The Weight of Fate

"Haaa....."

I let out a long, weary sigh, my breath barely audible over the soft rustling of leaves outside. Moonlight streamed through the open window, casting a faint glow across the room. Shadows danced along the walls as the wind stirred the trees, their whispers the only sound breaking the silence.

"So much happened today…"

From the moment I woke up in this body until now, it had all felt like a fever dream—unreal, disjointed, as if I would wake up any second in my old world.

"What if I sleep here and wake up as myself again?"

The thought was foolish, but it lingered. If something as absurd as transmigration could happen, why not something equally miraculous to undo it?

I scoffed at my own wishful thinking. Dwelling on it would only give me a headache.

Shoving the thought aside, I sat up. My stomach growled—a painful reminder that I had barely eaten all day. After my conversation with Selene, I rushed back to my room, avoiding any unnecessary interaction. Clara had come twice, bringing food, but I hadn't touched it. I had taken the trays from her without a word, shut the door, and left them untouched.

I didn't know why. Maybe I had lost my appetite. Maybe I just didn't want to deal with anything.

"Am I making the right choices?"

I had no answer.

Lying back down, I stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. My mind drifted to World of Estroma—the game I had spent countless hours playing.

The protagonist's story was a simple yet ruthless one.

Born into a small noble family, his entire bloodline was massacred for plotting treason. Miraculously, he survived. But survival meant nothing without power. He resented his own weakness, believing that if he had strength, he could have seized control of everything.

Then, at the brink of death—

All conditions met.

Survive and escape from pursuit.

Reward: Inventory unlock.

Bleeding out, confused, he barely had time to react before the system issued its first command.

From that moment, his rise was unstoppable.

The higher the difficulty, the greater the reward. The system pushed him forward relentlessly, making him stronger with each battle. And then, his first major quest—

"Kill the depraved young master of Stormbane Estate and seize his title."

I let out a bitter chuckle, shaking my head.

"No matter what I do, he's going to come for me."

"Arghh, I hate this…" I grumbled.

I was lucky enough to transmigrate—only to end up in this doomed body. It was like a beggar stumbling upon a hundred-dollar bill, only to realize it was torn in half.

With this weak, powerless body fighting was pointless.

But I didn't want to live in fear, hiding and running.

No.

I want to control my own fate and the way I want.

But how?

Only one option.

If I couldn't overpower him, I had to outmaneuver him.

That was why I approached Selene. She was cold and calculating, but she was the only person in this estate who didn't outright hate me.

She had her own twisted sense of honor—if she gave her word, she wouldn't break it easily.

She had developed this policy, as this was her only way making trustworthy allies.

That made her somewhat trustworthy, but definitely not safe. If things ever reached a point where betraying me is more beneficial, she wouldn't hesitate to kill me.

Worse, she could make my soul into her puppet and force me to serve her for eternity. The mere thought made my stomach twist.

Even in the game, at a certain point, she betrayed Stormbane and sided with the protagonist to take over the estate.

Could I trust her?

No.

But she was my best option.

The only other person who might be useful was Clara, but right now she didn't have any power that would help me. And I still didn't know how to face her. Nathan crushed her will so much, now she didn't even know how to think for herself. There was no background story for clara in the game, after Nathan's death her character had also disappeared.

Still… I couldn't ignore her potential. If I could understand her motives maybe I could turn her into an ally. Or atleast keep her from becoming my enemy.

This world didn't even have cheat items that would help me. The protagonist's system placed most of its overpowered rewards in his inventory after he finished a quest. That meant hidden items in the world were rare.

But there were a few exceptions.

And one of them was the Deathsong Amulet.

In the game, it was one of the game's rarest hidden items. That item can only be used by people having resonance with necromancy or spiritual power, when game MC got it at first, he couldn't make any use of it, so he stored it away in his inventory. But later, he gave it to Selene, solidifying their alliance.

If my memory was correct, right now he would be in the suburbs, fighting against a bandit group.

His first major quest was about to trigger. Unlike side quests, which activated based on scenarios, the main quests triggered automatically once he reached a certain power level—to maintain the storyline.

That meant, three months, maybe four if I am lucky that's all the time I have, before my death was scripted into the story.

If my actions didn't affect the storyline too much, then I was on borrowed time.

I needed as many allies as possible.

Selene hadn't given me an answer yet. No doubt, she was investigating my claims, weighing her options. She was careful.

But in the end, she had nothing to lose.

She would accept.

She had to.

Either way, she would take at least three to four days to respond after conducting her own investigation. Until then, there wasn't much I could do.

A yawn slipped from my lips as exhaustion weighed me down. My body sank into the mattress, the last bits of wakefulness fading into a hazy blur.

---

The room fell into silence.

Then—

"Click."

The door creaked open just an inch.

A single eye peeked through the gap, fixating on the sleeping figure inside.

Blue eyes.

They roamed over Nathan, scanning every inch of his form, lingering in a way that felt almost unnatural.

A maid stood outside, her auburn hair barely visible in the dim moonlight.

But her face—her expression—was different.

Not the soft, quite, polite mask she wore during the day.

This was something else.

Something unreadable.

Something impossible to explain.