Strangeness.

Badump! Badump!

My heart was beating faster than ever.

Thump. Thump.

It pounded against my ribcage like a trapped beast, clawing, desperate to break free.

I couldn't breathe.

The air stopped midway in my throat, snagged as if caught on invisible thorns. My chest heaved, but it brought no relief—only more pressure. I didn't know what kind of expression I was making. Was I shocked? Confused? Horrified? I couldn't tell anymore. My face felt foreign, numb. Detached from me.

Why? because My current situation make no sense.

As i stared down at my abdomen.

I didn't know what to say.

It was clean.

Smooth, unblemished skin. Pale and soft beneath the morning light filtering through the foreign curtains.

Not a single scar.

Badump!

The rhythm echoed louder in my ears, no longer the gentle beat of life, but the crashing of waves against a drowning man.

I was stabbed. I knew I was.

Not once— but over and over.

She had driven that sword into me again and again, each time with surgical precision, each time right in the same spot.

I remembered the cold kiss of steel.

The warmth of blood soaking through my robes.

The numbness that followed.

I remembered the pain.

How could I forget it?

And yet—there was nothing.

Not even the faintest sign that it had ever happened.

Could Kiel have healed something like this?

He was always resourceful—clever, daring, borderline insane with how far he'd go in pursuit of medicine. A man who once called himself a Divine Doctor, and perhaps deserved the title.

So yes, I could believe he saved me.

I could believe he pulled me back from death's edge.

But this…

This was too much.

The place I'd been stabbed—right through the abdomen, again and again—there wasn't even a scar. Not a blemish. Not a single mark.

It wasn't just healed.

It was as if it had never happened.

As if I'd never been wounded at all.

That, I could not explain.

Wounds can be closed.Bleeding can be stopped.Even a heart can be coaxed to beat again.

But scars?

Be it on one's heart or body—

Scars don't vanish so easily.

I frowned, my brow tightening with the weight of thoughts I had no answers for.

Ever since I woke up… everything had been wrong.

This room.

The ceiling stretched far above, too high for any residence I remembered. The windows were enormous, letting in an unnatural amount of light—soft, diffused, almost ethereal. The wood that framed the walls and floor carried a scent I couldn't place. Sweeter than oak. Lighter than cedar. The air itself felt thinner, lighter, as if I stood in a place closer to the sky.

The architecture was refined—but unfamiliar.

The curves of the walls, the fluid angles, the symbolic carvings etched into the panels—none of them belonged to any style from the Empire.

Or any of the other empires.

And that's what truly disturbed me.

I had conquered them all.

The East, the West, the North, the desert lands and the islands lost to maps—I had stepped foot in every territory known to man, and made them mine.

So how could a place like this exist… and not be mine?

How could I not even recognize it?

Even worse—how could it feel superior?

The craftsmanship… the design… the harmony of light and structure... if I had to compare, I'd say this place wasn't just equal to my palace. It was better. Slightly. Subtly. But unmistakably.

Foreign.

Completely alien.

As though I had not just been taken from my empire—

But from my very world.

And yet, the strangeness didn't stop there.

The room was just the beginning.

I looked down—at my hands.

And I froze.

I stared at them. Hard.

They looked wrong.

Not monstrous. Not deformed. Just… not mine.

Where were the calluses?

The thick skin hardened by sword handles and frostbitten winters? The knuckles that had broken countless jaws in the chaos of war?

Instead, I saw slender fingers. Smooth. Untouched by toil. Almost elegant. Almost feminine.

No—more like a doll's.

Fragile. Crafted. Artificial.

My heart pounded. My stomach turned. I rose to my feet, but the motion itself felt foreign.

My balance was off.

My limbs lighter.

Even the floor seemed farther away.

My height had changed.

My proportions were unfamiliar.

It was like inhabiting someone else's body entirely.

"..."

the moment this thought cross my mind i drew a cold breath.

can such a thing even possible?

I turned toward the window, hoping to orient myself, to find some clue, some logic—

But I stopped.

There. In the corner.

A mirror.

Tall. Old. Framed in strange silver leaves and set into the wall like a doorway to something forbidden.

And I felt it immediately.

All my thoughts—fragmented, frenzied—drew toward it like moths to a flame.

That mirror held the answer.

Forget the pain. Forget the room. Forget the absurdity of it all.

I had to see.

A man must know himself before he dares to know the world.

I stepped forward.

One step.

Two.

Each heavier than the last, as though the space between me and the glass carried a weight all its own.

And then—

Silence.

I stood before the mirror.

"..."

I stared. The mirror stared back.

And what I saw made my mind go completely blank.

A young boy.

Black hair—like silk, shimmering subtly in the light.

Skin pale and pristine, almost translucent. A face so delicate it could be mistaken for a girl's, with soft lines and full lips.

But the most striking thing—what arrested my thoughts, what held me there—were the eyes.

Golden.

Not just yellow. Not hazel. Gold.

Brilliant, metallic, otherworldly.

They shimmered like a treasure buried beneath still water.

Eyes that didn't belong in this world.

I had never seen anything like them. Never heard of anything like them.

They stared back at me, unblinking, eternal.

I raised a hand.

The reflection copied me.

I touched my cheek.

It followed.

"Is this… a dream?" I murmured, barely audible.

The lips in the mirror moved with mine.

Said the same words.

It would have been easier—so much easier—if it were a dream.

That would explain the strangeness. The alien room. The alien body. The suffocating sense of displacement.

Maybe I was still in the darkness.

Maybe I had died.

Maybe this was just some echo of my fading mind.

A nightmare.

And if it was a dream…

Now would be a good time to wake up.

But—

Badumppp!!

My heart slammed against my chest.

Like a war drum.

A warning.

As if telling me to stop lying to myself.

Badump! Badump!

It grew louder.

Faster.

Badump! Badump! Badump!

Until it was the only sound I could hear—an endless, hammering rhythm beneath my skin.

I reached for my face again, hand trembling.

I pinched my cheek.

The pain came sharp. Immediate.

Real.

This wasn't a dream.

This was real.

Which meant—

That reflection...

That face...

Those golden eyes...

They were all mine.

I had become this.

But—how?

And as if in answer to that thought—

A searing pain erupted in my skull.

"Kh—!"

Like a blade driven straight into the center of my mind.

My knees buckled.

I collapsed onto the floor, breath ragged, hands trembling.

One gripped my head. The other searched for balance against the smooth, cold tiles.

And then—

Flashes.

Visions.

Memories.

But not mine.

Places I had never seen.

Voices I had never heard.

Emotions I had never felt.

Foreign. Overwhelming.

I clutched my temples as a flood of memories crashed through me—each one striking like a wave, relentless and overwhelming, threatening to drown me in confusion and pain.

A thin stream of blood slipped from my nose as I collapsed onto my back, eyes fixed on the unfamiliar ceiling above.

'These memories…'

They don't belong to me.

'They belong to this body.'