhang Lu ever arrived. Silver hair fell into his vision again; he brushed it back with trembling fingers.
This can't be permanent.
Stories didn't work like this. There were rules. Systems. Blue notification windows explaining cheats and talents.
Instead, he had a splitting headache, a prophecy carved into reality, and the growing certainty that the universe had laughed while throwing him here.
Zhang Lu drew a slow breath.
Think.
Leonard Voss's life was now his.
The debt. The academy stipend barely covering meals. The Lowtown apartment with cracked walls and leaky pipes. The siblings waiting there—Orion's reckless grin, Elara's quiet, watchful eyes. The ghost of a mother lost to a ritual that had never sat right with Leonard's memories.
And looming over everything—
The prophecy.
The one that ended with the world dead.
Zhang Lu swallowed, jaw tightening. He had cried over Leonard's fate once, furious at an author who would sacrifice a boy like that for symbolism.
Now he was that boy.
A tired, bitter laugh slipped out. "Figures," he muttered in Leonard's smooth, unfamiliar voice. "I don't just transmigrate. I transmigrate into a scheduled corpse."
He pushed himself upright. The room swayed, then settled.
First priority: leave the restricted archive. Second: find Orion. Third—protect them. All of them.
He took a step.
Then another.
That was when reality cracked.
Hairline fractures spider-webbed across the air itself—thin crimson lines pulsing like exposed veins. From them seeped smoke, thick and metallic, glowing faintly with ember-light.
Zhang Lu froze.
The smoke had no source. No fire. No spell circle.
It simply bled into existence.
The smell hit next—copper and ozone, blood before a storm.
"What…?" His voice echoed too strangely.
He backed away. The smoke surged forward, crawling across the floor in rolling waves. Cold. Wrong. Where it touched his skin, it prickled like static.
He spun.
The door was gone.
The window—gone.
Shelves stretched farther than before, warping as if the room itself were inhaling.
"No, no—" He ran.
Left. Right. Endless aisles.
The smoke rose to his knees. His waist. His chest.
Books began to bleed.
Red seeped from their spines, ink running like veins split open. The shelves bent, shimmering like heat haze.
Then the archive collapsed into something else.
Wooden floorboards groaned beneath his feet. Peeling wallpaper replaced stone—purple bruised with age. Gas lamps flickered to life along a narrow hallway that should not exist.
Family portraits lined the walls.
Their faces were scratched out.
A sound cut through the haze.
A telephone.
Ringing.
Insistent.
Zhang Lu's legs moved without permission. The smoke herded him forward, whispers coiling into his ears.
You don't belong here.
Intruder.
Worthless.
"Shut up," he hissed. "You're not real."
The whispers laughed.
The hallway ended in a small room. A single bare bulb swung overhead. At the center stood an antique black rotary phone, receiver dangling, bell clanging endlessly.
The smoke pressed against his back.
He stepped inside.
The ringing stopped.
Silence fell—thick, expectant.
He lifted the receiver.
"Hello?"
Nothing.
He lowered it—
"Hello, dear."
The voice slid into him like ice.
He snapped the phone back to his ear. "Who are you?"
A soft, delighted giggle. "I'd like to play a game."
His heart dropped.
"A riddle," she continued. "Answer correctly, and I'll let you go. Fail… and you stay with me forever."
Zhang Lu steadied his breath. Fear sharpened into focus.
"Ask it."
"Oh, I will." Her voice grew intimate, playful. "What do you call it when night deepens and the clock strikes twelve? What is my name?"
The answer was immediate.
Too immediate.
"It's mid—"
A hand closed over his.
Cold. Strong.
"—night," she whispered against his ear.
Shadows wrapped around his wrists, gentle and inescapable.
The room dissolved.
She stood before him.
Tall. Overwhelming. Seven feet of elegant ruin.
Black hair floated as though submerged. A white blindfold etched with silver runes bound her eyes, yet her gaze pierced him. Crimson chains glowed loosely around her wrists. At her throat burned a turquoise pendant—the heart of an azure dragon.
In her hand: a purple envelope sealed in black wax.
Midnight.
Lady of the Dark Castle.
Leonard's mother.
Or what she had become.
"My dear Leonardo," she crooned, brushing his cheek with impossible tenderness. "Are you scared of Mommy?"
He couldn't breathe.
Memories flooded him—his and Leonard's, woven together by terror and awe.
The madness plague. The Black Sea. The dragon slain at midnight. The ascension.
Eternal night given form.
She leaned close. "Remember this, darling. There is no escape."
Then she laughed—and dissolved into smoke.
Zhang Lu collapsed, gasping.
The smoke thinned.
Walls reformed. Sunlight crept in through grimy windows.
He lay on a sagging couch.
Lowtown.
Home.
Footsteps approached—Orion's careless stride, Elara's lighter steps.
Zhang Lu staggered upright and fled to the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face.
Leonard stared back from the mirror.
"I guess this is my life now," he murmured.
Behind him, Orion's voice called, amused.
"Leo? You home already?"
Zhang Lu straightened.
Showtime.
In his pocket, the purple envelope weighed heavy.
He didn't open it.
Not yet.
The game had already begun—and Midnight never played fair.