Auren woke to a pain he had never felt before. Not the sharp, clean slice of betrayal — but something deeper, older. A weakness that clung to his bones like rot.
'Where am I?'
He forced his eyes open.
'Hospital?'
He expected a white ceiling, beeping monitors, the hum of servers...
But instead—
He saw a canopy of faded gold silk overhead, its embroidery eaten by time and moths. Shadows of rain flickered across the tattered fabric with every flash of distant lightning.
His nose smelled the air, thick with the bitter reek of burned incense, mold, and damp stone walls that hadn't felt sunlight in years.
His ears heard the sound of thunder rolling beyond the heavy walls, muffled but close, while rain tapped like bony fingers against high, narrow windows hidden behind old drapes.
'Where the hell is this?' Auren's mind, so good at answers, offered none.
Instinct made him push himself up—or try to. The moment his hands pressed against the thin blanket, a stab of pain cut through brittle arms. He looked down.
Pale skin, nearly translucent. Thin fingers shaking from the effort. White clothes, coarse linen instead of tailored silk — unfamiliar, poor.
He flexed his hand. The bones beneath felt fragile, as if the slightest force might crack them.
His breath turned ragged. His chest ached with every shallow rise.
Only then did he truly see it.
This wasn't his body.
"Argent!" Auren croaked, voice hoarse but firm.
His command cracked through the stale air, but instead of his loyal AI's smooth response, pain exploded behind his eyes like a nest of hornets.
"Arg!"
A sharp gasp ripped from his throat. He clutched his head, nails digging into his scalp.
The memories came like a flood.
A child's voice...
A fragile heartbeat...
A name whispered like a prayer and a curse — Caelus Babylon.
Images slammed through his mind:
A boy no older than five, lying pale on silk sheets as robed priests murmured prayers.
The cold diagnosis: Overflowed Soul— a rare affliction that poured too much soul into a body too weak to hold it.
Each flare of sickness brought priests from the temples— holy men who could ease the pain, but never cure it.
His Royal Parents, the King and Queen, stood watchful at first, whispering comfort and hope.
But years passed...
Hope turned sour.
The priests failed, and the sickness worsened.
At ten, his mother, the gentle shield who stayed at his bedside, died suddenly, her death wrapped in whispers that pointed to him.
He killed her.
He is cursed.
The prince devours the Queen's soul.
Voices in parliament rose like hungry crows as rumors festered in candlelit halls.
The King, battered by courtly daggers, could not silence them.
So he silenced his son instead— exiled the boy to an abandoned castle rotting at the edge of the kingdom's lands.
Surprisingly, in that cold stone tomb, the sickness slept.
Seven years passed. No priests came. No father visited. The king's silence was deeper than the castle's shadows.
Caelus told himself he would live quietly, forgotten but free.
Until his seventeenth birthday.
Until the soul inside him swelled like a storm that could not be caged.
Until he died — unmarked, unmourned, a ghost buried in mold and thunder.
Auren gasped as the torrent receded. His forehead was slick with sweat. His chest heaved. Each breath rattled in the small ribs he now owned.
He sat there, pale hands trembling, heart thumping too hard in a chest that felt too small.
It turned out he was...
What did people call this?
Reborn?
Reincarnated?
Possession?
Poor Auren Voss — who mastered systems, who trusted only facts — could not find a word for what he had become.
He only knew one thing:
He was dead. Now he was Caelus Babylon — abandoned prince.
While Auren sat there, chest still rising and falling with the weight of memories that weren't his, the quiet was broken by the sound of footsteps echoing beyond the heavy door.
A pause — then a careful knock.
The door creaked open. Lantern light spilled across the damp stone floor, chasing shadows into the corners.
An old man stepped in, white hair neatly combed back, clad in a faded but immaculate butler's coat. The flame inside his lantern flickered across deep wrinkles and tired eyes.
"Your Highness," The old man said, voice soft but lined with worry: "Are you alright?"
Auren turned his head, pupils adjusting to the warm light. The face was unfamiliar, but the name and weight of him settled immediately in the fresh blend of memory.
This was Eldrin, steward of this castle— and the only soul who hadn't left Prince Caelus's side in seven long years.
Auren's new mouth curled into an instinctive line. His voice, even cracked by fever, carried that old, icy edge.
"It's late, Eldrin," He said flatly, "What are you doing here at this hour?"
According to the fragments now stitched into Auren's mind, the prince called Caelus had always carried the same cold quiet Auren did — but for different reasons.
Auren was cold because he had no patience for fools. The world was full of people who mistook polite smiles for invitations to waste his time, so he froze them out with silence and sharp eyes. His frost was a weapon to keep stupidity at bay.
Caelus, though…
Caelus's cold was a shield born from solitude.
An illness that locked him behind doors too heavy for a child to open, a palace that grew quieter as priests failed him, a mother gone, a father who stopped visiting, a world that whispered curses behind silk curtains...
And in this castle—miles from court and memory—only Eldrin remained. The old, loyal butler whose fussy, precise routines were Caelus's sole human warmth.
Seven years together, a child, and an old servant. Eldrin's stiff manner shaped Caelus like cold hands shaping clay.
For this reason, Eldrin never flinched at Caelus's cold tone. He had weathered it for years like a patient stone under dripping rain.
