The sky in this world... was too blue.
That was my first thought when I opened my eyes. Then came the pain. A dull ache, as if I had been squeezed out of a dragon's womb—dry, weak, and disoriented.
I tried to move, but my limbs barely responded. Small hands, chubby fingers... A baby's body.
Wonderful.
I was once Kael Rivenhart, the Emperor of Seraphyl, feared and respected across four continents. And now? I couldn't even control my own head.
A woman appeared in my blurry vision—eyes tired but warm, cheeks flushed with sweat. "My little Kael," she whispered, before the world turned black again.
---
Days turned into weeks, and I could do nothing but listen, cry, and watch.
My name was still Kael, apparently. But the empire I knew no longer existed. This world was different. The stars looked unfamiliar. The language was strange, yet I understood it. My memories remained. My regrets, even more so.
I had been murdered—by my own son.
Now, I was given a second life.
---
I turned five the day I first heard about the Veritas Grid.
"Only those who understand the truth can touch it," said an old man in the village square, drawing strange diagrams in the dirt. "The Grid isn't magic. It's reality itself."
The villagers laughed, but I didn't.
I saw something that day—faint lines in the air, like threads of light only I could see. They shimmered, just out of reach.
Was it a hallucination?
Or... was it calling me?
---
If fate had dragged me into this world, I wouldn't run. Not again.
But as the wind stirred that night, carrying whispers from a sky too blue to be natural, I realized something:
I wasn't the only one reborn.
Five years in this new life.
Five years of pretending to be just another child.
I knew better.
Each day I trained in secret—reading old books, memorizing village maps, listening to every story the old drunkards told at the well. Information was power, and I was starving for it.
Then it happened.
One quiet evening, as the wind blew cold and the sky turned that eerie shade of blue, I saw it again.
The Grid.
Faint lines, like threads of moonlight, shimmered in the air above the field. They pulsed—alive, reactive, whispering.
I reached out.
And for the first time, it responded.
A ripple ran through the threads, and a voice—not from outside, but from inside my mind—echoed.
> "Truth... begins with loss."
I fell to my knees, gasping. My vision spun, and blood dripped from my nose.
And yet...
I was smiling.
---
That night, I couldn't sleep. My head throbbed, and strange symbols danced behind my eyelids. I knew it was a sign. The Grid had acknowledged me.
I had touched something forbidden.
But I also felt something else...
Someone was watching me.
From the trees.