The truck horn shrieked.
Aerin's body moved before his brain caught up. Hands shoving the little girl sideways. Her red balloon slipped from her fingers and floated up into the blue sky.
Then the world turned sideways.
He hit the ground hard. Something cracked—ribs, maybe. His mouth filled with the taste of copper. The sky was very blue. Strange how he'd never noticed that before until now, maybe he was just very busy.
People were yelling. The little girl was wailing.
Good.
That meant she was breathing.
Twenty-three years. That's all he got? No wife, no kids, no real friends. Just a desk job and an apartment with water stains on the ceiling.
At least this meant something. His life wasn't in vain at least.
His vision went dark.
Then—white light.
Pure, blinding white that should have hurt but didn't. Aerin floated in it, weightless, formless. No body. No pain. Just... existence.
He waited for something. A god. A goddess. Judgment. Anything.
Nothing came.
Just emptiness wearing light.
Then the white began to shift. Tinted red at the edges. Like blood diffusing through water. The red spread inward, deeper, darker, until the light itself was the color of fresh wounds.
Aerin tried to scream but had no mouth.
Tried to run but had no legs.
The bloody light wrapped around him like a living thing. Pulled. Hard.
And the world sucked him in.
---
Cold.
That was the first thing Aerin felt when consciousness returned. Not the clean cold of air conditioning, but the wet kind that soaked through cloth and settled into bones.
He opened his eyes.
A stone ceiling stared back. Cracks ran through it like black veins. Water dripped somewhere in the corner—slow, steady drops echoing in the small space. One tiny window with iron bars showed a grey sky outside.
This didn't look like a home.
Aerin sat up. His body felt wrong. Too light. Too weak. He stared at his hands.
These weren't his hands.
Too small, too pale, covered in thin white scars. Fingernails cracked and dirty. When he touched his face, he felt sharp cheekbones and hollow cheeks.
This body was starving.
Then the memories hit like a gut punch.
Not his memories.
Fragmented images crashed through his mind:
A manor with white walls. A woman with dark hair reading bedtime stories, her voice warm and safe. A man teaching him to hold a wooden sword, patient hands adjusting his grip. Two older siblings laughing at the dinner table, teasing him about his messy hair.
Then fire .Screaming. Blood on wooden floors.
Running through smoke while clutching a book to his chest. Collapsing in the ruins. Waking up alone among corpses.
The name came with the memories: Aerin Valefor Arclight.
Fifteen years old. Last survivor of House Arclight. His entire family slaughtered three months ago by unknown assassins. No relatives came to claim him. No friends offered help.
He'd been living in this cold room ever since, surviving on scraps and stolen bread, waiting for his chance to enter Arcanis Sanctum—the academy where mages learned their craft.
Waiting to prove he deserved to exist.
The original Aerin had died yesterday. Or maybe two days ago—time was blurry when this body had been starving. This body's heart had just... stopped. Given up.
Even though it wasn't his body, Aerin could feel it. The loneliness. The cold. The pure agony this boy had endured. It was all there in the body's memories, soaked into muscle and bone.
And now someone else was wearing his skin.
Aerin pressed his palms against his eyes. Focus. Think.
He'd died saving a child. Now he was in a fantasy world, in a body that wasn't his, with a dead boy's memories echoing in his skull.
Isekai. That's what they called it in the novels he used to read.
He waited for the cheat ability. The system notification. The mysterious guide.
Nothing happened.
No floating screens. No sudden knowledge. Just a cold room and a body screaming with hunger.
His eyes landed on something in the corner.
A book.
The grimoire—the only thing the original Aerin had saved from the fire.
Aerin stood. His legs shook but held. He picked it up carefully.
Dark leather, worn smooth from years of handling. A silver clasp shaped like a thorned rose held it shut. The moment his fingers touched it, something in his chest pulled, Like recognition.
He opened it.
Blank pages. Every single one.
At the academy, students received grimoires filled with spells. The original Aerin's grimoire had been empty from the start. A cruel joke.
He kept flipping until he reached the center.
One page was different. Darker, stained rust-colored. In the middle was a symbol drawn in what looked disturbingly like dried blood:
A circle. A sword piercing through it. Thorned vines wrapped around the blade.
Below it, words in a script he shouldn't understand but somehow could:
Only blood reveals truth.
Aerin stared at those words. The original Aerin had tried everything to activate this grimoire. Meditation. Incantations. Begging.
Nothing worked.
But blood magic? That was different.
He looked at his scarred palm. One scar was fresh-barely healed, still pink. The original Aerin must have tried this before he died.
What did Aerin have to lose?
