Mark spent a long, bitter moment cursing Thaddeus's idiocy before forcing his mind to focus. He had tried to deny it, but the grim reality of his new vessel was unavoidable. He had initially hoped the world was simply dark, but it was now undeniable: he was stone-blind. When he reached out to swipe the glowing System panel, his fingers passed through empty air. The screen existed only as a phantom image burned into his mind's eye.
Attempting to stand was a lesson in humiliation. His left leg was indeed shorter, turning every step into a clumsy, lurching struggle. The "little brother" was structurally there, but as the System had coldly stated, it was a silent, dead weight. Worse still were the flaws the System hadn't listed: his spine felt like a rusted chain, hunched and brittle. Keeping his back straight was an agonizing impossibility, forcing him into a permanent, pathetic stoop.
As he continued to probe the limits of his aching frame, a sharp chime shattered the silence.
[Ding!]
[Host, prepare yourself. The System is now lifting the suppression of the original memories belonging to Thaddeus von Lightborn. Transfer commencing in 3... 2... 1...]
As the countdown hit zero, a lifetime of foreign experiences surged into his consciousness like a violent tidal wave. The physical pain flared anew, but this time the epicenter wasn't his eyes—it was the very core of his skull. The memories didn't unfold like a film; they manifested as a sudden, suffocating influx of raw emotions, faces, and cold facts.
For several disorienting minutes, Mark lost himself. The boundary between Mark Miller and Thaddeus von Lightborn blurred until he felt his very soul might crack under the pressure. Slowly, the throbbing receded.
To his immense relief, his ego remained intact. While Thaddeus's past had left a deep, indelible mark, it hadn't consumed him. The noble's life felt like a secondary narrative—a vivid, tragic story he had watched with high-definition clarity, rather than one he had lived himself.
Through these inherited memories, Mark saw the truth of the House of Lightborn. They were unique among the nobility—a house defined not by bloodlines, but by pure, unadulterated combat. Succession wasn't a birthright; it was a trophy earned through strength. The Patriarch maintained a primary wife and countless concubines to ensure a constant supply of "candidates." Thaddeus was merely the product of one such fleeting union. His mother had handed him over to the House, collected her gold, and vanished without a second glance.
In the House of Lightborn, talent was the only currency. If a genius appeared among commoners, they were absorbed through adoption or marriage to strengthen the lineage. This was the very mechanism that had eventually allowed Colin, the protagonist, to usurp Thaddeus's place.
Thaddeus's early upbringing had been a brutal forge of etiquette, history, and weapon mastery. It was here that his innate genius had first manifested. He possessed a pair of extraordinary crimson eyes—The Mimic Eyes—a unique trait that allowed him to mimic any movement or technique after seeing it just once. In the heat of battle, he could dissect an opponent's patterns and flaws within seconds. What took his peers months of grueling practice, Thaddeus could replicate perfectly on his first attempt. This effortless brilliance fed a monstrous ego, birthing an arrogant noble who couldn't even conceive of the word "defeat."
With his striking appearance—piercing red eyes and snow-white hair—Thaddeus became a prodigy of the high nobility. This prestige led to his engagement at age eleven to Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the powerful Duke Bismarck. However, the structured training of the House of Lightborn ended abruptly on his twelfth birthday.
From that day forward, the House granted each child absolute freedom, monitored only by a "Shadow Butler"—a secret observer who reported every move back to the Patriarch. This was the House's true crucible: what would a wolf do when the leash was cut? Would they hunt, or would they rot? As long as they didn't tarnish the family name publicly, the House remained silent. But the price of public failure was exile or execution.
Thaddeus failed the test spectacularly. Drowned in praise and secured by the Lightborn-Bismarck alliance, he assumed his future as heir was a finished book. He abandoned the training grounds for social balls, wasting his youth among idle "spare" sons who had no claim to their own legacies. By sixteen, his growth had hit a dead end. He relied solely on his photographic memory for theory and his Mimic Eyes to fake his way through duels. Even at the Academy, he remained among the elite—a hollow king of easy victories.
That fragile crown shattered in his second year, the moment Colin enrolled as a freshman.