They say the greatest pain is dying alone.
I disagree.
The greatest pain… is dying while knowing the world you loved never once cared that you were in it.
I was born Lee Hyun-jae — just another unremarkable man in a gray, crumbling world. A sickly twenty-six-year-old with stage four cancer and no family, no friends, and no purpose. My body betrayed me early, but it was my mind that truly decayed — eaten alive by silence and solitude.
All I had left was fiction.
Web novels. Light novels. Eroge. Fantasy games.
I devoured them like a starving man—worlds filled with power, love, betrayal, gods, demons, and impossible destinies. They were my escape from a life of beeping hospital monitors and pitying nurses.
The last novel I read was The Hero's Welcome.
A painfully generic power fantasy, if I'm honest. A noble family's illegitimate son rises to glory, defeats the demon lord, and is worshipped by the empire. The second wife's golden child becomes the beloved "Hero of Flame." The family that once cast him aside welcomes him back with tears and fanfare.
It was cheesy, overwritten, and riddled with clichés. But I couldn't stop.
I read it with a kind of desperation—as if finishing it would anchor me to the world just a little longer.
But I never made it to the last chapter.
My heart stopped around chapter 91.
The final thing I remember was the MC reuniting with his long-lost father, who finally acknowledged him with the words: "You are my true heir."
I died alone.
No final words. No family. Just the glowing screen and the fake triumph of a character who had everything I never did.
But... that wasn't the end.
****
I woke to pain.
Not the dull ache of my cancer-ridden body, but something sharper. Wilder. Like my nerves had been doused in fire.
There was shouting. Swords clashing. Blood on marble.
My body—young, unfamiliar, but already bruised—was being dragged through a courtyard.
I was naked, bound, and bleeding.
What the hell is this?
"My lord, are you sure about this?" a voice said. "He's your brother—"
"He's nothing," another snapped. "He's a stain. A mistake our father was too blind to erase."
My vision swam. I was too weak to lift my head, but I recognized the voice. It was deep. Regal. Cruel.
Damon Ceylian—first son of House Ceylian. The empire's golden warrior.
This... this couldn't be happening.
Then I heard another voice—one that stopped my heart cold.
"Just make it quick. We don't need him crying like a pig again."
Lucien. Second son.
I knew those names.
Not from my life.
From The Hero's Welcome.
In the story, there was a line—just one throwaway mention—about a half-brother who was made heir in a moment of the father's weakness… only to be mysteriously killed before the main plot began.
No face. No backstory. Just a line in chapter 4.
I wasn't the hero.
I was him.
The discarded. The forgotten. The corpse buried so the protagonist's path could be "clean."
I was Reinhart Ceylian — the background character who died before the story began.
And now I was about to die again.
They dragged me into the woods, far from the estate's walls. The others stayed behind, too proud or indifferent to soil their hands.
Damon and Lucien stood over me with matching sneers.
"For what it's worth," Damon said, drawing his sword, "you should never have believed Father loved you."
"He named me heir," I croaked, shocked at the sound of my own voice. It was smoother than I remembered. Younger. "He named me…"
"He pitied you," Lucien spat. "A bastard with a dying mother. He gave you a title, but you were never going to sit on the throne."
I tried to stand. Damon kicked me to the ground.
"This is mercy," he said.
The blade came down.
Darkness and gruesome pain followed.
Luckily I didn't stay dead.
This time, there was no hospital bed. No tubes or machines.
Just an endless black void — warm, humming, electric.
And a voice.
[ Initializing System... ]
[ Welcome, Reinhart Ceylian. Reincarnation Status: Confirmed. ]
[ Cause of Death: Terminal illness. ]
[ Secondary Death: Unjust betrayal. ]
[ Qualifying for Unique Title: Reincarnated Soul. ]
[ Granting: Infinite Mana Core. ]
[ Granting: All SSS-Rank Skills unlocked. ]
[ New System Installed: Master of Shadows Protocol. ]
What…?
[ Objective: You have no fate. You have no prophecy. You were never meant to exist. ]
[ So forge your own. Rule from the shadows. ]
[ Become the Master. ]
When I opened my eyes again, I was in a dark forest.
Alive. Whole.
And very, very angry.