The incense tasted like copper and failure.
Evren opened his eyes to smoke stinging his lungs, twelve elders coughing into their sleeves, and the distinct sensation of wrong gravity. He knew this weight. He'd read it in manga panel 47 of Chapter 7—The Fall of the Yi Branch, where the disappointing grandson collapsed during the Spirit Awakening, brain-dead by page 12.
Only now the brain was his.
"Impossible." The High Elder's voice cracked. "The vessel failed. The spirits rejected—"
"I didn't fail," Evren said.
His voice came out wrong. Too blunt. Too flat. The tone that had made classmates cry in another life.
The ceremonial chamber fell silent.
Twelve pairs of eyes stared at the seventeen-year-old boy who should be foaming at the mouth. Instead, Evren sat cross-legged in the summoning circle—gold-threaded silk robes hanging loose on his neglected frame—holding a card that physically should not exist: thick stock, gold edges, painted with a skeleton in black robes.
The Death card.
"I drew a different spirit," Evren said, looking at the card. "He's... quiet. Compact. Efficient."
The High Elder's face purpled. "That is not one of the Nine Stream Ancestors! That is foreign magic! Demonic—"
"Tarot," Evren corrected. "It's tarot. And your collar is on fire."
The High Elder's hand flew to his jade-embroidered ritual collar. Indeed, the silk had caught a spark from the gold-plated brazier. As the elder batted at the flames with hands heavy with ancestral rings, Evren stood, joints aching from this new body's history of fragility—well-fed but spiritually starved.
[The Rumoured Deck System: Activated]
[Host: Yi Evren (Side Character - Original Death Flag: AVOIDED)]
[Current Arcana: XIII - Death (Upright)]
[Spirit Possession Type: CONTRACT (Not Conquest)]
[New Title Unlocked: "The Cursed Heir"]
Evren looked at the system text only he could see. Then at the twelve elders—men in tiger-skin cloaks and jade staffs—who were now backing away from him, touching protective amulets worth more than village houses.
"He's possessed by a death god," someone whispered.
"He's going to curse us," another said.
Evren tilted his head. "Not unless you keep standing there. The east corner pillar is rotted. Termites." He sniffed. "And the ritual cellar beneath us? The methane from the ancestral lamp oil stored there. It's going to blow."
"Madness," the High Elder hissed, clutching his half-burned collar. "The stress broke his mind. Lock him in—"
The east corner pillar, which had been holding up the gilded ancestral shrine since Evren's grandmother was a girl, crumbled.
Not dramatically. Just... sigh. Lacquered timber and bronze brackets collapsed inward, crushing the ceremonial tea set—imported porcelain, three hundred years old—but missing the elders by inches. The gas line below, feeding the eternal flames, ignited with a whump that heated Evren's back like a sunset.
He walked toward the jade-inlaid doors.
"Wasn't today my birthday?" he said to no one in particular, that cursed bluntness operating on autopilot. "Wonder if—."
He pushed open the heavy oak. Behind him, the Yi Ancestral Hall—the pride of the northern provinces, with its marble floors and silk screens—filled with smoke and the screams of wealthy men.
"—maybe not," Evren said, and stepped into the lotus garden.
---
Evren didn't return to his quarters. First day in another world—no one guiding.
He walked the east garden corridor, past the alabaster lanterns that should have been lit for his successful awakening, now dark because the servants had fled the smoke. His gold-threaded robes dragged on dew-wet stone. In his right hand, he held the Death card—XIII, the skeleton, his silent contract. In his left, the rest of the deck, heavy and impossible.
He turned a corner. Found the moon-viewing pavilion, empty.
Voices carried from the kitchen courtyard below—servants whispering.
"—said the pillar would fall. It fell."
"The High Elder's collar burned right off. Green flames. Demon fire."
"Grandmother Yi is in the spirit chamber. She's asking the Nine Stream if the boy is possessed or blessed."
"Blessed? He looks through you. Like he sees your death date."
Evren sat on the pavilion rail. He looked at the card. The skeleton rode a white horse.
Flashback:
"Your leg will bleed tomorrow."
The school corridor. Fluorescent lights humming like dying wasps. The girl—he remembered her face, not her name—laughing, showing off the bruise on her shin from volleyball. "Freak."
The next morning, she didn't come. Her mother came instead, screaming in the office: "You cursed her! You wished it on her! You made it happen with your devil mouth!"
He'd tried to explain. "I saw the geometry of the bruise. The swelling pattern. The shift in her gait. I just... calculated the probability."
They didn't believe him. They never believed him until it was true, and then they hated him for seeing.
End flashback.
Evren touched the scar on his palm—an old wound from that life, somehow carried over, throbbing in time with his pulse.
He looked up at the Yi Ancestral Estate sprawling beneath the pavilion. The three-story library with its jade roof tiles. The training halls where Haoran would study in three years. The spirit wall that kept the northern ghosts out.
The manga—Chapter 342.
He remembered the panel after Chapter 7 faintly: Night of the Hungry Ghosts. The Yi estate collapses.
Heir dead because of brain-dead in a silk robe—place burned.
Evren shuffled the cards. His hands moved automatically, mechanical, the way he used to shuffle during exams while calculating probabilities.
If he was alive, the timeline was already broken. Demon fire didn't care who survived today. It wasn't recorded properly anyway. Just a rumour. A side note.
One card slipped.
It fell to the stone at his feet, face-down.
Evren looked at the back design—gold lattice, the pattern his fingers knew better than this new face.
The Star meant hope. A guide through the dark. Someone to follow.
The Chariot meant flight. Take the reins. Leave this burning place.
The Devil meant deal. Bargain with the smoke for safe passage.
He didn't flip it. Yet.