"Your Highness, I heard your scream earlier. I was worried and came to check on you," Eldrin said, eyes narrowing as they traced the sweat on Caelus's pale forehead.
"It's nothing. Just a nightmare." Auren waved a thin hand, the gesture dismissive but weak, "Go back to sleep, Eldrin. There's nothing here you can fix tonight."
He wanted to be alone now.
Experiencing death was one thing.
Waking up in someone else's body?
That was an entirely different problem— and even he, Auren Voss, master of probabilities, had no neat equation for this.
'This is absurd,' He thought drily, 'Argent couldn't have predicted this. I doubt it could even run the simulation.'
That's why he needed to digest his current situation.
Besides, there's nothing this old man could do about it.
The old butler's frown deepened. For a moment, he looked like he might argue, but he caught himself.
"As you wish, Your Highness," Eldrin murmured, bowing his head. The lantern's light bobbed as he turned and stepped into the hall's darkness.
Auren listened to the door click shut. The moment the latch fell into place, his arms gave out. The frail body collapsed back onto the bed with a soft thud.
He stared at the cracked canopy overhead.
Old gold threads, like crowns rusting in the dark.
He is alive.
Technically.
But one foot was already planted in a grave.
He exhaled shakily. The chest rose like parchment stretched over splintered ribs.
His so-called illness — the Overflowed Soul — could kill him at any moment. That much, the memories made painfully clear.
Seven years of silence, then a sudden storm strong enough to tear Caelus's soul apart from the inside.
Auren's eyes narrowed under the moldy canopy.
"How did it suddenly recur?" He rasped, voice nearly lost to the damp air.
In Caelus's memories, there were no hints — no sudden stress, no tampering, no sign the soul would break its cage again. Caelus had believed he was free, foolishly hopeful the curse was gone.
Clearly not.
'So, what triggered it?'
Auren's mind— his real mind, forged in skyscrapers and servers — began to turn the question over and over like a puzzle box.
"Haaah…" Auren let out a long, low sigh. The breath rattled in his frail chest like wind through cracked glass.
He pressed two fingers to his forehead, massaging the ache pulsing behind his eyes.
No clue.
Real nothing!
The memories he'd inherited were worse than useless— seven blank years where Caelus, poor sheltered thing, had simply hoped the curse had vanished like a bad dream.
No records.
No priest's whispers.
No hidden journals in moldy drawers.
Just that quiet, naive faith that luck had done the impossible.
'Pathetic!' Auren thought dryly, 'You were a prince, kid. Didn't you learn luck is the first thing royalty runs out of?'
He let out a humorless breath.
Don't tell me… I'm going to die again?
The thought clawed at his ribs. The old machine in his mind snapped awake — the same ruthless instinct that once turned hospitals and grief into shining towers and profit.
He forced himself upright, ignoring the dizzy spin behind his eyes.
"This is not good," He muttered to the cold walls and the flickering candle stub. "I can't just lie here and wait for the same ending. Who am I?"
His voice hardened, echoing off damp stone.
"I'm Auren Voss— master of probabilities. If Caelus's memories can't help me…"
He exhaled, eyes narrowing.
"…then I'll find my own solution."
The moment the word left his lips, the world shifted — as if something invisible had been triggered.
Colors drained away. The sickly yellow candlelight faded to pale gray. Mold on the stone turned to cold shadows. Even the old gold canopy overhead dulled to lifeless silver.
And in the center of it all, one thing burned bright: a line of pure, pulsing red, weaving out from his chest into the shadows beyond the door.
Auren stiffened, breath caught halfway between a scoff and a curse.
'What now?'
He forced his racing mind to steady.
Rain still hammered the high windows. Thunder still rumbled overhead. But the world felt frozen, muted, and brittle — except for the single, blazing red line.
Hesitantly, he reached for it. His fingers passed straight through— light, not thread. Untouchable.
Yet it tugged at him all the same.
Auren's eyes sharpened, old curiosity sparking behind the cold calm.
"It seems like it wants to lead me somewhere," He muttered, "Fine. Lead away."
He pushed the rough blanket aside, swung his thin legs off the bed, and shivered as cold stone bit into bare feet.
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
Bare feet brushed against cold stone as Auren stepped into the dark corridor, the heavy wooden door closing behind him with a soft click.
The Redline pulsed before him— a thin ribbon of living light in a world stripped to monochrome. It snaked lazily down the hall, brushing along damp stone walls, weaving through shadows cast by old candle sconces.
Thunder rumbled overhead, echoing through the old castle's bones. Each step he took felt louder than it should — a dry slap of flesh on stone, a reminder that this frail shell was real, no matter how unreal the glowing thread seemed.
He trailed the line through narrow passages and forgotten corners. It slithered under cracked arches and around broken statues, past dust-choked windows where moonlight fought to slip in.
Once or twice, Auren paused. His hand would hover over the line — untouchable but insistent, like a guide that didn't care whether he trusted it or not.
Solution, he reminded himself, the word tasting like iron on his tongue.
Finally, the line curved around a final corner and stopped, ending at an old wooden door with heavy iron hinges.
Auren stopped too, his breath shallow from the walk in this brittle body. He squinted at the door, his mind rifling through the memories stitched behind his eyes.
When the recognition hit him, he frowned.
It's Eldrin's room!
Of all places...