Sleep brought no peace.
Kaelen dreamt in fragments. He dreamt of a young boy trailing after a mother whose face he could never quite see. Of a funeral where no one let him cry. Of years spent reaching for a father who never turned around, a brother who was always too busy being extraordinary to notice the ordinary sibling fading into the background. He dreamed of wine that made him forget, of laughter that curdled into mockery, of hands pushing him toward a railing.
He woke with a gasp, the phantom sensation of falling still clawing at his chest.
The room was dark. The candles had burned down, leaving only the pale gray light of early dawn filtering through the curtains. Rin was asleep in a chair by the door, her head bowed, a blanket draped over her thin shoulders.
Kaelen lay still, letting his breathing settle, and sorted through the memories that had surfaced during the night.
They belonged to Caelus Verant, intertwined with his own memories, and separating them was like trying to untangle two threads that had been deliberately knotted together.
He had lived through Caelus's childhood, his grief, his desperate longing, humiliating need for approval that never came. He had the shape of his relationships: the cold distance of the father, the casual dismissal of the brother, he had the taste of cheap wine given by people who he thought were his friends and the weight of a hundred sleepless nights spent wondering why he was never enough.
And he had the fall.
That memory was different, Murkier. Caelus had been drunk but there was something else, a sense of wrongness that lingered at the edges of the recollection the feeling was different from being drunk. The northern nobles had been laughing, urging him onto the railing, their voices bright with mockery. And then the place where water was flowing was soon replaced by a stone, and in the split second before impact, he had heard one of them say, "Finally."
He sat up slowly, ignoring the protest of his bruised body. The weakness was still there, profound and frustrating, but the fog in his head had lifted. He could think more clearly now meaning he could plan.
He hated the feeling of having a knife dangling on his neck and not knowing who was holding the knife.
First, he needed to establish the timeline clearly.
He closed his eyes and reached into Caelus's memories, searching for landmarks. The current year. The political events unfolding in the capital. The movements of the family. He found them scattered, buried beneath layers of alcohol and apathy, but they were there.
The Verant household was preparing to host the annual assessment a ceremonial evaluation of noble houses that determined their standing and resource allocation. It was three months away. In the novel, that assessment had been the backdrop for the protagonist's rise, a series of challenges and betrayals that would culminate in the fall of several houses, including…
He had read hundreds of novels during his years as a hunter. He could not remember every minor character's fate, but he remembered this one because it had struck him as particularly wasteful. A young man no one loved, dying in a way no one investigated, mourned by no one except perhaps a servant who had no power to demand justice.
It felt like a useless death.
He tested the boundaries of this new body, his arms trembled when he lifted them too high, his legs felt like they might buckle if he tried to stand for long and the mana pathways were there, but they were atrophied, underdeveloped, as if they had never been used. The Verant family had not bothered to train him, which was odd cause noble families love having more than one genius. In his memory he remembered having teachers for a while then suddenly they stopped coming and soon no one spoke of it. He had tried to ask his father but was told the teachers left because he was not talented enough, but he could clearly remember the teachers praising him for learning fast. He tried to learn on his owned but was punished for it, so his lack of use made them weak.
It would take months to rebuild, months of grueling and extremely painful work, of forcing this weak vessel to do things it had never done.
He had three months until the assessment, that means three months until the events of the novel begin.
And three months until, according to the fragmentary memory of the plot, Caelus Verant was supposed to die.
The hum returned, faint and insistent. He had noticed it before a discordant vibration beneath his skin, as if something in his chest was wanting to get out. He had assumed it was a remnant of his injuries, a symptom of the body's trauma. But now, lying still in the gray morning light, he recognized it for what it was.
It was a connection being made, with what he was not sure. He was too weak to stop it so all he could do now is slow it down and watch.
He had felt something like this before. In dungeons, the mana density shifted unexpectedly. Near gate anomalies, when the boundary between worlds grew thin and gates connected to their world. But this was different it was inside him could it be related to how he came to this world?
What are you? He thought, directing the question at the hum it was instinctive. He felt the question was heard but, the hum or rather what was on the other side did not answer. It simply persisted, like a reminder that something had been altered in the process of his rebirth.
He let out a slow breath and pushed the concern aside; he could not solve every mystery at once. First, he needed to survive. Yes, he promised himself to be passive he should not forget that.
He would only find out who had killed Caelus Verant, and why as a means of survival remove the issue save money then go away.
The dawn light strengthened, painting the water-stained ceiling in shades of amber and rose. Rin stirred in her chair, her face scrunching as she woke. When she saw him sitting up, she bolted upright, a flood of apologies on her lips.
"Young master, you should be resting—"
He should also try to find this servant's indenture and set her free. She was the only one who stayed even when the original was violent and cared for him every time he came home drunk.
"I'll go get you food…the doctor will be here soon and…
"Rin." he cut her off, his voice amused. "How long until the next dungeon exploration?"
She blinked, clearly thrown by the question. "A month, young master. Why do you ask?"
It was indeed odd for him to ask since he had not been interested in it ever since he was punished for secretly practicing. He was counting days, calculating the window of time he had to transform this broken body into something that could survive another assassination and also survive the novel plotline. In the novel, the assessment was a only a start, there were deadlier things that happened and he needed to survive them.
"Three months," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
Rin was watching him with an expression he could not quite read fear, perhaps, or confusion. The young master she knew had never asked about assessments. The young master she knew had never looked at her with eyes that held more than disgust for being a lowly servant.
"Bring me something to eat," he said, his voice softer now, closer to what Caelus might have sounded. "And whatever news there is. I've been asleep too long."
She nodded, still looking uncertain, but she went.
When the door closed behind her, Kaelen let the mask slip, he was annoyed, the though of the fact that it had been the last dungeon before he could retire and relax with the money he had saved. He had struggled for so long to survive and have a good life after, but it all ended. He looked down, his hands were trembling and he could feel pain in his chest due to anger, he had served for more than thirty years from the age of ten when he awakened as an A-rank and his dead beat parents sold him to the state and he was trained as a weapon. He never knew that the body that had held S-rank blades, that had carved through dungeon beasts and survived three apocalypse like events would die in the hand of the state that raised him.
And what hurt him was that they did it right before his retirement. He had never known relaxation and just as he was to feel it he died. He breathed in the pain in his chest was increasing, he needed to calm down.
His well-trained body was gone, but the mind that had trained with the body was still here. The instincts, the knowledge, the cold precision of a hunter.
The hum beneath his skin pulsed once, a single discordant note that might have been agreement or warning.
He still did not know which.