Keiser had always hated wasting time.
Maybe it was because he'd spent most of his life in a state of perpetual battle--raised in the border wars, where every breath could be your last and every second demanded readiness. The only time he ever knew peace--however brief--was when he had his faction. When Gideon stood behind him.
Not as a prince.
But as a friend.
…That, too, had been a lie.
What he'd mistaken for a hand of support had all along been a blade aimed at his back.
***
"Your Highness! What do you mean you're returning?!"
Keiser didn't bother answering. He walked right past the boy.
He didn't care that he looked like he'd just clawed his way out of hell, covered in grime and gods-knew-what else. He didn't care that this wasn't his body--or that the boy, whose name he still didn't know, was following after him, calling him Your Highness, My Lord, with the reverence of a beaten servant who'd been taught that loyalty should look like worship.
Muzio, this body, had run away from being a noble.
But Keiser?
He was running straight back to it.
"Where are we?" he asked, eyes narrowing as he moved toward the barn's other end. Outside, endless fields. Weathered stables. Ramshackle barns scattered across the land. No towers. No citadel. No sign of court, capital, or civilization.
"What? Has your head sickness gotten so bad you've forgotten where we are?"
The boy's voice wavered with worry. He dropped the bucket he was holding, panic flashing across his face as he rushed to Keiser's side. Before Keiser could react, the boy was pressing a hand against his forehead like a fretful nursemaid.
From this distance, Keiser finally got a good look at him.
A freckled face. Sunburnt nose. Green eyes flecked with rust. His hair curled messily, caught between copper and chestnut. Familiar.
Too familiar.
But the hand pawing at his face wasn't welcome.
Keiser slapped it away.
The boy winced, clutching his stinging hand with a wounded pout. "My lord, since when did you become so abusive?"
Keiser ignored him.
There were more important matters. Something had gone very wrong--and if he really was in another body, in an unknown place, then wasting even a second was something he couldn't afford.
"You… you're Olga's younger brother, aren't you?"
The boy stiffened.
"Hey! Who gave you permission to call my sister by name so casually?" he snapped--and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, regret flashing in his eyes. "I-I'm sorry, my lord. I just… how did you know my sister's name? I never told you anything about my family."
Because I fought beside her on the border, Keiser wanted to say.
Because she saved my life more times than I deserved.
But Muzio--the boy whose skin he now wore--had never even seen a battlefield, let alone survived one. Saying that now would make him sound mad.
"You're Lenko," Keiser said instead.
The boy's brow furrowed.
"Yes, my lord… Why do you sound unsure?"
Because Keiser was unsure.
Olga had talked about her siblings--eleven, if memory served. But the one she always mentioned was Lenko. Her younger brother. The boy who had died alongside his lord. A death she never let fade into silence.
"His name," she once said, "will not be a whisper."
She had followed the sixth princess of Valemont--believing her ideals would bring proper remembrance to the fallen. She had allowed the princess to mark her with sigils, to carve faith into her skin. She had trusted that her cause would be honored.
But in the end, it was Keiser's kingmaker who ascended the throne.
"I'm just… confirming something," Keiser muttered.
He brushed past Lenko and stepped toward the barn doors, toward the sun.
Lenko groaned behind him. "Come on, Your Highness. You can't seriously be thinking about returning to court--not after all these years hiding and running."
Keiser didn't answer.
He just walked. Even if he didn't know where yet. Instinct guided him, not memory. The way the light pulled at his attention… the familiar tilt of shadows. Still, he doubted Muzio had ever truly been in hiding.
This didn't look like exile.
It looked like comfortable irrelevance.
A bastard, yes--but still noble.
And now, Keiser had to decide what to do with this borrowed second life.
"Lenko."
Keiser halted mid-step.
That name--uttered like an afterthought--dragged his attention to a crooked little wooden house, nestled just beyond a line of skeletal trees at the edge of the barnyard. It looked as though someone had built it in a hurry and then immediately forgotten it existed. Like a memory too painful to demolish but too dangerous to keep close.
He turned, slowly.
"Where are we?" he asked, voice low and tight, as if the answer might somehow explode.
Lenko blinked at him. For a moment, the boy just stared--clearly weighing whether the question was rhetorical or whether Keiser was about to throttle him.
Then, straightening, Lenko responded with uncharacteristic seriousness. "We're in Sheol, my lord."