He was in a fantasy world with no money, no allies, no future unless he got into that academy. This grimoire was all he had.
Aerin pressed his thumb against the fresh scar. It split easily. Pain flared bright and sharp. Blood welled up, darker than expected. He pressed his wet thumb against the symbol-Nothing.
Then, the page grew warm. like the fever of a living body. The symbol pulsed beneath his thumb-Thump-thump.
Like a heart.
The warmth crawled up his arm. The dried blood symbol began to glow a faint, sickly red. Aerin tried to pull away, but his thumb was stuck.
The light grew brighter. The heartbeat hammered faster. Red lines spread across the page like roots breaking through soil, growing beyond the paper's edges.
The grimoire slammed shut, trapping his hand.
Aerin stumbled back, dragging the book with him before it fell to the floor, releasing him.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The cover began to crack—unhinging. Red light spilled through the fissures. The silver clasp shattered. The book opened itself, pages flipping violently in a wind that didn't exist.
Then, the light exploded.
Aerin threw his arm over his eyes. Heat washed over him, smelling of iron and ozone. The heartbeat shifted into a high, keening note that made his teeth ache.
When he lowered his arm, the book was gone.
In its place, red light twisted into solid form. Lines hardened into black metal. A shape materialized, heavy and hateful-A sword.
It hung suspended in the air. Three feet of black steel. A single-edged blade with a slight curve near the tip. Crimson lines ran along the fuller, pulsing with light.
Thump-thump- it's like thesword was alive
At the base of the blade, letters were etched in that ancient script, burning with an inner fire:
Sangreal.
Aerin knew he shouldn't touch it. Every survival instinct he had-both his own and the dead boy's-screamed that this was a line he shouldn't cross.
He reached out anyway.The moment his fingers closed around the leather grip, reality shattered.
***
He stood on a battlefield.
Bodies lay in heaps, armor twisted like wet tissue. The sky burned with a red fire that refused to go out.
A man stood in the center of the carnage. Dark hair. Grey eyes turned blood-red. He held the same sword Aerin now grasped.
"Forgive me," the man whispered to the corpses. "You need to see. All of you need to see what is feeding on us."
He raised the sword. The heartbeat grew deafening, drowning out the roar of the fire.
"I'll show you the truth," the man wept. "Even if I have to burn the world to do it."
He swung-
***
Aerin gasped, collapsing to his knees in the cold stone room.
Sweat dripped down his face. His hands shook violently, but they refused to let go of the hilt.
"That man. That battlefield.Valefor Arclight. The Crimson Emperor. The tyrant who nearly destroyed the continent seventy years ago, how do I- how do I know of this.."
His ancestor.
"Finally", a voice resonated in his skull. Not spoken, but felt, like a migraine taking shape."He hears us"
Aerin's blood froze. "Who—"
We are Sangreal- The Bloodbound Sovereign. A curse you have just accepted.
The voice was ancient, tired, and sharp as a razor.
"The boy who died in this body was weak. He would have broken the moment he touched us. But you..."The sword pulsed. You died for a stranger. You threw your life away for something small. That is... interesting."
"You brought me here?" Aerin whispered.
"We pulled a soul through the void to fill an empty vessel. We require a wielder, and the Arclight blood was failing."
A pause heavy with implication.
"Valefor failed to finish his work. You are the second attempt."
"To do what? Kill armies and destroy a continent, I refuse!"
"You cannot. The pact is sealed in blood."The voice held a grim amusement. "besides, do you wish to return to your gray desk? And your empty room?"
Aerin went silent. The memory of the water stains on his apartment ceiling flashed in his mind.
"I didn't think so,"the sword purred. "We offer power. A purpose we shall instil in your life, but know this, wielder: We are bound to feed. If you do not feed us your enemies, we will feed on you...gradually but surely."
"you will learn of the truth when you become stronger"
The presence faded, leaving only the quiet heartbeat in his hand.
Thump-thump.
Aerin knelt there, mind reeling.
He had been chosen. Pulled from death. Given a second chance at life, but attached to a weapon that had slaughtered millions.
Outside, the sky was lightening. Dawn.
The admission trials for Arcanis Sanctum were today.
Aerin looked down at his ragged clothes, his skeletal frame, his scarred hands. The examiners would see a beggar- An orphan.
"Fine by me, I've endured worse during my high school days"
He stood up, his grip tightening on the black leather hilt. He had a legendary cursed sword, a tyrant's memories, and absolutely nothing left to lose.
Aerin Arclight smiled, and it didn't reach his eyes.
The Crimson Emperor's legacy was awake.
And it was hungry.