He even dipped his head slightly, reverent--grim, like he was announcing a death.
Keiser froze.
Sheol.
The word hit him like ice water down the spine.
The common grave of mankind.
The rotten edge of the kingdom where battle lines blurred and monsters bred like rumors. A place that still twitched with dead things too stubborn to lie still. The name whispered in taverns, always with a shudder. Not a place, but a wound.
They had once fought here. No, bled here. Died here. Not for crowns or glory, but simply to delay the end a few more days.
Now there was… a barn.
Chickens. Horses. Cows. Goose.
And a house.
A house. In Sheol.
Keiser didn't walk--he ran.
His boots slammed against the soil as he bolted past the yard, past the chickens who squawked like he'd insulted their lineage, and straight toward that impossible house. Lenko's voice chased him, somewhere behind.
"My lord?! Wait--what are you--?!"
But Keiser couldn't stop.
The wind clawed at his face. His lungs screamed. Sweat rolled down his back. Every step punched a dull ache through his ribs--like an old wound, one he'd earned in another life. One this frail, skinny teenager's body wasn't built to carry.
He reached the clearing just before the treeline and collapsed to one knee, panting like he'd sprinted through a memory.
Because maybe he had.
The trees here looked wrong--too tall, too still. The kind of stillness predators made before they pounced. The shadows clung low to the ground, curling like fingers. The air had a weight to it. Like grief.
Keiser's breath hitched. His side burned like a knife was lodged beneath his ribs. He clutched it instinctively--reflexes from a body that wasn't his.
"Dammit," he muttered.
He hadn't survived the war just to be undone by teenage side stitch.
Behind him, Lenko stumbled into view, wheezing dramatically and flapping his arms like a bird trying to land.
"Wh-why are you running like that?!" the boy huffed. "Did you see a ghost? Or--wait--can you see ghosts now?! Is that a new head sickness thing?!"
Keiser ignored him. His eyes stayed locked on the house.
Wooden. Ordinary. Impossible.
"Were you just running to grab something to change into before heading to the capital?" Lenko guessed, tilting his head with innocent confidence. "Though I'm not really sure about your decision… but like I said, Muzio, I'll always be by your side."
The words landed like a slap.
Keiser flinched, visibly, like the boy had just smacked him with a wet fish.
He turned slowly, eyes narrowed.
"Don't say that."
The words cut sharper than intended.
Lenko recoiled, startled, his mouth opening in surprise. "I--I'm sorry, Your Highness! I didn't mean to-- I must've gotten too comfortable--"
He fumbled into a sheepish bow. "It's just… you seem serious about returning this time, so I thought I shouldn't call you just Muzio anymore. Maybe I should address you properly. Y'know. Like a prince. But not the formal kind of prince, obviously, I'd never--"
Keiser let out a long, slow groan, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Gods. The boy was pouting now.
He was pouting.
Gideon never pouted.
Because, of course, this wasn't Gideon. And this wasn't his life. Not anymore.
Bitterness coiled in his throat.
He turned away and approached the house.
Closer now, he could see it was... ordinary. Modest. Peaceful, even. There were flowerboxes under the windows. Flowerboxes. In Sheol. He half-expected a demon to crawl out of the tulips just to maintain the aesthetic.
He reached the door but didn't open it.
His fingers brushed the weathered frame, and something in his chest twisted.
"This house…" he murmured, barely audible. "Is it mine?"
The question sounded ridiculous, even to him. Like asking if a nightmare had a great sleep.
But Lenko--sweet, impossibly sincere Lenko--nodded without hesitation.
"Yes, my lord. It's yours. I cleaned it up while you were in the barn." He hesitated. "Do you want me to fetch an apothecarist from the village? You don't look so good."
"I don't need a healer," Keiser muttered.
Not unless they could stitch together fractured identities or exorcise the wrong soul from the wrong body.
No. What he needed wasn't medicine.
He needed answers.
Because this wasn't a resurrection.
It was a change.
He hadn't just been brought back to life. He'd been rewound, recast, shoved into the role of a ghost no one remembered, with a face no one was supposed to see again.
He hadn't returned as the man he once was.
He had returned as Prince Muzio Auro Valemont.
The tenth son.
The forgotten one.
And someone, somewhere, had decided he still had a part to play.